The California Energy Commission, more or less on the fly, has decreed that beginning in 2020 all new single-family homes and low-rise multi-family residential projects must be built with rooftop solar panels.
Although they would add perhaps $10,000 to the cost of a new home, the commission insists that solar arrays would pay for themselves in lower electric power bills while helping the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals.
. . . After the Energy Commission acted hastily, Moody’s Investors Service issued a bulletin calling it a “credit negative for the state’s utilities,” and suggesting, as have other authorities, that utility rates on residences still getting their power from the grid will have to be raised to offset the loss of revenue from those generating their own energy.
This is serious business, too serious to be done on a political whim.
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