It appears like California goes from photo voltaic chief to photo voltaic loser.
A yr after regulators on the state Public Utilities Fee voted to intestine the profitable incentive program that has helped put greater than 1.8 million photo voltaic techniques on properties and companies, the implications have gotten distressingly clear.
Preliminary knowledge from the rooftop photo voltaic trade exhibits a steep drop in installations and widespread job losses since April. That’s when the PUC’s adjustments to the online power metering program took impact, slashing the compensation new photo voltaic prospects obtain for the surplus energy they feed into the grid.
The fee sided with utilities, organized labor and shopper advocates who argued that incentives have been so beneficiant that photo voltaic prospects weren’t paying their justifiable share to take care of the ability grid, elevating electrical energy charges for lower-income households and renters with out photo voltaic arrays.
It’s not a shock that eviscerating the monetary incentives for shoppers to spend money on solar energy would trigger gross sales to plummet. But it surely’s nonetheless extremely disappointing to see the end result of state regulators’ wrecking-ball strategy play out so predictably.
The evaluation by the California Photo voltaic & Storage Assn. discovered that gross sales of rooftop techniques within the state have dropped between 77% and 85% since April. That’s backed up by knowledge from Southern California Edison and Pacific Gasoline & Electrical displaying that prospects’ purposes to attach their photo voltaic techniques to the grid dropped between 66% and 83% within the months since incentives have been decreased, in contrast with the identical time interval in 2022.
The trade group forecasts that 17,000 jobs — one-fifth of all photo voltaic jobs in California — might be misplaced by the tip of 2023 because the discount in incentives comes on prime of excessive rates of interest and inflation. That’s a steeper decline than the trade skilled in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic introduced most photo voltaic installations to a halt.
Undermining the rooftop photo voltaic market is the other of what California ought to be doing to fight local weather change. The world recorded its hottest yr in 2023 and is experiencing worsening storms, warmth waves and wildfires and different disasters. But, state regulators are doubling down.
Final month, the five-member panel of commissioners appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom voted to slash photo voltaic incentives once more, this time making it far much less financially viable for condo buildings, faculties, strip malls, farms and small companies to go photo voltaic. These choices serve the pursuits of the state’s three large investor-owned utilities, who need to get photo voltaic electrical energy from large-scale arrays within the desert the place it may be generated extra cheaply. Organized labor additionally stands to profit from the change. Because the rooftop market falters, there can be extra want for union-built photo voltaic tasks to assist the state meet its renewable power objectives.
The gutting of rooftop photo voltaic incentives isn’t hurting solely the native regional corporations that set up residential techniques. It’s additionally dragging down large, publicly traded corporations like Enphase Power that offer the tools utilized in rooftop arrays.
Holding photo voltaic financially viable and reasonably priced for as many Californians as attainable to generate renewable power on their properties, residences, companies, faculties and church buildings isn’t an excessive amount of to ask. It’s an crucial for our planet.
Newsom and his PUC appointees ought to regulate this alarming decline in photo voltaic jobs and installations and, if it continues, intervene. You possibly can’t be a pacesetter within the battle towards local weather change by crashing the photo voltaic market. It’s not too late to reverse course, reestablish robust shopper incentives for photo voltaic techniques with battery storage and stem the injury to a cornerstone of California’s clear power future.
