Arizona Corporate Commission Must Pressure Utilities to Support Rooftop Solar Energy

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The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) is set to consider further reducing what the state’s monopoly utilities pay homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar for the energy they send back to the grid—and which the utilities then sell back to customers.

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I urge the Arizona Corporation Commission to reconsider the idea of changing the relationship between power utilities and homes with solar panels.

Our country has taken pride in our sense of initiative for at least the last century and a half. We have innovated, modified, and changed things in our daily lives like nobody else. We have been the renowned world leaders in the adoption and adaptation of new ideas and new technology.

We did that with automobiles, light bulbs, washing machines, typewriters, computers, aircraft, spacecraft, air conditioning and toilet paper. That is quite an incomplete list, isn’t it?

Now consider this: Arizona gets a lot of sunlight. Every day, more days in the year, and in total each year. We could be the national leaders in harnessing that resource, showing not just the U.S. but the rest of the world just how American ingenuity can help change the world for the better. We could show the world just what Arizona is capable of when we take the lead.

We also have two bunches of very rich fuddy-duddies:

• • One group wants to hold back Americans from doing what comes naturally. Their wealth and income depends on an ossified, smelly, oily, wasteful source of energy.

• • The other group has been investing in fossil-based resources to manufacture energy and is more keen than anyone else to milk the system for whatever monopoly profits they can grab. Why should any American listen to either of them?

And yet, we have a bunch of political leaders in positions of power who are listening with enthusiasm to, if not enamored with, these same fuddy-duddies.

The Arizona Corporate Commission wants to turn back the clock on solar energy. In the process, they are betraying a great American tradition. It is also turning against a significant section of the voting population, many of whom have already installed rooftop solar collection, and many more of whom are seriously considering doing just that. Just to kowtow to the energy companies who provide lip service to non-fossil energy sources, and do everything they can to keep the status quo in practice.

Consider this: individuals have put solar panels on their roofs, and are willing to give it back to the power companies. Apart from setting up the systems that can receive these kilowatt hours, power utilities have only a little cost in collecting that energy, most of it in depreciation costs.

Households are not businesses, they are not looking for a profit. All they want is a fair deal, at least getting the same rates for their energy as other sources that supply power to these utilities. Yet, these utilities want to keep changing the rules, short-changing these households at every turn.

Power utilities can do several things to take the lead themselves: for instance, they could simply rent roofs, install solar panels, pick up all that energy, and sell it right back to those under those roofs. I am sure the business can be structured so that the cost could be much less than using coal-based plants, at a much lower cost to the environment and our children and grandchildren.

I urge Chairman O’Connor and the Commissioners of the ACC to rethink what they are considering. Please think about not approving the suggestion to remove the 10-year guarantee, the 10% decline in buyback terms. On the contrary, please do more to pressure the power utilities to do their thing and truly innovate in the way they produce electricity. Please do more to educate the general public about the significance of the state increasing its use of solar energy at all levels, including households.