California Communal Services blow their deadlines for CONECT ROOFTOP Solar

From Malena CaroloCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

The two largest communal services of the country routinely drag their legs, connecting solar panels to the electricity network, missing terms, a term of the state up to 73% of the time, according to a complaint filed with the solar defenders regulators.

The complaint filed by a solar energy advocacy group calls on the California Commission for Utilities to be liable for utilities when they do not comply with such deadlines. The Commission officially reviews it.

Defenders have been complaining for years that such delays interfere with California’s transition to renewable energy sources. The regulators of state utilities separately review the process of connecting solar energy to the roof to the network, including the study of whether and how the utility committee must require utilities in order to comply with the deadlines established years ago.

But the Commission has not yet reprimanded utilities for regular mislauts of these deadlines.

“The rule is there, but the Commission has not chosen to impose (IT),” says Kevin Luo, a policy manager and market for the California Association for Sun and Storage, a group that advocates the acceptance of solar energy that filed the complaint.

“The rule is there, but the Commission did not choose to impose (IT).”

Kevin Luo, California Association for Sun and Storage

When the Californians add solar panels to their roofs, they begin a complex “bonding” process, led by utilities to ensure that the massif is properly installed and can provide power for both the customer and the network that receives the power supply that the customer does not use. For each step of interconnection, usefulness is separated for some time, ranging from five working days to 90 calendar days.

The deadlines for several of the more extensive steps-including design, construction and installation-have been clarified in a 2020 decision after solar panel owners complain that the main utilities owned by investors are inflating their deadlines.

Delay can have significant financial consequences for panel owners, expanding the period after exposing money to solar cells, but before they see a reduction in energy consumption or payments from selling excess solar energy back to utility services.

Pacific Gas & Electric, South California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric report their compliance with these three -month basis. The reporting is for projects over 30 kilowatt, which are often for business, not for residential homes and represent the bigger part of the solar projects.

These data show that PG & E and Edison routinely exceed the distributed windows.

In the complaintSubmitted at the end of August, the California Sun and Storage Association notes that utilities take longer than are allowed to connect clients between 19% and 73% of the time, depending on which stage of the process is being investigated.

For example, communal services receive 10 working days to recognize someone’s request for interconnectedness – the average time of PG & E for this step was 20 days, with its longest 245 days. One of the most important steps is to study the system that looks at how the addition of the client’s solar array will affect the network and identify any potential demand problems. PG & E reserved to its schedule 49% of the time until Edison fulfilled his final period of 43% of the time, according to the complaint.

San Diego Gas & Electric usually meets its deadlines and is not included in the complaint of the solar Association of Typo.

PG & E spokesman Mike Gazda responded to the complaint, saying that “PG & E is a strong supporter of solar energy and has linked nearly 900,000 solar customers – more than any other utility in the United States – to support customers who have made the choice of solar energy, to strengthen the California energy grid and to reduce California.

Edison’s spokesman Jeff Montford said the company is taking “complaints seriously and (E) working with the California Commission for Utilities to deal with all the problems related to our interconnectedness processes.”

It is said that delays can be caused by solving problems, unknown new technologies, or other agencies to participate.

So what happens when they break the rules?

The Commission for Utilities declined to state specific sanctions when it clarified the deadlines in 2020. It rejected a recommendation from a working group, including industry representatives and consumer protectors to “clearly state that financial sanctions” could happen if the utility program fails to comply with 95% of the projects.

“The committee must first determine if the timeline is improving,” the decision said. The regulators could outsource in the future, “if it determines that such a construction would support timely connection.”

The Commission declined to comment as the case was “continued court proceedings”, said Adam Cranfil, a spokesman.

Without any punishment, the defenders say, there is no only incentive for utility services to follow the rules, there is deterrence because of the way money is running.

“From their point of view, solar energy and storage are a competition for them,” Lo said. “The presence of people with their own solar energy and storage reduces the need for continuous expansion of the network and the construction of transmission lines.”

The solar industry on the roof roof has been sunk in a dispute in recent years due to the Net Energy Measurement program of the country that manages how many utilities are needed to pay for the clients of solar energy for additional energy that their panels generate. The program aims to stimulate the perception of renewable energy sources and to compensate for the significant cost of solar energy on the roof, but utility services claim to create a burden on unfair price for those without solar energy that pay more for costs, such as networking. As a result, the current iteration of the program pays significantly less than previous versions.

Three ecological groups are sued over change and California’s Supreme Court ruled last month That the lower courts should review the details of the case instead of delaying the regulators of utilities.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.