STEAL FROM THE POOR, GIVE TO THE RICH - John Hinderaker

[Geee]

Powerline

That’s what solar power does. American Experiment’s Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling have an excellent expose of California’s solar power scam: Stealing with Solar: The Great Net-Metering Heist. Subhed: “How Solar Panels Helped Wealthy Californians Pick The Pockets of Low-Income Families.” See original for links:

Affluent households in California siphoned nearly $3.4 billion in 2021 from the pockets of low-income families through a government program called net metering. This program allows people with solar panels to get free electricity while forcing people who can’t afford them to pay all of the costs associated with maintaining the electric grid. What a steal!

Net metering allows customers with rooftop solar installations to sell their electricity back to the grid at the full retail price of power rather than the lower wholesale price that other power providers are paid. This is great if you own solar panels, but it effectively pays rooftop solar owners more than the electricity is worth.

For example, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show the statewide average retail residential electricity rate in California was 25.84 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2022. This means someone with solar panels on their house would be paid the full retail cost of 25.84 cents per kWh.

The problem with this arrangement, however, is that the people with solar panels on their roofs are not paying their fair share to upkeep the rest of the grid, but these substantial costs don’t disappear; they are foisted upon people without solar panels.