Utilities push back against growth of rooftop solar panels
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
One of the biggest thrills Lynn Krell and her husband experienced after they installed solar panels on the roof of their Hattiesburg, Mississippi, home was watching their power meter run backward as their utility credited them for excess power they sold back to the grid.
Those credits also showed up on their electricity bill, helping to cut their average monthly payments by $11 — in addition to the $250 or so they saved during peak summer months by using solar power themselves.
But eventually the Krells began to question the value of the credits. The Krells learned that Mississippi regulations allowed utility companies to buy roof-generated solar power at a small fraction of the retail rate they charge to deliver that power back to customers' homes. The Krells talked to rooftop solar owners in other states where more generous compensation rules allowed them to offset their entire electricity bills.
It felt unfair.
"I'm royally ticked," Krell, 63, said.
Mississippi, which gets a lot of sun, was one of the last states to give subsidies to people who install solar panels on their roofs in 2015, and those subsidies remain among the stingiest in the country. Thirty-seven states reimburse at the full retail rate, but Mississippi offers significantly less. That, experts say, is one of the reasons rooftop solar hasn't caught on there. Only 586 Mississippi households have the technology.
How to fix that is the subject of a fight before the Mississippi Public Service Commission, which is considering rules that would expand subsidies for rooftop solar. The battle is one of several around the country that could determine the future of home solar panels, which advocates say are crucial to weaning the energy system off power sources that emit carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming.
Rooftop solar has a "huge potential" to cut air pollution, create jobs, protect against outages and shrink utility bills, said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. The technology will be vital for the U.S. to make the transition to all-renewable energy by 2050, he said.
"It's such a low-hanging fruit, such an easy thing to do, to put panels on people's roofs," Jacobson said. "We are really shooting ourselves in the foot by not doing it."
The question is who pays for it.
Almost every state offers some kind of credit to rooftop solar owners who send excess power to the grid. But as solar power has become cheaper and more widespread, utilities in some states have pushed to curb the payments, said Autumn Proudlove, senior policy program director at the NC Clean Energy Technology Center at North Carolina State University.
In Florida, the state's largest utility persuaded lawmakers to vote to gut the state's rooftop solar credits, a measure that Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, vetoed last week, saying it would hurt consumers. In California, state regulators, at utilities' urging, are considering whether to cut rooftop solar incentives. In North Carolina, utility-backed proposals to change the state's relatively generous rooftop solar subsidies have split environmentalists, with opponents saying the plan puts solar customers and installers in financial risk.
In Mississippi, the dispute pits environmentalists and solar companies against the state's largest utilities, Mississippi Power and Entergy Mississippi, regional monopolies whose business models depend on building power plants and transmission lines that deliver electricity to homes. Most of that power is created by burning fossil fuels, but the utilities are also expanding their own solar offerings. They have resisted competition from rooftop panels, in part by asking regulators to limit the financial incentives for customers to install them, saying they are unfair to low-income customers.
"The utilities are kicking and screaming, crying foul, saying this is horrible," said Louie Miller, the Mississippi director of the Sierra Club. "They have a protected market. They are a monopoly, for God's sake. But there are people who want to have clean energy and the right to self-generate."
This is how solar panels work
Representatives of Mississippi Power and Entergy Mississippi declined requests for interviews. In recent filings with the Mississippi Public Service Commission, the companies argued that sweetening solar subsidies would lead to higher costs for customers who can't afford solar panels.
"Rooftop solar is not economic for the majority of customers, and any efforts of the Commission to artificially enhance these economics will be financially shouldered by the non-participating customers," Mississippi Power said in a February filing.
That question remains unsettled. Some studies have supported the utilities' argument, while others haven't. One, performed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2017, found that rooftop solar's effect on electricity prices "will likely remain negligible for the foreseeable future" but that the costs could rise in states with "exceptionally high" rates of rooftop solar adoption.
Despite efforts from solar installers and environmentalists, it seems unlikely that reimbursement rates for rooftop panel owners will increase in Mississippi. But the utilities may have to offer other incentives.
In January, the Mississippi Public Service Commission proposed new rules that would add $3,000 cash rebates for low- and middle-income customers who install rooftop solar systems. Mississippi Power argued against the rebates in a February filing to the commission; Entergy Mississippi, which hasn't opposed the rebates, said its acceptance depends on what the final rules say. The commission is expected to vote on the change in the coming weeks.
A new meter was installed when solar panels were put on Lynn Krell's roof. The meter helps regulate and monitor how much electricity her panels are putting back onto the grid. Bryan Tarnowski for NBC News
Solar advocates say the rebates are a good idea but wouldn't be enough to spark a wave of new investment in rooftop solar systems, which typically cost homeowners $11,000 to $16,000. For that to happen, the utilities should pay more for power sold back to the grid, the advocates say.
