The renewable energy case for net metering

PG and E's basic argument against net metering is that solar producers didn’t pay for Transmission and Delivery (T and D) and have already been subsidized by rate payers with rebates. Paying for over production is thus an unfair subsidy to producers which puts additional burden on rate payers.

This is a false argument because it starts out by assuming that solar producers materialized out of thin air instead of being rate payers themselves subsidizing the system all along until they became producers. When did PGE become this charitable institution that looked after the rate payer? The history of utility reform in California has been the ability of consumer lawsuits to force PG and E to comply with its function as a public provider of power. And within the public interest the legislature has granted PGE access to charge Californians to build the grid and land to install it on. In other words PGE functions much like a landscaper I would hire using plants and labor I pay for to install a garden on my property. The landscaper can't come back and ask a fee of my guests who are using my garden. The grid belongs to California and access to the grid means that any CA producer can use it.

Now if PGE has a maintenance cost to upgrade and upkeep, that cost should also be viewed within the confines of our objectives. Renting the grid is ok for surplus power without any division of the RECs. But let’s rent it proportionally since the surplus power is produced in the summer when the demand is largest and the need greatest. Thus PGE should pay the peak rate for surplus power and charge a maintenance rent for supplying it on the grid per kWh at the Market Bearable Rate. New Mexico pays a surplus rate of $1KWH. And Florida uses the Utility Avoided Cost by allowing producers to act as producers! Craig Morris in Truthout discusses the case of Germany with respect to CA.

Upgrades costs need to be distributed by low and high users. The goal of the legislature in requiring variable rates is to discourage high users from maintaining consumption patterns that destabilize the system. Solar producers on the other hand represent the lowest need since they offset consumption patterns elsewhere. In this case PGE should be paying, and one can argue that the rebate meets this requirement, solar installers for reducing the upgrade cost.