How Rooftop Solar’s
Sweetheart Deal went Sour in Nevada…as It Should Have
Rooftop Solar Owners’
Having Hard Time Accepting End of the Free Ride
(Chuck Muth) - If you live in Nevada, you might think the big,
hot-button issue of the 2016 campaign season isn’t radical Islamic terrorism,
illegal immigration, the skyrocketing cost of ObamaCare or even our
ever-exploding national debt – which we are shamefully passing on to our kids
and grandkids.
No, if you live in Nevada you’d be excused for not thinking
the biggest issue of the 2016 campaign season is…rooftop solar.
Rarely has such a tiny minority of self-interested players
generated so much annoying, vuvuzela-like sound-and-fury on such a
comparatively insignificant public policy matter.
And when I say tiny, I mean T-I-N-Y.
Indeed, in a state of some 2.8 million people, the number of
rooftop solar customers is all of around 17,000 homeowners. That comes to all
of about 2 percent of power customers.
TWO PERCENT.
And make no mistake; even with all the government and
utility subsidies rooftop solar owners have enjoyed over the years, these folks
aren’t your average working stiff. Most rooftop solar owners are in the
upper-class.
They ain’t exactly bringing their lunches to work in brown
paper bags.
And yet this privileged, high-income 2 percent has all
manner of liberal politicians on their side, including socialist presidential
candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Why?
Because at the heart of the issue is “green” energy, the
Holy Grail of liberalism. And anything even remotely perceived as fighting
so-called “global warming” is sacred and must be protected, even at the expense
of siding with the rich.
At the heart of the matter is the issue of “net-metering.”
It’s an unusual and confusing term, so let me try to explain it in, you know,
plain English and stuff.
Let’s say liberals want you to buy a new kind of coffee
maker that will combat global warming. It won’t, but that’s not the point. The
point is simply to claim that it does and repeat it often enough that people
fall for it.
Anyway, nobody really wants the new coffee maker because
it’s considerably more expensive and will cost you more to brew a pot of coffee
than it would be to buy a cup at Starbucks…
So you KNOW it
must be REALLY expensive!
To boost sales, the government not only decides to give you
a big rebate to help you pay for the coffeemaker itself, it passes a law
telling Starbucks that it MUST buy any excess coffee you make with the
new coffee maker over and above the amount you yourself drink.
Not only that, but the price Starbucks has to pay you for
your excess coffee isn’t the wholesale cost of brewing its own coffee, but the
retail cost that it sells its coffee for to the general public.
So instead of paying you, say, 50 cents for each cup of your
home-brewed coffee, it has to pay you, say, a dollar.
But to be more accurate, it doesn’t really “pay” you for
your excess coffee.
Instead it gives you a credit that you can use to buy
Starbucks’ coffee at Starbucks when you either can’t or don’t want to consume
your own home-brewed coffee.
That’s the essence of
“net metering.” Still with me?
Along those same lines, liberals want to force people into
consuming solar-generated electricity even though the cost of rooftop solar
systems remains astronomically high and out of reach for the average Joe
Sixpack.
So for the past few years, it’s been paying, with taxpayer
dollars, a significant portion of the cost of buying a rooftop solar system.
In addition, the government told NV Energy that it not only
had to buy – in the form of a “net metering” credit for additional purchases –
the excess home-brewed electricity that rooftop solar owners generate, but pay
them the higher retail price instead of the lower wholesale price for which it
can generate (or purchase elsewhere) its own electricity.
Now here’s where it
gets hairy…
Even with the government subsidies for the purchase of the
rooftop solar system itself, most people STILL can’t afford to purchase
a rooftop solar system. Enter the rooftop solar industry.
In order to sell more products and beef up their profits,
rooftop solar companies developed a program for homeowners that allow them to LEASE
the rooftop solar systems from them instead of buying them.
This means the homeowner doesn’t have to come up with the
approximately $20,000+ or so to buy the system outright.
But here’s the catch…
Since you’re leasing the rooftop solar system and making
payments rather than own it outright, the “net metering” rooftop solar credits
you rack up don’t go to you.
No, they go to the rooftop solar company!
Now do you understand why the rooftop solar industry is
having a collective conniption and public meltdown over having this sweetheart
“net metering” government subsidy scheme come to an end?
You see, it’s not
about saving the environment. It’s about saving their profits!
At the expense of taxpayers and the 98 percent of Nevada’s
electricity ratepayers who didn’t fall for the scam!
Make no mistake. This isn’t about global warming or “green”
energy.
This is about the cost of solar technology still being too
expensive to be affordable for the 98 percent.
This is about the solar industry not yet being able to stand
on its own in the free market.
When the technology develops to the point of being
affordable enough to operate without government training wheels, the industry
will explode. But it’s not there yet.
And that’s the final
piece of this manufactured “crisis” in Nevada.
For over a year the rooftop solar industry knew the gravy
train of government/utility subsidies was coming to an end. It lobbied the
Nevada Legislature HARD to keep its sweetheart deal.
But legislators sided with the 98 percent, not the 2
percent.
Nevertheless, knowing the jig could be up by the end of
2015, the unscrupulous rooftop solar industry mounted a full-court marketing
press on the 98 percent, warning with dire “sky is falling” sales pitches that
home owners better go solar now…or forever hold their peace!
Falling for it, thousands of Nevada homeowners bought or
leased rooftop solar systems last year, most of whom were probably comfortably
unaware of what the solar companies knew full well; that the rules of the game
were likely going to change in 2016.
And change they did
on January 1st.
While the government still forces NV Energy to buy excess
electricity it neither needs nor wants from home-brewed rooftop solar
generators, the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC) decided in December
that NV Energy will now only have to pay the wholesale price for the rooftop
solar-generated power rather than the retail price.
This means the 98 percent will no longer be paying the
higher cost for rooftop solar-generated home-brewed electricity.
Of course, rooftop solar system owners have now discovered
the fine print in the agreements they signed with the solar companies and they
ain’t happy.
But their anger at NV Energy and the PUC is misdirected.
The rooftop solar industry knew all along that all good
things come to an end. They just wanted to put it off as long as they could to
fatten their profits as much as possible before the bottom fell out.
That explains the rhetoric and media firestorm the rooftop
solar industry created over the past month in the hope of getting the PUC to
delay implementation of its decision to pull the plug on the existing “net
metering” rate scheme.
But as PUC Chairman Paul
Thomsen, “Darth Vader” to rooftop solar owners, explained at the hearing on
January 13th…
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable to try to protect 98 percent of residents in this state who don’t have net metering on their roofs.”
Nor should it.
The 2 percent who bought into the taxpayer/ratepayer subsidy
scam, brought to them by feckless politicians, have just learned an important
lesson known well by limited-government conservatives…
A government powerful enough to give you anything you want
is powerful enough to take away everything you have.
So the bottom line is
this…
If you believe in the global warming propaganda and want to
“do something” about it, then buy a rooftop solar system and salve your
conscience on your own dime, not the taxpayers.
And if your purpose for buying a rooftop solar system was a
cheaper electricity bill, you still don’t have to buy electricity from NV
Energy during the day (as long as the sun is out!).
It’s just that the credit you receive for your excess
home-brewed electricity during the day will be at the wholesale, not retail
rate, for NV Energy’s electricity that you still need to buy at night.
Now…
If that doesn’t pencil out so that the savings offset the
cost of the system you bought from the rooftop solar company, don’t blame NV
Energy, the PUC or Nevada’s taxpayers.
Blame the rooftop solar salesman who sold you this bill of
goods knowing full well that change was in the air.
And may the Force be with you.
No comments:
Post a Comment