NewEnergyNews: ORIGINAL REPORTING: The Search For A Successor Solar Policy/

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YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
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    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

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    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

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    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

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  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Wednesday, April 07, 2021

    ORIGINAL REPORTING: The Search For A Successor Solar Policy

    The search for the next net metering policy takes center stage in California; The nation’s biggest solar market now faces regulators’ biggest solar conundrum — the cost shift.

    Herman K. Trabish, Dec. 23, 2020 (Utility Dive)

    Editor’s note: The effort to defend traditional retail rate net energy metering is heating up.

    California’s long-awaited proceeding on distributed solar compensation may offer important answers to new questions about the costs of renewables that will come with the Biden energy transition. Net energy metering (NEM) compensates distributed solar owners for generation exported to the power system at the retail electricity rate. At low solar penetrations, that may not impose significant costs to other customers. But utilities and solar advocates differ on the cost-benefit balance at the higher penetrations now forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), and others.

    To get past the controversy, stakeholders across the U.S. are working toward a successor to NEM. "At the heart of any good successor tariff is the recognition that retail rate NEM overpays customer generators," Edison Electric Institute (EEI) Executive Director for Regulatory Affairs Adam Benshoff said. Because it is passed to other customers, it is "an unfair and unnecessary subsidy" and the best way to support distributed solar’s growth is "a properly designed NEM rate that doesn’t overcompensate."

    But imposing a successor tariff is premature in most states now because research shows "solar’s benefits to the grid exceed its costs when penetration is low," SEIA Vice President of State Affairs Sean Gallagher said. Research also shows that "at penetrations of 5% to 10%, the cost-benefit curve starts to flatten and a new policy that aligns customer behavior with grid needs can benefit both."

    For regulators, utilities and solar advocates who would design a new tariff to support solar growth, the challenge is to protect non-solar owning customers by balancing any increase in system fixed costs with the value of the system benefits from increased solar. A successor tariff that imposes more costs than benefits is unsustainable and distributed solar’s future is in a successor tariff that benefits all stakeholders, solar advocates and utilities agree. That is why attention is turning to California where the world’s fifth largest economy, with a 22.3% solar penetration, just opened a new proceeding to reconsider NEM.

    Because NEM begins to impact non-solar owning customers when penetrations reach 5% or more of peak demand, concerns about distributed solar’s costs and benefits begin with its forecasted growth. And distributed solar's growth was forecast to be "10% to 15% between 2023 to 2025" without extension of the federal tax credit, according to 2020 Q4 SEIA-Wood Mackenzie U.S. Solar Market Insight Report, released Dec. 15. The latest COVID-19 relief bill’s functional extension of the tax credit through 2025 and anticipated further support for clean energy from the incoming Biden administration seem likely to accelerate that growth. During Q3 2020, 17 states were working on successor tariffs to alter NEM compensation, the reported… click here for more

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