Readers React
A cloud over solar energy
To the editor: I met with a solar firm recently hoping to get solar panels for my home. I am in the process of getting an arborist to let me know if my trees can be trimmed to let me install enough panels to cancel out my electric bill. ("Sun block,” Business, Sept. 27")
Now I find out through The Times that the rules might be changed by my utility company after I install the panels, affecting my future costs.
I happen to think solar is the only future for this planet. I have impatiently waited, hoping that scientists can develop improvements so that everything in the world can someday run on solar.
Thanks, utility firms, for dashing my dreams. We humans always seem to get in our own way when it comes to doing what is right and practical.
Connie Elliot, Studio City
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To the editor: What usually seems to go unmentioned is that by installing solar systems, homeowners are helping lessen the need of the utility companies to build power plants — a huge cost savings to them. That must be figured in to any decision as to whether to allow new fees or increased rates. Thank you for referring to this briefly in your article.
Joseph DeMello, Long Beach
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To the editor: Regardless of what the California Public Utilities Commission does about raising fees on solar customers, they will eventually be paying more.
As solar becomes more widespread, demand in the current peak hours in the afternoon will diminish relative to demand in the evening hours, until the evening hours become the new peak hours.
Rates will then increase for the evening hours, when solar customers are buying electricity, and diminish (relatively speaking, not likely absolutely) in the daytime hours, when solar customers are selling electricity.
Their bills will thus increase relative to the bills of non-solar customers.
Bill Quade, Granada Hills
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To the editor: The article on the plan to raise utility fees on people who installed solar on their roofs is outrageous.
The federal and state governments want us to go green. Many of us did that and are supplying energy to the power grid.
Now state regulators want to renege on the promise of clean energy?
Bernard Bregman, Northridge
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To the editor: It is a stunning example of hypocrisy to ask people to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to conserve our natural resources, whether water or electricity, and then put a surcharge on them for doing the right thing.
This self-serving dis-incentive to conserve is a slippery slope.
Shall we next put a surcharge on all hybrid cars because less gasoline is being purchased and this means less money for road upkeep?
Rex Altman, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Rooftop solar is definitely part of California's energy future. Southern California Edison has been helping customers go solar for more than 15 years; SCE has connected more than 130,000 homes to its grid.
SCE invests in the grid to assure needed two-way power flow that makes possible customer choice of new technologies, including solar. It is only fair that a customer with rooftop solar pays his share for part of the grid system that provides him benefits.
In contrast to the comments made by some parties in your story, existing solar customers are grandfathered for 20 years and will continue to see robust support from the program. No existing solar user, or one who is in the process of connecting, will lose the value of their investment.
We have proposed changes to make rules for rooftop solar additions after 2016 more fair to all customers.
It is only by making changes to the existing system of subsidies that solar can become truly sustainable and available to all who want it.
Pedro Pizarro, Rosemead
The writer is president of Southern California Edison.
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To the editor: Electric utilities in California want to maintain their profits, even if they produce less juice. They want to charge people more for using less electricity, turning the whole idea of conservation on its head. This could only happen in the Kafkaesque world of private, for-profit companies operating as government-sponsored monopolies.
Solar panels are getting cheaper every day. Every roof should have one.
The big power companies see the danger to their bottom lines and they want to stop it.
Bert Bigelow, Orange
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