California utility regulators appeared poised while voting on new rules for apartment buildings, schools and farms interested in adding solar panels. And they are getting pushback from solar advocates.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is poised to vote Thursday on solar rules that govern complexes that have more than one electric meter. That includes apartment buildings, schools, farms and some business locations.
The new proposed decision was not warmly received.
“It weakens the financial incentives for solar adoption of multifamily housing. It’s essentially stripping away the cost savings for the building owner,” said Calum Weeks, a policy advocate for Generation Housing.
Removing financial incentives from landlords, Weeks said, will discourage owners of multifamily apartments to spend money to install solar panels.
“It’s essentially stripping away the cost savings for the building owner which then obviously gets transferred to the people that are renting in that building,” Weeks said.
That means renters will continue paying more for energy, increasing the inequity between homeowners and renters, according to Weeks.
The revised proposal lets renter’s share solar credits, but it limits landlords from using the solar panels to offset electricity used for common areas like community rooms, hallways and laundromats.
“So, in effect what this is going to do, is it is really going to narrow the number of apartment buildings that can pencil out going solar,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association. “It’s going to be limited to smaller buildings with a very small common space electricity load.”
Critics say the latest plan still drains the financial incentives to install solar panels that can be shared by more than one meter. That’s made possible by something called virtual net energy metering (VNEM).
The original proposal released this past summer eliminated VNEM for all but a small number of low-income housing projects with multiple units.
The state’s investor-owned utilities argued, in legal filings, it was too costly and difficult to develop a new VNEM system.
Schools, farms and small businesses will not be able to share the benefits of solar the same way a homeowner can.
“To make solar work in a multi-tenant building, the CPUC needs to adopt what’s called building level netting,” said John Witchel of King Energy, a technology solutions company that deals with multi-meter complexes. “Meaning that they sum up the energy used across all of the tenants. And treat that as a whole.”
That would not be permitted under the proposed rule.
Solar industry officials think regulators are taking the wrong tack when it comes to rewriting the state’s solar rules.
They want to see guidelines that encourage wider and quicker adoption of clean energy technology, like solar, so California can meet self-imposed and aggressive climate goals.
“We need utility scale projects to move forward. We need distributed projects to move forward. And we need efficiency and conservation,” said Del Chiaro. “That’s how we get to 100% clean energy in California. And we really need the governor to make it a priority.”
The rules are being rewritten as part of the legislatively mandated review of the state’s solar tariffs that led to the adoption of new rules for homeowners last spring.
The California Public Utilities Commission has delayed a vote on these changes several times since the first proposed decision was unveiled.
Observers say the rules could be adopted as proposed, amended or rejected when the CPUC meets in El Centro.
