Tesla, by way of purchasing SolarCity, and Salt River Project (SRP) are moving forward in a negotiation to settle a lawsuit brought by SolarCity in 2015, that was headed to the Supreme Court for oral arguments this month.
According to the Agenda Notes,
SRP will purchase a 25 MW utility-scale battery system (BESS) from Tesla, at no more than current market price.
Per AZCentral.com, the board voted to approve the settlement details on Monday, March 5, 2018.
The battery storage plant will be built at the Aqua Fri Generating Station in Peoria. The site is a natural gas plant, with a relatively small 200 kW solar system.
Additionally, SRP has agreed to launch a limited incentive program for residential batteries, with the incentive going to the end users – not directly to the manufacturer.
However, SRP has not agreed to withdraw the rate structure put in place that led to this litigation. There has been an agreement to test new demand rate structures with a limited number of customers.
The beginnings of this lawsuit were that a judge ruled SRP acted illegally as a monopoly in February of 2015, when they approved a new rate structure for PV system owners.
Jean Su, associate conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, commented on this,
“This settlement doesn’t address the heart of the problem. While it may be a positive step for battery storage, it fails to prevent utilities like the Salt River Project from continuing to set unfair rates for customers who want to embrace rooftop solar. In our era of runaway climate change, we can’t allow outdated utility monopolies to prop up their bottom line by restricting access to renewable power and obstructing our clean energy transition.”
The changes included a monthly demand charge of US$9.25 per kW of capacity in the customer’s PV system. Under the new structure, the average compensation for electricity generated under net metering was also reduced from the retail rate of around $0.09, to $0.05 per kWh.
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BS, Unless you go off-grid completely, SRP will get you. I put solar on my house, like an idiot, and my bills have been identical to the previous year. I have a power manager installed, I have reduced my usage by 50% and I have moved 75% of my usage to off peak hours. Still my bills are the same. See, the more system you have, the more they charge you to keep you at the same bill. It is total crap, and I am in a situation where it would be financially wise to remove the system from my home all together, not spend another $15000 on Tesla batteries. SRP will try these new plans, not make as much money and say f u for having solar.
Thanks guys.
Not sure why I was expecting some sort of result that would have benefit the consumer… I see Tesla’s benefit, I see SRP’s continued benefit, and the customer continues to get shafted. Way to go guys! Make a ridiculous profit over saving the planet! …Or, wait for it… pay SRP extra for them to have solar. I give up.
Ken, perhaps you could aggregate your rooftop PV into a larger community solar project, with better net metering rates and leverage into SRP?
This is BS! So SRP is going to buy batteries from tesla and the lawsuit will be dropped. This has nothing to do with why they were being sued in the first place. The real issue is once SRP increased the charge to get solar it basically killed people from wanting to get solar in SRP territory. The fee is ridiculous and people who want solar should not be penalized. I thought tesla was on the side of the people not the utility companies that are trying to do everything they can to stop solar. We live in Arizona its sunny most of the year everyone should have solar!
SRP needs new oversight regulation. Election of new commissioners and new regulators is a way to change the utility. Another way would be to strip them of their monopoly and force the grid to be controlled by the public, leaving only generation for the utility.
FORCING SRP to compete for electricity sales would clean the cobwebs from their management minds.