The fight over California’s sky-high energy bills had an obvious winner this week: the owners of rooftop solar panels. They blasted lawmakers with emails and phone calls, and showed up to a protest in Los Angeles County and a Wednesday hearing in Sacramento — where they were ultimately rewarded.
Over the past couple of years, state regulators have decided that the incentive payments given to solar panel owners are partially to blame for other Californians’ rising electricity costs. Regulators argue that because legacy solar owners are paid for their excess energy production through a program called net energy metering, and don’t pay their “fair share” to keep up the grid, non-solar owners get saddled with higher bills. In February, Assembly member Lisa Calderon, D-Whittier, introduced a bill aimed at scaling back net energy metering incentives by booting old solar owners onto a less generous subsidy after 10 years instead of 20.
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