The Public Utilities Commission of California (United States) has upheld net metering for solar rooftop installations, allowing home-owners equipped with solar panels to continue selling their excess power generation to the local power utility at the full retail rate. However, the PUC introduced a new fee to connect solar installations to the grid (from US$75 to US$150) and solar users will be required to pay monthly fees for some utilities programmes and to move to time-based utility rates, paying more for power during peak hours. The net metering scheme will be revised again in 2019.
Net metering has been criticised by some ratepayer advocates for rewarding solar users while leaving other consumers connected to the distribution grid the burden to pay for maintaining the network. In addition, the 40% drop in the cost of residential solar installations in the last five years has triggered some utilities to call for the removal of these schemes.
Interested in Global Energy Research?
Enerdata's premium online information service provides up-to-date market reports on 110+ countries. The reports include valuable market data and analysis as well as a daily newsfeed, curated by our energy analysts, on the oil, gas, coal and power markets.
This user-friendly tool gives you the essentials about the domestic markets of your concern, including market structure, organisation, actors, projects and business perspectives.