Taxing sunlight

[widebody911]

SRP's proposed rate hike targets new rooftop-solar customers

Salt River Project customers who want to add solar to their homes could be hit with $50 a month in new fees as part of a rate-hike plan.

[porsche4life]

Just read that this morning. Seems completely idiotic and like a money grab to me. By their logic someone who doesn't use much power is costing them $50/month? Really. Then why are they just hammering solar customers?


We are on SRP, but aren't planning on doing solar soon. Hopefully this doesn't happen.

[Neilk]

It really pisses me off in Texas that there is no incentive to save energy. In the winter months, we average about 900kw per month. If we increase our usage by 11% to over 1000kw, our rate goes down about 15% and the service fee goes down in half, from around $10 to $5.

I should get near my meter on the last day of the month and turn on every appliance and light to bump me over the edge. What a stupid concept.

I hope SRP isn't publicly traded, raising rates for the shareholders.

[porsche4life]

One of the public hearings is near my house. I'll try to go raise a stink if we can come up with some good talking points

[BE911SC]

Capitalism at its finest! Monetization! Nice try trying to "go off the grid" and lower your energy bill. You're not going to get away without paying. The whole system is propped-up by rates and fees and if you try to cleverly avoid paying them they'll catch up to you and make you pay.

Before you get upset that it's government regulators doing this, they are under intense pressure from traditional energy suppliers to keep solar (and wind) from getting too popular too fast. Ronald Reagan had Jimmy Carter's solar panels removed from the White House roof because Reagan's corporate energy pals/donors told him to. State regulators answer to energy providers, not voters.

[gacook]

I love that my "energy delivery fees" keep getting higher and higher each year (by a lot), yet they haven't upgraded any of their infrastructure in my area...yet, I live in the desert and water is dirt cheap (approximately $30/month water bill, and I've got 7 people in the house, taking showers daily--3 of which are girls).

[intakexhaust]

Reminds me of the ever rising cost of taking a dump. Consider the increased cost of flushing a toilet, higher cost for schit paper plus the sales tax collected.

[island911]

Everyone needs grid electricity -just like everyone needs Health Care. So why not make a law that says that if you don't buy a grid electricity you will be taxed 2% of your income? That would make it fair for every one - just like Obamacare.

uh huh.

[island911]

Oh, and sunlight; you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.
ergo, you should pay for that sunlight.







Don't forget to pay for your exhaling of carbon dioxide.



same same

It's all about control. ...in this land of the free, home of the brave.

[Rick Lee]

At least they're upfront about it this time and saying it's only going to affect future solar customers.

When I went solar, the value proposition was that by leasing I'd lock in my APS rates for 20 yrs. and they normally go up 5-7% per year. My monthly costs now vs. two yrs. ago are close to a wash, maybe saving $200/yr. since going solar. Now APS is saying they're "fighting" for us, trying to not raise rates or impose new fees on all those solar customers who did what APS and the gov't. asked them to do. But that the huge number of solar customers means fewer are paying their "fair share" to support the grid. Who couldn't have seen this coming? It's like imposing a tax or toll until something is paid for. It never goes away and usually goes up.

[tadink]

This is actually pretty surprising from SRP, they have traditionally been pretty pro-solar in their thinking. They have supported both solar Elec (PV) and solar Hot Water with some fairly aggressive rebate programs.

Must be something going on - this is fairly strange behavior from a 'municipal' utility vs. an IOU (Investor Owned Utility). Generally speaking, the Muni's tend to view their customers as their constituents - they 'serve' their customer base with the customer's goals as their goals. Contrast that with the IOU's whose goals are to serve their shareholders and return the maximum profits possible.

The entire utility marketplace is viewing solar the same way that the telecom's industry viewed cellular - left to grow and flourish cellular eventually wiped out the 'wires' companies. The utilities are concerned that increased solar penetration will obsolete their monopolies....and they are fighting back. This is one indication of that.

The absurdity is that most solar penetration rates hover below 5% of total connected load in most utility service territories, Hawaii being the exception.

The utilities are even MORE concerned with the coming 'battery back up' market - and have yet to realize that there are very real benefits to having controllable generation in the circuit areas of their distribution network.

Interesting times -

td

[HardDrive]

Meh. If you have power lines going to your house, and you expect electricity to be there when you need it, the it follows you need to pay for it. Grid maintenance is not free.

[varmint]

Capitalism at its finest! Monetization! Nice try trying to "go off the grid" and lower your energy bill. You're not going to get away without paying. The whole system is propped-up by rates and fees and if you try to cleverly avoid paying them they'll catch up to you and make you pay.



