This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Rocky Mountain Power can see the future of energy generation in Utah — and they don't like it.
Over the course of the past year, local families, community leaders and Utahns across our state have demanded that our officials at the Utah Public Service Commission (PSC) protect energy freedom in Utah and consider the enormous benefits that rooftop solar provides to our communities.
Just last week, the PSC ruled on the controversial cost-benefit study that will determine the value of rooftop solar's contributions to a reliable grid. Despite more than 100 Utahns rallying outside the PSC building to protect rooftop solar and testifying overwhelmingly in favor of energy choice, the Commission excluded long-term system benefits of rooftop solar in their order, allowing Rocky Mountain Power to ignore enormous financial benefits for Utahns, like avoided future costs of building expensive power plants, and the substantial public health, economic, and environmental benefits realized by renewable energy sources.
With rapidly dropping renewable energy prices, rooftop solar is now within reach to an increasing number of hardworking Utah families, stabilizing their energy costs and their budgets. To protect that freedom to choose, we need to ensure that rooftop solar gets fair treatment. The PSC's ruling last week only enables Rocky Mountain Power to continue to lock our communities into more dirty power and volatile energy prices by stifling the access for Utahns to support innovation by choosing rooftop solar.
Solar net-metering customers push their extra clean energy onto the grid during peak hours when the air conditioning is turned up, businesses are open, and demand is high. Rocky Mountain Power can then charge the neighbors of that customer market rate for consuming this cleaner power — all without having to invest in infrastructure to generate that energy themselves or pay the cost to move it across half the state from one of the distant generation sites. This local generation has a real value: it can reduce the amount of money Rocky Mountain Power needs to raise in customer rates for energy generation. In fact, during the PSC proceeding, clean energy advocates submitted detailed expert testimony demonstrating that rooftop solar is by far the cheapest resource available on Rocky Mountain Power's system.
In addition to displacing the need for expensive, dirty power plants, investing in rooftop solar has already created real jobs and growth benefits for our state. Just last week, a study conducted by Environmental Entrepreneurs reported that Utah now ranks number one in the nation in clean energy job creation. It has been projected that, over the next 10 years, 7,000 new solar jobs will be created in Utah. The PSC missed an opportunity this month to embrace the energy transition that is underway and the enormous benefits that come with it. The order will allow Rocky Mountain Power to protect aging, archaic fossil fuels that threaten the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Consider that rooftop solar customers represent less than one-half of one percent of Rocky Mountain Power's customer base, and yet the utility is devoting enormous resources to stopping future adoption of solar. Despite the motives Rocky Mountain Power espouses in the media, the single greatest effect of a fee on net-metered customers would be to stifle the rooftop solar industry and end the threat to Rocky Mountain Power's energy-producing monopoly.
The PSC's decision is disappointing and undermines the local solar market at exactly the time when we need clean air solutions more than ever. Over the next 35 years, Utah's population is expected to nearly double and our airshed and health will become more abused than ever if choices aren't made to enable renewable energy adoption. Our economy depends on reliable energy prices. As the cost of solar continues to drop, solar will play a vital role in that economy if it is not obstructed by an industry that is allowed to privatize profits while dumping dangerous pollution into the air we all have to breathe. Nonetheless, it remains the duty of the Public Service Commission to determine a rate that is just and reasonable. Nothing about this order relieves their duty to consider all facts put before them in future cases, including evidence that solar advances the well-being of Utah.
Deb Henry is an engineer in the solar industry. She is also a member of the Sugar House Community Council.