aps plan offers sustainable, fair solar choice for arizona

niel wrote: »

brandt is full of it that it raises the rates others will pay. i guess if everybody conserved 5% of their power he's saying that he will charge you more anyway for you're supposed to only get charged for what you use. this guy is trying to control the solar industry and may be guilty of price fixing by saying you will get charged no matter what.

we already addressed the grid use crap as the customer who is using the electricity gets an appropriate bill from them for the use of that grid no matter where that power comes from. to charge the generation source as well for the grid use is double billing as it is billing both generator and user for the same electric at the same time.

are there any voices fighting these idiots in these meetings or are they the lone voice?

T.U.S.K., Tell Utilities Solar won't be Killed, is dedicated to keeping the solar industry viable in Arizona & keeping energy costs lower through competition.

Our Chairman, Barry Goldwater Jr.

"As a son of Arizona, I know we have no greater resource than our sun. Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice and the competition to drive down rates.That choice may mean they save money, and with solar that is the case. Solar companies have a track record of aggressively reducing costs in Arizona. We can't let solar energy - and all its advantages and benefits it provides us - be pushed aside by monopolies wanting to limit energy choice. That's not the conservative way and it's not the American way."

The Issue

Arizona Public Service wants to extinguish the independent rooftop solar market in Arizona to protect its monopoly. How? They want to eliminate the policy that lets homeowners get fair credit for the surplus power they return to the grid. This is called net metering and it's successful in 43 states. APS wants the Arizona Corporation Commission to change the rules so the utility can keep homeowners' excess solar energy for free while maintaining its monopoly status.

NorthGuy wrote: »

That is more expensive than maintaning batteries. For $1,200 per year you can buy a lot of batteries. Such a high fee may push some of the solar customers off-grid.

lost fixed cost recovery (lfcr)

In May 2012, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) approved new rates for APS. Because more customers are installing renewable energy systems such as solar and wind, and energy efficiency measures such as compact fluorescent light bulbs and refrigerator recycling, APS is selling less electricity, but fixed costs remain. APS is allowed to implement a new charge to recover a portion of the fixed costs.

APS has offered two options. The first would keep net metering in place but push solar users to a new rate plan that would include more fixed costs based on their peak power use.

The way APS’ rate structure works currently is that all its costs — from operations and maintenance to power plants and transmission — is captured through use charges on the residential side. The utility’s challenge, officials said, is that as solar customers use less power, they aren’t paying enough to compensate and more costs are being borne by other ratepayers.

“What happens is you still have to take service from APS,” said Jeff Guldner, senior vice president of customers and regulation for APS. “How do you value the fair costs for fair use?”

With 18,000 customers currently on solar, APS estimates it is shifting $1,000 a year in costs from solar customers to non-solar customers, or about $18 million annually. That would amount to a couple dollars per month based on APS’ 1.1 million customers.

Some of those costs are captured through a method already granted to APS through its last rate case, known as the lost fixed cost recovery tariff.

One way of straighten that out would be to require solar customers to pay a fixed cost said Chuck Miessner, pricing manager for APS.

“You’re collecting the same amount of money from the house, you’re just shifting it to fixed costs,” he said.

The other avenue APS has offered is to ditch net metering altogether and rely on a bill credit, where a customer would use the utility’s power, and the solar power would go directly onto the grid. The customer would then receive a credit for how much power it supplied.

The difference in this model is that the utility would buy power from solar systems at wholesale rates, about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, but sell power to its customers at retail rates that, depending on the time of year, could easily double that charge.
Lower payments and incentives

Solar customers will see lower bill credits and payments under both incentives. APS officials said the utility was paying between 15 and 16 cents per kilowatt-hour at current net meter rates. Under the proposal keeping net metering, they estimate they will pay out between 6 and 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Under the bill credit plan, it will be about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Two additional ideas are key to both proposals. The first is that additional incentives would be needed upfront to keep a solar market going, Guldner said.

“In order to make it work for a solar customer, we’re going to have a higher up-front incentive,” he said.

APS will not offer a recommended incentive. Greg Bernosky, APS renewable energy program manager, said they will leave that up to commissioners to decided in the utility’s annual plan for how it is meeting the renewable energy standard.

However, APS already has enough residential rooftop solar to meet its mandates under the state requirements through 2016. That would, in theory, allow the ACC to approve no incentives for the next three years.

Guldner said APS believes the incentive amount is a policy decision best left to regulators.

“You don’t want to try to pick the number, because you’ll be too high or too low,” he said. “What regulators will have to do is decide what is in the budget.”

That would include ways to increase the incentive if demand slackens, and lower it if it is too robust, Guldner said.

The second key is that neither program would affect current solar owners. The ACC has been inundated with comments against changing the net metering program, particularly from those who bought or leased solar systems.

APS officials said they decided to grandfather in the current solar systems because many have 20-year leases and making such a change could mean those solar customers would be paying more for solar and APS power combined than they would with just APS power.

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Rare that I find myself defending utility companies but ...

We have to clear up this business of "the power I generate just goes next door to the neighbour so why should we have all these fees/charges?" The utility has all those wires in place everywhere and can't really keep track of your power going from your house to the neighbour. It isn't even relevant. The base charges are paying for the infrastructure across the whole of the company's grid, divided out equally among everyone who has any connection to it for any reason. As such they have the right to charge for you using their wire to send power next door, so to speak. It's when they declare they have the right to charge you for their wires when you don't use them that you should start complaining.

If you want to skip the utility's wires, run your own. And good luck with that.