Solar

Here Comes the Sun

Growing Impacts of Residential Solar on Utility Customer Service

What does PV mean for utilities’ residential customer service operations? From helping customers with supplier selection, through installation and maintenance issues? And with billing? To begin to address this question, we conducted two sets of surveys of residential electricity customers in the second quarter of 2016.

Byline:

Daniel Gabaldon, Matt Guarini and Jamie Wimberly

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Ratemaking and the Campaign Against Rooftop Solar

Rate design should balance consumer and investor interests.

Regulators should ensure that changes to rate design seek to balance consumer and utility interests. Rates that are intended to insulate utilities from economic and technological change while providing no benefits to consumers ought to be considered unjust, unreasonable, and unduly discriminatory.

Byline:

Ari Peskoe

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Community Solar: States Are Testing Designs While Driving Forward

Minnesota, Oregon, New York case studies

Minnesota, Oregon and New York are certainly not alone in testing shared solar models. But the developments in each state in spring 2016 should shed light on the ability to deliver on the promise of community solar.

Byline:

Andrew Moratzka and Sara Bergan

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Response to Brown Re: Net Metering

A response to the letter to the editor by Ashley Brown in our February 2016 issue.

Is rooftop solar more like an independent power producer, subject to societal regulation and policy, such as wholesale-level regulation or retail-level resource planning? Or is the electricity that is produced a private consumer good, immune from regulation, policy, and planning?

Byline:

Charles Cicchetti

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Musk and Me

I signed up for a free quote on line.

With all the talk of the “existential threat” to traditional utilities from solar and other disruptive technologies (and the blowback against net metering in various states), I thought I’d check out SolarCity first hand.

Byline:

Steve Huntoon

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A Rose By Any Other Name: Response to 'Solar Battle Lines'

Vitriol is to exploit the public’s inclination to favor solar to make utilities pay an exorbitant political price to have policy decided on the merits.

If a solar panel owner can sell at bundled retail rate, while generators are paid LMP, this is discriminatory pricing.

Byline:

David Raskin

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Community Solar

Answers to questions you were afraid to ask

Community solar is expected to jump fivefold. What exactly is it and how exactly does it work?

Byline:

Chris Vlahoplus, John Pang, Paul Quinlan, and John Sterling

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Solar at High Noon

Surplus generation at mid-day calls for long-duration energy storage.

Utility execs and PUCs should plan now to handle extensive solar penetration, including the significant overgeneration that can occur at mid-day.

Byline:

Edward Cazalet and David MacMillan

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Solar Shines As Regulatory Battles Abound

A tough legal and financial terrain is confronting producers, utilities and regulators.

State commissions are challenged to find the sweet spot whereby utilities can afford to maintain their systems and homeowners are motivated to go green.

Byline:

Ken Silverstein

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There and Back Again

Why a residential demand rate developed 40 years ago is increasingly relevant today.

Why not design a rate that allocates the higher system cost to customers based on their actual energy demand?

Byline:

Leland Snook and Meghan Grabel

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