I still don't see where they shouldn't have a voice in what happens in their industry.
Right now they are being forced to buy something they don't want to, for a much higher price than they could get from other sources. And this is OK to you guys?
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What am I missing here?
The thing is, they are buying the PV kWh from you at retail, and selling it to your neighbor at the same retail rate, and the wire connecting you to your next door neighbor is pretty cheap, doesn't suffer any wear and tear on the transaction, and is likely amortized already. Then later at night, you buy actual kWhs they made, from the grid at what would normally be the retail rate, but rather than you paying, they apply the equivalent funds (to the penny) that they collected from your neighbor the day or month before.
In other words, the utility is selling you and your neighbors pink flamingos at an already agreed upon rate. You are making a couple flamingos in your basement, shuffling some flamingos between your and your neighbor's lawns, and everyone is still paying the exact same price per flamingo that the utility set with a public committee. The net effect is that you made and sold two flamingoes (with your capital), and the utility sold two fewer.
Does reduced sales (or sales growth) affect the utility's business....of course it does. The solar comes in (for now) at peak demand periods....in summer and daytime. If they have to BUY power in sunny peak periods from other generators at above their retail rate...they make money on the deal. If they own peaker plants and SELL power to other utilities at above retail during peaks...you cut their profits.
But at the same time, you are making their jobs a little easier by solving a problem for the utility....you are reducing their need to expand their peak grid capacity and generation, which is very capital intensive...and shaving their peaks. So, its really about how they ran their business in the recent past, re projected growth.
--If people told them a decade ago solar flamingo factories would never work, and flamingo demand was going to go up 3% a year, and they built a huge new flamingo factory with borrowed money, now they look like idiots and are losing money on their investment (passed onto the consumer through higher rates). In this case the lower demand is mostly due to efficiency improvements, with only a little from solar piling on...but they are easy to blame. And if your blame and lobbying can pass an anti-bespoke flamingo law it can remove a future threat....maybe your demand can grow enough in the next ten years to recoup your mal-investment without an embarrassing rate increase!
--In a second area, the utility decided that it would undertake enough efficiency programs (at their cost, passed on to the consumer through things like MassSaves) to shave growth in total and peak demand to AVOID or reduce a large capital investment in new flamingo factories. Since flamingo demand has actually been pretty flat for the last ten years, these guys are not sitting on a pile of debt and mal-investments. In this situation, your solar flamingo factory looks like a free efficiency program. They currently have chosen to PAY to reduce total demand and especially peak demand, and you are helping them do that FOR FREE. So they don't have to charge customers so much to pay for demand reduction strategies!
PV net metering is small pool in most of the areas debating net metering. Whether you like it or not depends on how well you the utility forecast your demand growth in the last decade. If you overforecast, (easy since growth has been flat), you are hoping to sell excess power at peak rates to your neighbors, and PV looks like a threat. If you underforecast you are afraid you will have to buy expensive power from neighboring generators with excess, and PV looks like a godsend.
At the national level...PV avoids peak rate profiteering by one generator over another, reducing consumer costs, and displaces other expensive demand reduction program costs, also reducing costs. IOW, solar net metering reduces consumer costs overall, which has been confirmed by many studies. While this also happens to reduce utility revenue, whether it reduces utility profits depends on how well they are running their business (if they accurately forecast demand taking PV into account....it is neutral).
Other than that....I agree with you Matt. If the public commission allows them to pay into a lobbying fund from their operating budget...of course they can do so. If someone doesn't like it...they should lobby the commission to disallow the practice.
In reality, PV is so small almost everywhere (<1%) that it is a rounding error on most of these company budgets. The lobbying is all about future projections that are scary to some utility business models. And it is true that once solar gets to 10-15% energy (an order of magnitude larger than currently) the rosy picture above gets more complicated and adding more solar at that point might require other expensive engineering solutions. This is where it gets even more complicated. If PV is stupid cheap, then why should the utility let you make money from it? They should build a solar plant, make power at less than retail and sell it to you at retail....at least up to 10-15% total solar. In the (scary) future, if homeowners own all that PV, the engineering solutions might be limited/costly (like litigating net-metering rules). If you the utility own the PV, solutions might be easier (like installing cheap grid storage that will become available then, or simply curtailing PV overproduction, which you can do if you own it).
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