Tag: CPUC

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The Details of CPUC’s Disastrous Proposal for Updating Net Metering in California

votesolar  – excerpt

Californians: Take action now to protect rooftop solar!

The Background

On December 13, 2021, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a proposed decision updating solar net metering. Their proposal would create major new barriers for Californians who want to invest in rooftop solar and battery storage. Net metering is a foundational clean energy policy that allows customers with onsite solar to save on their electric bill by receiving a credit for the excess clean energy they send back to the grid.

The popular policy has helped make California the national leader in rooftop solar adoption, with over 1.3 million solar roofs installed statewide. The December 13th proposal would reverse solar progress by decimating solar bill savings for future solar customers, as well as changing the rules on existing solar customers.

The proposed decision has been in the works for a while. The CPUC, which regulates the state’s investor-owned utilities, opened a proceeding to update net metering back in August 2020. Stakeholders including Vote Solar submitted and debated a range of proposed policy changes, which the Commission considered as it developed the 187-page proposal. Now over a year later, the CPUC released the proposal…

Some of the proposal’s most problematic elements include:…(more)

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California Utilities Will Buy More Energy, Hike Rates to Avoid Blackouts: CPUC

By Olga R. Rodriguez  : nbcbayarea – excerpt (video)

Utilities will be allowed to buy extra energy and pass on the costs to customers in order to avoid a repeat of rolling blackouts that kicked in last summer when demand outpaced supply, California regulators said Thursday.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to authorize Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Company to purchase additional power in the next three months.

“Customers deserve a reliable grid, and they deserve a regulatory body that will be mobilized to do everything in its power to ensure that we have one,” commission President Marybel Batjer said…(more)

All the more reason for people to switch to solar power, but, will the CPUC make that more difficult? Find out what California does for and against solar power users how the utilities exert constant pressure on net metering. https://solarrights.org

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Utility bosses: If you make us look bad, there’s gonna be trouble

 

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She Noticed $200 Million Missing, Then She Was Fired

By Scott Morris, Bay City News Foundation : propublica – excerpt

Alice Stebbins was hired to fix the finances of California’s powerful utility regulator. She was fired after finding $200 million for the state’s deaf, blind and poor residents was missing…

Earlier this year, the governing board of one of California’s most powerful regulatory agencies unleashed troubling accusations against its top employee.

Commissioners with the California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, accused Executive Director Alice Stebbins of violating state personnel rules by hiring former colleagues without proper qualifications. They said the agency chief misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs for the state’s blind, deaf and poor. At a hearing in August, Commission President Marybel Batjer said that Stebbins had discredited the CPUC.

“You took a series of actions over the course of several years that calls into question your integrity,” Batjer told Stebbins, who joined the agency in 2018. Those actions, she said, “cause us to have to consider whether you can continue to serve as the leader of this agency.”…(more)