It’s time to combat utility opposition to solar

Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association business group, will moderate a talk on abuse of monopoly positions by utilities at the Empower 2022 virtual summit.

There are plenty of examples of big utilities using their monopoly status and wealth – the latter derived from profits guaranteed by state governments around the US – to try to block customer access to self-generation technology.

For starters, in 2020 PG&E [Pacific Gas and Electric Company], SDG&E [San Diego Gas & Electric], and Southern California Edison between them pushed through an average $900 per year tax on consumers of solar and on energy storage systems. In making this proposal, the investor-owned utilities (IOUs) explicitly contemplated the need to tax self-consumption, including non-exporting battery systems, simply because the consumer would purchase less of the IOUs’ product.

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Source: PV Magazine

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