With a 5-0 vote, the California Public Utilities Commission passed a big setback to solar energy the nation has ever seen. They failed to adopt a reasonable NEM-3.
The revised proposed decision adopted on Dec 15th made few changes to what was put forward in November. No legitimate “glide path” for residential. No “glide path” at all for commercial. The value of solar exports is slated to go from 30 cents/kilowatt hour down to 5 cents for residential and 3 cents for commercial starting April 2023.
That said, lets focus on the wins moving forward. with NEM 3.0.
What We Accomplished with NEM 3.0
With over 600 organizations strong & with the biggest outpouring of public support for a clean energy we should all be proud of what we accomplished:
- Stopping the solar tax
- Prevented retroactive changes to NEM-1 and NEM-2
- Defeated AB 1139
- Over 1400 members of the public called into the CPUC on NEM 3
- Over 160,000 members of the public signed our petition on NEM 3
- Built a diverse coalition of over 600 organizations and elected officials
- Supporting tens of thousands of jobs and improving the lives of over 350,000 new solar customers.
Surge in Applications Causes Interconnection Slowdown
Utility timelines for processing interconnection applications have been painful lately. We are hearing it from everyone. You are not alone! Everyone is feeling it.
What Is Happening?
Some contractors are relating to CALSSA that customers are upset by delays and assuming their contractor doesn’t know what they are doing. CALSSA is pushing the utilities to work faster and more efficiently. The utilities created this mess with their outrageous NEM-3 proposals. Pushing export rates off a cliff with no meaningful transition created the biggest surge they’ve ever seen, and they weren’t ready for it. CALSSA submitted more than a year’s worth of applications during the 120-day NEM-2 sunset period.
What Should I Know?
The steps in the process that are largely automated have been incredibly slow. Doing the initial review of an application for a small residential system or issuing the permission to operate communication are taking as much as 50 business days. CALSSA is in regular communication with the utility interconnection directors to make sure they understand our perspective and to help them operate efficiently. Delays with the automated steps should be fixable. In the meantime, we need to help customers understand that the current delays do not reflect any mismanagement on the part of contractors.
