In other words, DTP East ​“assuming that the customer is obligated to pay the company’s utility the retail rate” for electricity that customers generate and use themselves – ​“and anything else they do is stealing,” McCann said.

In terms of assessing who owes whom, it’s not much different from saying that a customer who uses less electricity by insulating their home or switching to more efficient appliances owes money to the utility. public for the electricity it no longer consumes, he said.

“If you grow vegetables in your garden, you’re not paying the retail price for those vegetables at the grocery store,” he said. ​“You own those vegetables – and you own the solar energy you produce.

DTP‘s calculations also ignore the reality that customers with solar still pay their utility bills, McCann said. His criticism of DTP‘s work indicates that its cost transfer calculations fail to include the average of $80 at $160 per month that solar customers pay to the state’s big three utilities. Including this amount saves another $1.4 billion reduction on DTPIt’s total.

Neither DTP calculate the value of rooftop solar for low-income customers using special support rates, he said. The lowest rates for these alternative California energy rates (CARE), whose annual income is at or below the federal poverty level, is subsidized by additional surcharges on the bills of all other utility customers. Not having to raise that money for solar power, CARE self-generated customers will save approximately $720 million in 2024he said.

DTP‘s analysis also contains fundamental errors in calculating the true average electricity costs paid by customers of the state’s three major utilities, McCann said.

For example, approximately $2.46 billion of DTPit’s $8.5 The billion-dollar total is derived from the assumption that solar customers are charged far more than the actual average rates they pay, and that their solar panels generate more energy on average than the official authorities state distributed generation data watch. It swells DTPEvaluating how much money these customers save by not using utility electricity.

How distributed solar can make the grid cheaper for everyone

One of the most glaring errors of DTP‘s analysis is that it doesn’t take into account how the state’s enormous rooftop solar resource has reduced the amount that utilities would have had to spend to buy power and build their networks, McCann said.

This is an important point because the arguments for utility cost shifting are inextricably linked to the idea that solar customers do not pay their fair share for electricity grids, power plants and purchased energy that is bundled into utility costs.

McCann’s analysis reveals that since California launched its Million Solar Roofs initiative in 2006distributed solar power has replaced approximately 15,000 megawatts of peak load compared to state forecasts at the time. Peak load – the maximum amount of energy needed to serve each customer on the grid – is a key determinant of how much utilities must spend on their power grids and on purchasing expensive peak energy resources.

California utilities recoup the cost of the energy they buy – and get a guaranteed rate of profit on the capital investments they make – through the rates they charge their customers. Many of these costs extend for years, even decades, after they are incurred, meaning that the money saved in not buying energy or building grid infrastructure years ago translates into lower rates today.

McCann’s analysis found that this reduction in rooftop solar costs amounts to $2.17 billion in 2024. This latter benefit pushes the calculation of rooftop solar out of the realm of incremental costs for utility customers as a whole, and into the realm of net benefits for all customers.

To be clear, these benefits are retrospective, he said. From 2006Peak loads on California’s grid, which are largely due to air conditioning use during heat waves, have shifted from mid-afternoon to later in the evening, when California has faced its biggest network emergencies in recent years.

In the coming years, California will need more batteries to absorb its abundant solar resources and meet the state’s new nighttime peaks. That’s why the state’s new rooftop solar policy rewards customers for adding batteries — although rooftop solar groups worry those rewards aren’t big enough to offset reductions in old billing rules sharp.

But it must still be recognized that solar energy on roofs has contributed to reducing the costs of the network of 2006 to today, McCann said. And state agencies should not use faulty estimates of past costs to undermine Californians’ ability to purchase solar panels and batteries. to save money and help fight climate change in the years to come.

A growing body of research indicates that distributed solar power and batteries play a vital role in reducing costs to achieve a clean grid, instead of relying solely on large-scale solar and wind farms. Rooftop solar power can also helping people afford electric vehicles and electric heating necessary to reduce carbon emissions from transport and buildings, particularly in California, where utility rates make electrification easier a more difficult proposition.

Del Chiaro said Mr. Cubed’s new findings are further evidence that California policymakers and regulators need to more forcefully oppose the utility-led cost-shifting argument.

“They’ve gotten into this weird mindset that all the electrons that solar customers have are ​“production and sharing with their neighbors is the property of the utility,” she said.

But the last two decades of growth in rooftop solar show that ​“if we give customers a little nudge, they will achieve more than half of their investment,” she said.