Late last Friday, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) announced that it expects to hit its cap for the state’s original net metering program before the end of December. This will mean that new customers who install distributed solar will be compensated under the rules of “Net Metering 2.0”, which were finalized last January.
PG&E reports that 275,000 of its 5.4 million electric customers have now installed distributed solar PV systems for a total of 2.4 GW, which brings it within striking distance of the cap of 5 percent of peak demand set by the state’s government for the original net metering program.
Under Net Metering 2.0, new customers who install solar PV will continue to receive roughly retail-rate compensation for the electricity they export to the grid, but will have to pay additional “non-bypassable” charges totaling around $0.03/kilowatt-hour. Customers participating in the program must also transition to time-of-use rates, and there is a one-time connection fee of $145 for new PV systems.
PG&E is still complaining about this arrangement, which it fought bitterly. In a press statement the utility claims that “rooftop solar customers continue to receive subsidies that are borne by all other customers”, despite this myth of a cost shift being repeatedly debunked in independent studies.
PG&E will be the second of California’s three large utilities to hit its caps under the original net metering program, after San Diego Gas & Electric hit caps this summer. Southern California Edison still had another 595 MW of available capacity under the original net metering program as of a week ago; If this is not reached by July 1, the utility will still transfer its solar customers to net metering 2.0.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.