Senate Passes Bill To Partially Restore Solar Incentives - Livermore Independent

Senate Passes Bill To Partially Restore Solar Incentives | Livermore News | independentnews.com

A bill that would restore the ability of schools, shopping centers, farms and apartment building owners to use the power they generate with their own rooftop solar systems passed in the California State Senate last week and was sent to the Assembly.

Senate Bill (SB) 1374, authored by Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, would reverse a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) decision last year that prevented numerous types of solar panel owners with multiple meters from using the electricity they generated to offset what they purchased from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and other power companies.

The bill was approved 28-7 on May 20.

“SB 1374 removes a burdensome barrier and restores the ability for customers to self-consume the energy they produce on their property,” Becker said in a statement. “This bill is simply a matter of fairness. Multiple-metered customers should get the same treatment as everyone else — not have to sell their power to the utility at low prices and immediately buy it back at much higher retail prices.”

If approved in the Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bill would not affect individual residential solar users. Instead, it would impact sites with multiple meters, including apartments, schools, community colleges, universities, water agencies, city facilities, farms and shopping centers.

Becker said the bill will ensure that those users with “on-site generation are given fair and equal treatment for the energy that they self-consume.”

Three utility companies — PG&E, which provides electricity in Northern California; Southern California Edison; and San Diego Gas & Electric — oppose the measure, saying it would increase customer bills.

“SB 1374 subsidizes solar for all non-residential customers, not just schools,” the utility companies wrote in a joint memo announcing their opposition. “This bill would create subsidies for government, commercial properties and more, all paid for by other customers.”

Becker’s legislation follows the CPUC’s vote in February 2023 to reduce the amount of money that PG&E and other utility companies credit to solar users who sell the power they don’t use back to the grid. Opponents of that decision believed the decision would disincentivize Californians from purchasing rooftop solar systems.

The February decision also ended the ability of schools and other customers with more than one meter from using any of the power they generated.

“Essentially, what it did was it forced these buildings to sell all the solar energy they produced at a low rate to the utilities and then buy it right back from them at full retail rate, instead of just letting them use their own solar to offset the energy they buy from the utilities,” said Steven King, Clean Energy Advocate for Environment California.

Sam Davis, president of the Oakland Unified School District board, said in a statement that the district’s electricity bill increased $1.5 million in the last year.

“In previous years, we used solar energy to offset these rising costs and invest the savings in programs that improve educational equity,” Davis said. “Restoring and protecting these incentives is critical to ensuring all students receive the education they need to thrive.”

Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District Superintendent Chris Van Schaack said the district has several schools that produce solar energy.

“This (SB 1374) would definitely benefit us and provide us with incentive to expand our solar panels,” Van Schaack said. “Though I can’t say definitively how much we would stand to gain, I’d say it’s definitely in the tens of thousands at the current time. At some school sites, we installed fewer solar panels than the site could hold because we knew that any additional energy would, essentially, go to waste.”

King said the bill should be part of a larger effort to encourage solar panels to be built wherever feasible, including on rooftops, parking lots and roadside land.

Schools are a particularly great place for solar,” King said. “It helps Californian’s clean energy goals, increases community resiliency, and it helps the school districts save money.”

PG&E, SDGE and SCE countered with a statement that the bill’s passage “is likely to trigger grid upgrades, which results in high cost for all, but for the benefit of only a few customers.”