Columbia, SC - (WLTX) Participants at the Rally to Save South Carolina Solar jobs want to increase renewable energy options for South Carolina residents. Representative Nathan Valentine tells us why he is sponsoring the bill.
He says, "solar is providing choices and providing jobs we have reached the cap the limit from the bill that was recently passed we need to expand it and we need to keep and provide more options for our rate payers."
He goes on to explain the implications if the bill does not get passed by saying, "we already lost five thousands jobs in the nuclear fiasco we stand to lose another three thousand jobs with solar."
James Koehler, Vice President for Energy Markets and Policy with Palmetto Solar, explains how this will affect consumers.
He says,"when you put solar on your roof it's the only option you have other than to pay Scana or Duke, the major monopoly utilities in South Carolina and as you've seen with the nuclear power plant, people are going to be paying for that for the next twenty years and they're being forced to pay for a project that never provided any energy at all."
Solar industry worker Greg Gebhardt, says, "if this bill is not passed and others like it means less opportunity and that's unfortunate."
Gebhardt, A US veteran with Cyber Creek Renewable says when he left active duty in 2012, he had to do a lot of soul searching and he found his passion in renewable energy.
He says, "I have three young daughters, I love to go home at night and tell my daughters that dad made a difference today. Not only did dad go to work but he made a difference in installing renewable energy. Veterans really struggle when they leave active duty service looking for a profession with a purpose so that's why we need bills like this."
Current law caps solar usage in the state. Utility Duke Energy wants lawmakers to consider the implications of changing those caps.
In a statement they told News19 the following:
We are all for common-sense legislation that is fair and balances the interests of all who call South Carolina home – solar providers, energy companies, and customers who use solar energy and those who do not.
The state got that in 2014, when South Carolina’s General Assembly passed Act 236 – comprehensive solar legislation that laid the groundwork for expansion of solar power in the state and was endorsed by solar developers and installers, utilities, large customers and environmental groups.
As a result of Act 236, Duke Energy along with these other parties agreed in settlement to support a path to meeting those goals, with caps that were intended to enable the solar industry to stand on its own after the caps had been met. That path has been very successful. It grew the state’s renewable energy market. It created jobs. And it created one of the country’s greatest success stories for renewable energy, making South Carolina one of the top 10 states in the country for solar.
Thanks to the law, Duke Energy provided an extremely successful solar rebate program that helped customers across the state install solar generation with little or no upfront costs – a program that has provided nearly $50 million in rebates to date. Just last week, Independence Elementary School in Rock Hill flipped the switch on an installation that will help power their classrooms for years to come, thanks in large part to the Duke Energy rebate. This year, we plan to launch a community solar program to let multiple customers share the economic benefits of a single solar facility. We will also complete our plans to meet the goal of adopting 53 megawatts of utility scale solar as prescribed by the law.
But now California-based Sun Run wants to undo all of that by exploiting the political climate and grabbing even more aggressive subsidies for their businesses.
House Bill 4421 requires utilities like Duke Energy to offer rooftop solar to customers at a subsidized, anti-competitive rate at the same time it prevents utilities from recovering costs. This is not about utilities protecting profits. It’s about having a fair system, paying private solar customers the same, competitive price we pay for other solar energy, instead of above-market rates that result in higher costs for all customers. Having others bankroll the lucrative earnings of the rooftop solar industry is not the answer.
House Bill 5045 appears to be an improvement over House Bill 4421, but we were not involved in its drafting. Our view is that we should continue down the successful road that Act 236 – and the agreements between utilities, solar interests and others that followed it – paved for South Carolina.
We have successful legislation in place already – Act 236 – and it addresses all of the “concerns” the rooftop solar developers are focused on now, including caps and what to do once they are met. The only cap coming close to being met is in Duke Energy Carolinas, which serves primarily the Upstate. Because of the success of Act 236, that cap will likely be met in the second quarter of this year. No other utilities will come close to reaching caps before 2019 or 2020, when Act 236 laid out the groundwork for everyone to come back to the table, end the net-metering subsidy, and pay the true value of solar to rooftop customers moving forward – the same value we already pay to solar farms and other generators who sell back to our system.
Under Act 236, we committed to provide the net-metering subsidy to the 2 percent cap of roughly $75 million through 2025 for customers enrolled by 2020. This subsidy is currently a very small part of every customer’s bill and was agreed to by the rooftop solar industry and others as a way to help the solar industry grow. But this subsidy was never envisioned as something that would grow beyond that and it was never envisioned to be paid for solely by utility shareholders, which is what 4421 does – taking advantage of a political climate where lawmakers will tell you to your face it’s time to stick it to all utility shareholders, whether that shareholder is a hardworking lineman or your grandmother who is counting on Duke Energy stock dividends to help her through retirement. The cost shift would grow by tens of millions of dollars over the coming decade if House Bill 4421 becomes law. It’s a government mandated solar welfare policy that robs from pensions and retirement funds for many South Carolinians to bolster the bottom line of California’s SunRun and other out-of-state rooftop solar developers. It is absolutely not needed.
The bottom line is this – we’re not against raising the cap on net-metering after the goals of Act 236 and the associated agreements between all parties are met. But if you do, you must pay rooftop solar customers the fair value of solar energy. The current policy of subsidizing net metering does not do that and House Bill 4421 will continue and grow that anti-competitive policy well into the future.