My God people… Do you not see that Newsom is backed by the utilities! So he backs them!!! Remember their big private maskless dinner party during the Covid mask mandate period? So understand, Newsom is not all about renewables but about the power that comes from saying he is and the manipulation of power he gains from stating he is aligned with renewables yet behind closed doors he’s protecting the utilities at every corner. Just look at the States semi confusing bail outs for the wild fire legal issues, allowing the CPUC to be run by the utilities (which is filled with Utility Company Directors), and excessive regulations which hurt the renewable industry and installers as well. There is power in positioning with an ideological movement that can be used even against that movement.
EXAMPLE: The CPUC created a Solar Consumer Disclosure form required for interconnection. Its sounds and reads like it’s designed to protected consumers against predatory solar companies but what it really did was suggest that Large Corporate companies be selected and guided homeowners away from small contractors who could really drop the cost of solar. Keep in mind that most of the Large National Corporate Solar Companies us the same technicians. In effect it made Corporate Large Solar the only suggested option, yet these guys are the predators who use crafty ways to over charge, ie Hybrid Leases, Hybrid Loan/leases and certainly PPA’s (big corporate money). These Large Corp companies had their liability regarding predatory practices covered via this required form. It directed Solar PV customers towards conglomerates that charge $3.50 to $5.00 per watt and basically signed away a persons ability to claim predatory practices. All while small contractors could do quite well charging $2.75-$3.00 per watt using top quality equipment. This is not a free market supporting bureaucracy.

Matt I see your point and I see the extortionist path the CPUC is trying to allow to satiate the IOU electric utilities in California, where the term Califronia Public Utilities (Commission) is supposed to be an ombudsman for the retail energy user, not the utility in a biased and improper manner. What the consumer is missing is (specific) information on how (their) particular household uses energy, how much and at what hours this occurs. I believe there are such monitors available for the homeowner to apply or have some electrician install one of the more expensive monitors that have current transformers that snap around the main buss bars in the house electrical panel. With the proper programming and enough memory one can not only monitor when an appliance comes on, but how long it stays on and it is possible to map surge values of appliances and when they occur over a period of time. (This) is the information one needs to determine how much and (when) one would use a smart ESS to help power the home to keep electricity costs down. A 20kWh ESS seems to be a nominal all around system capacity for most residential applications. Many early adopters have up to 40kWh of ESS storage and capacity.

There comes a time, where the homeowner stops worrying about ROI of their solar PV system or solar PV and ESS as the utility creates tiered electricity blocks of use, then turns around and creates a TOU period of rate spiking for 5 hours every day and now to protect their egregious practice of choosing dividends over O&M of the system that feeds your house, they get to turn your power off for hours or maybe even days when a PSPS is invoked. The thing to worry about now is “just how important is resiliency” in your own home’s A.C. use and capacity every day?

well, Newsom responded to the outcry last year, when he was up for reelection. The fact that they announced this 2 days after the election suggests to me that he’s already onboard with the revised proposal and the vote next month is a rubber stamping exercise.

We should be pushing back hard as solar advocates on this insulting “glidepath” that was presented by the CPUC members, and encouraging Gov. Newsom to step in and correct this travesty.

For me it depends significantly on just how much lower the off-peak pricing would be. I don’t have a home battery system but there are certainly poor-man’s solutions using power stations that I could use to easily load-shift a few hundred watts of power.

But the new proposal has a number of warts. The biggest one is that the peak period starts at 3pm when the actual utility peak is more around 7pm. At a minimum the proposal should be changed to adjust the peak period start time to 5pm. 3pm is absurd. The new proposal also low-balls export prices while generously increasing import prices on a wider time frame. For example, peak export pricing doesn’t get interesting until 7pm-9pm, but import pricing starts at 3pm and maximizes at 4pm. That is also absurd in my view.

-Matt

Did you read the article? The last NEM 3.0 proposal went down in flames in part because Newsom was aggressively against it. He wants solar to be affordable. He wants more of it. Your reply makes no sense, it’s just a hyper-partisan rant.

This CPUC proposal makes sense only from a private utility shareholder perspective. Clean energy with a 120% markup for utility transmission and delivery – rather than distributed generation of clean energy located near users – makes no sense to the rest of us!

Regulatory capture, pay to play, and the continued undermining of the clean energy market on behalf Citizens (Shareholders Only) United empowered oligarchs really would look ugly for California politics, and those in leadership here.