No One Said You’re Not Green, California. What’s in Question is Your Stance on Distributed Energy

Source: Elisa Wood | · SMART ENERGY INTERNATIONAL · | June 5, 2024

California's vote on community solar creates another reason to doubt it will lead on grid decentralization

Before last week’s controversial community solar vote, Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), enumerated the state’s green energy credentials — almost defensively so.

She appeared to be girding for the tongue-lashing the state was about to take from a myriad of green energy and consumer advocates for adopting new utility-backed community energy regulations that they say do little to build real community energy. 

“I’m really proud to say that California is the forerunner when it comes to solar development,” Reynolds said. “We are well positioned ahead of other states in terms of solar deployment on our grid with 35 GW of installed solar capacity.”

She went on to note that on May 13, solar energy output hit a new record high “and recently clean energy resources like solar, wind, hydro and batteries have exceeded the entire demand on the CAISO system at some point in the day for 34 days straight.”

All of this is true. And good. But California’s green cred isn’t the problem. What’s being questioned is the state approach to distributed energy resources. 

Latest anti-DER vote

“California’s utilities are doing everything they can to stifle distributed energy generation in order to tighten their grip on the state’s electricity grid.”

Derek Chernow, CCSA

Last week’s vote, which rejected a net value billing tariff, is the latest in a series of commission decisions that advocates say indicate distributed energy — unless it’s built by utilities — is out of favor at the commission even as it’s increasingly embraced by consumers. They point to the commission’s decision to quash micro utilities, its damage to the state’s rooftop solar industry through its actions on net metering, and other commission decisions that lawmakers say fell short of legislative mandates and undercut independent or community-backed distributed energy.