Musk vs. Buffett: The Billionaire Battle to Own the Sun
Local TV news crews close in on the women as several hundred other protesters wave signs that read "Don't hog the sun" and "Save our solar jobs." Another poster takes a jab directly at the local power company: "Don't be shady NV Energy."
SolarCity's success is partly because the government provides subsidies and enables an arrangement called net metering, which allows homeowners with panels to sell back to the grid any solar energy they don't use.
Rooftop solar customers, it went on, were already getting a subsidy, and it would only increase if the cap were lifted to 10 percent, as the solar industry wanted.
Someone had just inserted information about NV Energy's lobbying on net metering in the governor's biography and wrote-erroneously-that he could lift the cap to prevent solar companies from cutting jobs.
NV Energy, SolarCity, and other solar companies agreed to legislation that eliminated the cap.
Throughout the process, says Kevin Geraghty, NV Energy's vice president for energy supply, he'd been frustrated by how the solar industry has tried "To influence what is a technical, financial analysis with emotion." If you go solar, he adds, "You have to pay your fair share" for the grid.
One year, he got a $1,355 check from NV Energy because his solar power was helping the utility meet its renewable energy requirements.
Solar is booming in the U.S., in part because of a stunning drop in the price of panels. Adjusting for inflation, it cost $96 per watt for a solar module in the mid-1970s. Process improvements and a huge boost in production have brought that figure down 99 percent, to 68¢ per watt today, according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
he public outcry seems to have registered with NV Energy. On Jan. 25 it said it would ask the commission to allow existing net-metering customers to stick with the old system for two decades in some instances. “A fair, stable, and predictable cost environment is important to all our customers,” Paul Caudill, the utility’s president, said in a statement. The commission will soon rehear that portion of the case.
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