The California Public Utilities Commission shot down a San Diego Gas & Electric request to charge a new fee ranging from $11 to $30/month for customers using their own renewable energy systems. Mark Ferron, the CPUC commissioner assigned to the case, issued a Jan. 18 memo stripping the so-called “network use charge”--aimed primarily at people and small businesses with solar systems--from the investor-owned utility’s current rate proceeding. SDG&E asked the CPUC for permission to add a separate fee for transporting electricity to customers. It would have mostly affected customers with a form of renewable generation, such as solar or wind. Customers using renewable energy are not only “avoiding the cost of paying the utility for their commodity, they also are avoiding all the other costs related that are typically in a bundled customer’s bill,” like meter installation and usage, customer service, and customer assistance programs, said utility spokesperson Stephanie Donovan. Under the proposal, submitted Oct. 3, 2011, solar customers would have been levied four cents/kW more than they pay now, based on average hourly usage. The utility sought the charge due to what it called unfairness in rates. “The fact that net energy metering customers are being subsidized by non-solar customers is not sustainable in the long term,” Lee Schavrien, the utility’s senior vice president of finance, regulatory and legislative affairs, countered. “The current net energy metering structure can easily result in many customers who have rooftop solar paying no bill at all, yet having access to all of the reliability, storage, and access features of the grid,” Schavrien said. The main problem, the utility maintained, is that customers with solar panels on their rooftops don’t now pay anything to use the utility’s power lines, even if they use the grid at night and other periods when their energy source isn’t producing. Ferron noted the proposal ran contrary to section 2827 of the state’s Public Utilities Code. “A utility may not create a new charge that would increase an eligible customer generator’s costs beyond those of other customers in the same rate class who are not eligible customer-generators,” Ferron wrote. “SDG&E’s [proposal] is a new charge.” While the network use charge would have applied to both customers who generate their own power as well as customers who don’t, customer-generators would have to pay a charge on both incoming and outgoing power under SDG&E’s proposal. Non-generators would have paid a charge only on incoming power. “As proposed, the [monthly charge] might be viewed as imposing costs on customer-generators beyond those imposed on other customers in the same rate class,” Ferron explained. The commissioner also gave SDG&E until Feb. 17 to submit a new rate proposal that doesn’t include the network use charge. Despite taking issue with the decision, the utility indicated it would comply with the commissioner’s order, but that it also would like to try to find a viable answer to the perceived rate inequality. “This is a situation that is not sustainable and requires a broad set of stakeholders to collaborate on a fair and effective solution,” Schavrien said.
