Utilities beat back community solar bill in California

One of the big pieces of a future that makes sense is an energy system that involves clean power, less waste, more intelligence, and a wider distribution of economic benefits. 

(Think locally owned solar panels hooked into a smart grid.) I lump all that under the term “distributed energy” and have been making fitful efforts to track some of the battles going on around it.

The latest episode is a sad one. Last year in California, state Sen. Lois Wolk (D) set out to tackle a pretty simple problem: Access to distributed energy (mostly rooftop solar panels) is restricted to those who can afford it and own a suitable roof. About 75 percent of Californians don’t fall into that category — they either rent, don’t have the equity, or have a shaded or wrong-facing roof. That’s a huge market to be tapped.

So she put forward Senate Bill 843, which would allow customers in the service territories of the state’s three big investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) — to “subscribe” to distributed energy projects (20 megawatts or less) anywhere in their territories.

But it didn’t sound good to the big quasi-monopoly utilities, PG&E and SCE (SDG&E supported the bill). Late last week, they led a last-minute flurry of lobbying and killed it.