Rooftop Solar Makes Sense - EPEC Just Wants to Steal

The State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) "partners with Texas consumers, businesses, educators and local governments to reduce energy costs and maximize efficiency." In December 2008 they issued a report: Texas Energy Resource Assessment. To save you from reading all 196 pages, Plano Solar Advocates wrote a summary today,Valuing Distributed Generation.

The bottom-line is this: "Small renewable energy generation systems located at the point of use capture the benefits of renewable energy while reducing utility costs." These "generation systems" consist of "rooftop solar water heaters and solar electric systems, small wind energy generating systems, and ground-source heat pumping systems."

The report recommends that energy sources (such as rooftop solar) are critical to providing power within a distributed, aggregated system. In other words, we aren't dependent on one source of power - e.g., El Paso Electric Company power stations. Those who add this power to the system - rooftop solar users - should receive compensation for the energy that they produce. To do so requires net metering. The report recommends incentives for small renewable energy generation and fair compensation through net metering.

The El Paso Electric Company wants just the opposite. They want to destroy the rooftop solar industry in sunny El Paso and continue their monopoly of power. The huge natural gas and coal lobbies are behind them. They want you to buy from them and only them. 

If you want to know what can happen to El Paso and to El Paso jobs, read Nevada solar industry collapses after state lets power company raise fees. The Nevada power and utility commission granted the state's one utility, Nevada Energy, the ability to raise the fees and rates that rooftop solar users must pay. In essence Nevada Energy has now turned all rooftop solar panels into one big solar farm for themselves. Who is stealing from whom? Yet EPEC continues to lie that solar owners in El Paso aren't paying their fair share. Read between the lines. Solar owners (and all of us) must pay for the infrastructure needed because EPEC wants to remain its monopoly and do so on the bucks and backs of ratepayers rather than shareholders.