Before you get upset that it's government regulators doing this, they are under intense pressure from traditional energy suppliers to keep solar (and wind) from getting too popular too fast. Ronald Reagan had Jimmy Carter's solar panels removed from the White House roof because Reagan's corporate energy pals/donors told him to. State regulators answer to energy providers, not voters.

You forgot to blame space Jews for keeping the water burning engines secret.

[RedBaron]

It still puts stress on the grid for the extra infrastructure. This is no different than charging a Tesla owner road tax.

[Tervuren]

Originally Posted by BE911SC

Capitalism at its finest! Monetization! Nice try trying to "go off the grid" and lower your energy bill. You're not going to get away without paying. The whole system is propped-up by rates and fees and if you try to cleverly avoid paying them they'll catch up to you and make you pay.

Before you get upset that it's government regulators doing this, they are under intense pressure from traditional energy suppliers to keep solar (and wind) from getting too popular too fast. Ronald Reagan had Jimmy Carter's solar panels removed from the White House roof because Reagan's corporate energy pals/donors told him to. State regulators answer to energy providers, not voters.

Every looked into the maintenance costs of the white houses solar panels vs the cost of the energy they produced? They didn't make economic sense. At lest they were for water heating rather than electrical generation which at the time was absolutely horrible technology in terms of energy to produce the panels vs energy gotten back from them.(They made sense if you stripped the atmospheric losses and put them on a space ship).

The solar the white house had was running water through conduits that were heated by the sun, it wasn't efficient due to installation reasons, poor exposure, and the panels were painted over for appearance reasons.

While solar water heaters are one of the most effective uses of solar energy(broad wave lengths accepted rather than narrow bands for photo-voltic), the system in the white house had quality problems with the install and implementation. I believe, that several of the panels are in use else ware to this day, although mainly re-used and installed as a publicity stunt, I have no figures on their usefulness today. At least they aren't being wasted. Style was more important to the white house solar than functionality, you weren't allowed to see them. This meant the panels were partially painted for a drop in efficiency. The 3,200lb's of them on the roof also only produced hot water for a few tasks at the white house, and were used for little else.

They were an expense with little actual use relative to cost of production and operation. Had they been installed properly, the story might be different.

They were removed when the roof needed to be resurfaced. It would of been additional expense to put them back up again, and it didn't pan out what they saved vs what it would cost.

[intakexhaust]

Originally Posted by tadink

This is actually pretty surprising from SRP, they have traditionally been pretty pro-solar in their thinking. They have supported both solar Elec (PV) and solar Hot Water with some fairly aggressive rebate programs.

Must be something going on - this is fairly strange behavior from a 'municipal' utility vs. an IOU (Investor Owned Utility). Generally speaking, the Muni's tend to view their customers as their constituents - they 'serve' their customer base with the customer's goals as their goals. Contrast that with the IOU's whose goals are to serve their shareholders and return the maximum profits possible.

The entire utility marketplace is viewing solar the same way that the telecom's industry viewed cellular - left to grow and flourish cellular eventually wiped out the 'wires' companies. The utilities are concerned that increased solar penetration will obsolete their monopolies....and they are fighting back. This is one indication of that.

The absurdity is that most solar penetration rates hover below 5% of total connected load in most utility service territories, Hawaii being the exception.

The utilities are even MORE concerned with the coming 'battery back up' market - and have yet to realize that there are very real benefits to having controllable generation in the circuit areas of their distribution network.
Interesting times -

td

You mean like Warren Buffet buying Duracell...

Don't even get me started with the third party line leased electric suppliers scam. Oh thank you kindly lobbyist / legislature con artist.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally Posted by varmint

You forgot to blame space Jews for keeping the water burning engines secret.

LOL! (Literally, my cubicle neighbors are asking me what's so funny)

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by porsche4life

One of the public hearings is near my house. I'll try to go raise a stink if we can come up with some good talking points

Better to become a corporate apologist and just roll over while C-level execs buy their 3rd homes.

[Evans, Marv]

As already stated, we aren't going to get away with avoiding these kinds of fees. Another example is taxing vehicles by the miles driven rather than gasoline consumed. All energy and resource saving schemes will result in this.

[strupgolf]

Originally Posted by RedBaron

It still puts stress on the grid for the extra infrastructure. This is no different than charging a Tesla owner road tax.

I don'think so. There is no more stress on the grid from this person using solar at all. There is NO extra infrastructure at all from the power sourse. He is not using anything they have in their system. He should get a price break for NOT usung their power.But we all know that big energy always wins.