Update on ‘Just Sayin’ column of Jan. 18
My column was not fully up to date on the proposals that have been made in response to Assembly Bill 205. The column reported that AB-205 requires a restructuring of electric billing that would implement an Income-Graduated Fixed Charge (IGFC), combined with a reduced per kilowatt fee.
Several sources have posited that it would be extremely difficult to design and implement a system that was dependent on access to and verification of family incomes. There have been revised submittals of the IGFC proposals that limit the fixed fee to just “low-income” and “all other.”
The bottom line is that the UC is going ahead with the fixed charge component of AB-205, but is likely to delay the Income-Graduated part, except for low income. The adverse impact to solar s remains.
There are others beside myself, including many in the state Legislature, that agree that the concept of income-based pricing is worthy of a dedicated conversation, rather than being buried in an obscure segment of a larger bill. With the realization that implementation of such a policy would be extremely complicated, it looks as if there will be an opportunity to give it the careful examination that it is due.
Harvey Levine
Rancho Bernardo
A few things about SDG&E electrical pricing
I usually enjoy Harvey Levine’s columns. I love how he’s shifted to the middle ground. But his latest column about SDG&E electrical pricing left me scratching my head. Levine is entitled to his opinions, and I happen to agree with him on these. But I really wish he would get his facts straight. I offer some humble corrections.
Net Energy Metering (NEM) 1.0 and 2.0 require utilities to buy power from customers with rooftop solar at the full retail rate. This isn’t just the generation part, it includes fixed overhead costs such as transmission and distribution. NEM 3.0 changes this to reimburse only at the “avoided cost” rate, which is essentially the generation cost, about 8 cents/KWH. The other 3/4 Levine wonders about is fixed overhead.
Selling power back to SDG&E under NEM 1.0/2.0 does not mean the customer buys an oversized solar system to make money selling power to the utility. Such excess is disallowed before permitting. Rather, it’s about the time of day and the season.
You sell the utility power in the daytime and buy it back at night. In the summer you might have extra and build up a credit. In the winter there’s less generation and you owe SDG&E for the difference. Once a year you true up, and you either pay SDG&E the retail rate for the difference, or if you somehow manage to overgenerate, they pay you their avoided cost.
SDG&E does not want a monopoly on solar generation. It buys most or all of its solar from big solar farms at wholesale rates. They do seem to hate rooftop solar, but not because it’s competition. If they can buy power wholesale at 8 cents or from customers at 40 cents, which do you think they prefer?
It’s a fair question how to encourage people to add rooftop solar to their homes. The new NEM 3.0 has already destroyed the solar industry, and the proposed income-tiered billing system will likely make this worse. But if we subsidize solar to encourage it, who pays the subsidy? It’s arguably unfair for lower-income customers to pay it. But then who? Taxpayers? Citizens with Sempra stock in their 401K plans? Solar system sellers? There are no easy answers.
Mary Ann Horton
Poway
More about electrical pricing
Harvey Levine is correct in celebrating the end of the cross-class subsidies from non-solar electric customers to solar households who, generally, are higher income individuals. This has been poor public policy from the start. However, he is puzzled about how the difference between the retail rate and the avoided cost can be so great.
The cost of electricity has two components — fixed and variable. The variable cost is principally the price of the fuel to generate a kilowatt-hour and is denominated in dollars/kilowatt-hour ($/kWh). It is the cost of the commodity which would be avoided if the generation company did not need to produce.
The fixed cost component exists independent of the volume of energy consumed. Industrial tariffs differentiate this cost in $/kilowatt ($/kW). It is normalizing this fixed cost in residential tariffs on a dollar-per-kilowatt-hour basis which can make the total retail rate higher than the avoided cost.
It’s about time that one class of electric ratepayers quit subsidizing another. Having the fixed cost of energy segregated from the commodity charges makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is another bonehead idea from Sacramento of electricity prices being a function of income.
Jack Russ
Poway
Storage tanks on ballfield should be removed
At Lake Poway we have a beautiful statue for Tony Gwynn. In addition to Tony’s many accomplishments on the baseball field Tony was a person of high character we could all learn so much from.
When I look at the statue now I can only think what he would have thought now the ballfield his statue looks out at has been rendered unplayable because of the placement of two large storage tanks on the field. In a time of such disagreement in the world, it seems like we can all agree these storage tanks need to be removed at once and the ballfield restored.
I’m sure Tony would have strongly agreed.
Joe Calabrese
Poway
Warn young people about vaping side effects
As a high schooler in the Poway Unified School District, I have witnessed a lot of vaping. Walking into bathrooms, you get hit with a whiff of flavoring and oftentimes see a smoky haze circling throughout the room. The problem: most people don’t know how harmful it really is.
From elementary school, we are taught about the effects of tobacco and addictive substances. Even young kids know that smoking can cause lung cancer and other diseases. However, the bright, exciting ments focused towards younger generations make vaping seem cool and fun. Vape companies purposefully promote their products to teenagers, simultaneously creating new problems: peer pressure.
With vaping, where many people find it cool, others are going to want to fit in with the new “trend.” They will ask their friends how they get theirs and begin to do it themselves too, ultimately spiraling into a domino effect, in which more and more people start to vape. Most of the time, vapes are small enough to go unnoticed and kids do not get punished for their actions, as well.
It is all a matter of correctly educating students about e-cigarettes and the toll it can take on your body in the long run. Vaping is a serious issue that can be solved by teaching younger people about the negative effects and possibly banning vapes altogether. It is time to take a stance and find a solution to this ongoing problem.
Ella Bear
Poway
