We must be doing something right. Someone wants to stop it.
The rooftop solar systems we have been subtly installing across the Coachella Valley are empowering our clients to produce their own clean power. The excess power being generated is supplied back to the grid and credited to each account and then sold by the utility co. downstream to unknowing neighbors. This arrangement is called Net Energy Metering “NEM” and every rooftop solar client has one defining the way solar is credited to the producer and clean rooftop energy is monetized and distributed locally.
Perhaps you have recently seen this topic in the news as the California Public Utilities Commission is currently hearing arguments from both sides of the solar debate, the Utilities and the Rooftop Solar Associations, as a review in advance of the new NEM Agreement 2.0 that is due to be updated by December 31, 2015 and in effect by mid 2017.
Here is an article covered in Greentech Media that spells out the issue with links to the various sites weighing in as well as the Public Utility Commissions Background.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/05/utilities-newest-solar-battleground-california.html
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/DistGen/NEMWorkShop04232014.htm
Needless to say, we at Hot Purple Energy are for the continuation of a NEM agreement that fairly compensates roof top solar production. This is an issue on the individual payback scale, but also the larger effect that rooftop has in the way power is generated either locally / “distributed” or centrally as it has been for decades.
The model of how power is being generated is obviously changing, but so too is where. We love that we have clients producing power at the point of use. We don’t see that these changes to the NEM will end the cost and environmentally saving evolution of the distributed renewable power production, but rather see it as a fight back from an antiquated bureaucracy that may at best slow the growth and their models demise.
To be sure, the grid is a complex infrastructure that is quite tremendous. It has powered us in California to great prominence and prosperity. It has fostered everything from great concerts to great inventions. But, at the same time, it has made the investors billions of dollars as well as relied on dirty fossil fuels that have caused epic pollution and wide spread ill health. But most of all it has made every business and every home dependent on these dirty fuels and required to pay the price.
The grid model has failed to remain cost effective, has failed to protect our air quality and environment, and has failed even to keep up with the growing demand and trends in consumer needs and habits.
The rooftop solar movement and the distributed grid is where we are headed locally, nationally, and globally. The people have woken up to the opportunities they have to supply themselves and their local community with clean, renewable power and are not going to go back to the old forced to pay ways.
Please help us support the power of the individual, the power to produce your own electricity, and the ability for the individual to be represented fairly by the CA PUC in the next generation Net Metering Agreement.