hey. Y'all in Cal (or #energytwitter generally) listening? I want to talk a moment about #AB1139, an anti-solar bill. And some other stuff. Thread, beginning.

Years ago Cal passed laws to allow solar owners to sell their excess sunshine back to the grid, aka Net Energy Metering. And it worked. #AB1139

In fact, NEM worked so well that the investor owned utilities - Cal PG&E, Sempra/ San Diego Gas & Elecric, SoCal Edison -- got cranky because it was cutting into their profits.

So NEM was revised to be somewhat less generous to homeowners, and that's called NEM 2.0. #AB1139

And along comes me, the climate hawk who can't quite afford to go solar, but fed tax credits are decreasing, so in 2019 I take money out of my retirement account to pay for a brand new beautiful made-in-USA-panels solar rooftop. #AB1139

and I do so in large part on the representation that my bill would effectively be zero dollars (it's $12/ month) instead of the $200+ that I'm paying.

Along comes #AB1139 to f*ck me over.

the Investor Owned Utilities have been whining about net energy metering since the beginning of time, because it cuts into their profits, and they've produced studies claiming that solar homeowners like me make the rates go up for others who can't afford solar. Hence #AB1139.

How much does NEM cut into IOU profits? An extremely slanted legislative analysis (more on that later) claims that it's $3M in 2020, $5M in 2030. You can download the analysis at the "bill analysis" tab here https://bit.ly/3gHVZzg 

just to put this $5M into perspective, these utilities have been earning 6 to 10 percent profits, annualized over 10 years, on net income of $1 billion, so you do the math and realize that $3M is a drop in a bucket. #AB1139

but the IOUs can't say that quiet part out loud, so they get friendly unions to sponsor the bill, and gussy it up it in concern for low income utility customers, and marinate it in social justice principles, and introduce #AB1139.

To be clear, virtually all of the opposition to #AB1139 is "oppose unless amended" -- that's Sacramento-speak for "we LIKE the low income utility customer relief, we AGREE with social justice, kewl kewl just don't f*ck up rooftop solar"

sometimes legislators really want to kick off a new program, so taxpayers get in early, and then they realize that they overpromised, so they try to scale it back EXCEPT FOR PROP 13 THE ORIGINAL SIN OF CALIFORNIA POLITICS THAT DESPERATELY NEEDS TO BE SCALED BACK but I digress