HB27? Where the sun don’t shine!

House Bill 227 is like milking a dry cow.

More than fast labeling and poor rhetoric is needed to justify a bill. The labeling of solar customers as emotional, rich people who invested long-term in solar systems just to take advantage of a 30 percent federal tax credit is false. I’ve never heard a word about the thousands of geothermal owners claiming a 30 percent tax credit.

It’s a coverup for the fact that over the past 30 years utilities have not adequately invested the variable energy payments they collected in improvement to the grid.

Utilities claim solar customers are causing the problem, not paying enough in fixed costs and are using the phrase “traditional customers are subsidizing solar customers.” This is now a holy cow.

HB 227 attempts to regulate something that barely exists. Only 1,200 solar homes produce much less than the 1 percent cap utilities agreed to in 2009.

Solar customers’ electricity ships 500 feet to the grid and utilities sell it at $0.10-12/kWh. Utilities now want to charge solar customers $0.06-0.09/kWh, the same as customers whose electricity is shipped 500 miles or more from the coal plant. Who is subsidizing whom?

This story was originally published February 9, 2018 at 5:58 PM with the headline "HB27? Where the sun don’t shine!."