Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

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Utilities are pushing for*taxes and fees on residential solar, according to utility trade-group Edison Electric Institute’s (EEI’s) attorney.*Solar advocacy group*The Alliance For Solar Choice (TASC) observed EEI Attorney Edward Comer’s comments at a solar workshop with the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) last week. It shouldn’t be a surprise since utilities are in the practice of […] Read moreThe post Utilities Push Home Solar...

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  • South Africa
    South Africa Solar Expert Posts: 295 ✭✭✭
    #2
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    I do not see the governments allowing all homeowners to generate power and not having to pay tax on it. They will be losing a lot of revenue, taxes on that revenue etc.

    For one thing, if you connect to the grid, who is responsible to maintain your connection to it?

    On the other hand, if you have 1 000 000 homes generating power for you, that you sell for 3 times as much to the rest, and you do not have to spend one cent to build that capacity, bar maintaining the wire connections, that is a good deal.

    But, whichever deal comes to the table, someone is going to lose a lot of profits.

    In South Africa, this man is trying his best, from local to national government, to allow neighourhoods to generate their own power and selling surplus back to the utilities company, without the municipalities losing revenue, and shareholders earning a good ROI, whilst reducing electricty costs, with job creation, the green way: http://www.mypowerstation.biz/
    5kVA Victron Multiplus II, 5.2kW array, 14kWh DIYLifepo4 bank, all grid-tied.


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  • westbranch
    westbranch Solar Expert Posts: 5,183 ✭✭✭✭
    #3
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    I am not sure how they see it, but IMO it looks like a double taxation: have to pay tax on the total system production (not sell to utility) and pay on what you buy back?

    “Utilities from Arizona, to California, to New York who are lobbying for VOSTs, have some serious explaining to do now that EEI’s own general counsel agrees with TASC about the severe tax consequences of these policies” said TASC President Bryan Miller. “Regulators can now see VOSTs for what they are—hidden taxes that hurt unsuspecting homeowners.”

    In addition, under FiTs and VOST agreements homeowners with solar sell all the power they produce to the utility at the rates set by the utility under long-term power-purchase agreements. So they would be taxed for all the power their system produces. Under net-metering arrangements the homeowners only sell the power that they don’t use back to the utility, which again helps the homeowner keep electric costs down.
     
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  • DanS26
    DanS26 Solar Expert Posts: 267 ✭✭✭
    #4
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    The only answer for this shenanigans is off grid.

    We need a technological breakthrough in either electrical storage or electrical transmission. Either or both would be catastrophic for the utilities as we know them.

    Where are the inventors when we need them?
    23.16kW Kyocera panels; 2 Fronius 7.5kW inverters; Nyle hot water; Steffes ETS; Great Lakes RO; Generac 10kW w/ATS, TED Pro System monitoring
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  • unseenone
    unseenone Solar Expert Posts: 61 ✭
    #5
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    This is why in some areas there is a move to make it illegal to disconnect from the grid. I also discovered that homeowners will get a 1099 for misc. income for the "net" metering. At least in some areas. That means, it will be considered income, you will owe taxes based on that "income". This is never included in any of the overly optimistic data provided by the company selling such systems.
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  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    #6
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    Well if the 'surplus' power you sell back to the grid is income then you can deduct the costs incurred in producing that income, such as electricity for this "home business" they think you have. Now, how many people are actually going to be making a profit off their GT solar install? Yeah: none.

    Another tactic by utilities to stymie solar installs. This has got to stop.
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  • South Africa
    South Africa Solar Expert Posts: 295 ✭✭✭
    #7
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes
    Cariboocoot wrote: »
    Another tactic by utilities to stymie solar installs. This has got to stop.

    It will not. Too much money is involved.
    5kVA Victron Multiplus II, 5.2kW array, 14kWh DIYLifepo4 bank, all grid-tied.


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  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    #8
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes
    South Africa wrote: »
    It will not. Too much money is involved.

    Yes, and the utilities could be making it with solar instead of without. But they lack vision and understanding. Their antics will be a boon for the off-grid people, which will ultimately cost the utilities more.

    Basically they don't like solar because they don't control it.
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  • solarix
    solarix Solar Expert Posts: 713 ✭✭
    #9
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    The utilities are obviously feeling the pressure from solar which is a good sign that we are making progress on supplanting bad power with good power. The tipping point will be when society figures out that the renewables are viable then the substantial subsidies and advantages that now go to the conventional power sources will start to come to us. How about a tax on the coal industry for all the harm it causes? or some "code" changes in the mining industry to bring it up to the same high OSHA standard as solar installers (that would put them out of business). Sooner or later this world is going to wake up to the advantages of putting PV on roofs vs having hundreds of miners die of an "oops" coal mine explosion. Hey - which one of you guys is working on how to include batteries into a grid-tie inverter and have it be a grid-stabilizer? Charge the utility for that!
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  • michael k
    michael k Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭
    #10
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    Re: Utilities Push Home Solar Taxes

    Same complaint from utilities against solar in Georgia. Argument is if required to connect, supply and maintain power infrastructure whether we use/need it or not other grid customers will ultimately have to bear increased costs without us. Of course no mention is made of the deliberate 'dirty' coal plant shutdowns occurring nationwide at an increasingly alarming rate (while China builds/is free to pollute at twice our teardown rate? Apparently we just shop there but otherwise do not share/live on the same eco-planet?). This is major socialistic tyranny in the name of the majority, utterly stupid dependant masses at it's finest.

    Those special interests vested by 'law' in providing for 'all' just cannot stomach anyone outside the matrix! We must CONFORM g forbid it is THEY that change, adapt toward something better! In modern social darwinistic lingo "too big to fail" has wholly replaced "survival of the best & fittest"!
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