"Otherwise, you'll have a program with some good parts but not enough oomph to get the market started," said Will Giese, the Southeast regional director of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.
Brent Bailey, one of three elected members of the Mississippi Public Service Commission, said in an interview that the proposed rules aim to expand adoption of rooftop solar. But higher credit rates for excess energy don't appear "achievable" in part because of the utilities' concerns that they would shift costs to people who don't have rooftop solar, he said.
"We hope that through this process we find a balanced pathway that addresses a lot of the needs of solar advocates and addresses the needs and concerns of utilities," Bailey said.
The two other commission members didn't respond to requests for comment.
Katherine Egland, an environmental justice activist in Gulfport, Mississippi, said utilities are wrong to argue that solar subsidies hurt low-income customers — including people of color — who can't afford the technology. There are other ways that people who are unable to buy solar panels can still benefit from them, she said.
Egland, 70, who is Black, and her husband, 80, are retired, and she said they pay $59 a month to lease solar panels on their roof. Their summertime electricity bills have been cut in half, from about $400 to about $200, she said. That includes reimbursements for solar power she doesn't use.
"It is such a tremendous feeling not only to be saving money but also saving the planet, as well, and doing our part in reducing carbon emissions," Egland said.
Lynn Krell doesn't expect to recoup the $19,000 she spent to install solar panels. But she wants rooftop solar to become more affordable. In February, she wrote a letter urging the Mississippi Public Service Commission to require utilities to pay a retail rate in their reimbursements to rooftop customers.
"I spoke up to the Public Service Commission in the hope that I would not be a lone voice," Krell said. "I want them to push back against the power companies. What they buy from us should not be of less value than what we buy from them."
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When I read the headline it reminded me that someone told me about 60 years ago that people are controlled through the supply of utilities.
utility companies need to pay market rates to homeowners for solar power.
The trick to solar panels is to install what you will use. Even states that offer decent rates for selling excess power to the utility companies could (and likely will) change those policies during the life of your solar panels (or tiles). Thus one should consider the selling of excess as 'gravy' and not factor that into the equation.
Err on the side of fewer panels.
We used to have an electric monthly budget over $300. ( 5 years ago)
Now I lease 60 solar panels for about $150 a month. We could have had 3 more panels but they were aesthetically not going to be put where I or the neighbors wanted to see them so we opted not to install them in case the property value would suffer.
We keep the house at 72 degrees year round.
The April electric bill was $2.79. May through August should be credits.
The highest billed month was in the $90 range during the Texas big freeze last year and the heat pump
had to run in emergency mode, like an old fashioned electric heater.
Every bulb in the house is LED right down to the landscape lights.
btw,
I spent countless hours on landscape lights every year, finding poor connections and replacing 4watt dim bulb after burned out bulb.
I found 30 watt LED replacements on line 2 years ago and haven't replaced one yet.
Do you use batteries to store excess power or do you directly sell it back to the grid?
My brother is trying to get completely off the grid w/solar and propane generator, both of which will charge a bank of batteries where he will draw his power through an inverter. He wants to get off the grid because the buy back isn't that great and the energy companies still need to maintain the power grid and they will find a way for people with solar to foot some of it and the power company in this area is already sending out letters to customers w/standby generators that the company wants to take over control of the generators to supply power to the grid in times of need.
That is bullcrap. If I paid for an emergency generator, I would have bought it to power my own house when the power goes out. Not for them to use it and not supply my house.
But if they were to buy excess power from your generator (for an emergency) at retail prices (what you pay to get energy from the grid) would you find that to be fair?
( I know that will never happen; but this forms a decent argument to stop utility companies from trying to screw consumers. )
That is part of it, they claim they will pay the fuel used and maintenance costs, but I'm not sure they will pay for the power that is generated.
My brother bought a water cooled generator for it's longevity for it runs at half the RPM as an air cooled unit. So, depending upon the amount the utility utilizes the generator, they could seriously shorten the life of the unit.
I just remembered, my electric company is a co-op. I am thinking it changes they way they make decisions.
No batteries, they were not available for lease at the time and now are $11K per Powerwall.
No economic payback there.
It looks like we are selling it back at 10.9
where their going retail average is 13.8
We still have to pay Oncor for distribution and taxes
Enphase and Generac provide batteries. I don't know if they can be leased.
We should all go off the grid.
Fuck the electric utilities.
I'm planning to complete my "solar system" soon.