Starting Jan. 1, Nevada's more than 17,000 residential and small-scale commercial solar users were hit with higher electricity rates, coupled with reductions in the credits they receive for sending their unused solar energy back to the grid. The state Public Utilities Commission had approved these changes less than two weeks before, astonishing and angering the solar industry and customers.
The backlash has been swift and intense. Customers have balked. Major solar installers, including Sunrun and SolarCity, announced they were ceasing local operations, closing offices and cutting hundreds of jobs. Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who appointed the regulators, tried to distance himself from the decision.
The controversy has spread even to the presidential campaign, where two Democratic contenders have criticized the decision. Bernie Sanders called it "just about the dumbest thing I have ever heard." More recently, Hillary Clinton said, "I don't think any change in rules should penalize people who were permitted and encouraged to do what folks have done" in Nevada.
Nevada is among a handful of states that have repealed incentives aimed at encouraging residential-scale solar and other forms of distributed generation, part of a push by some utilities and fossil fuel interests to fight the spread of renewable power. The leading industry trade group Edison Electric Institute has called customer-owned distributed energy a "disruptive challenge" to the control utilities have over America's electricity supply.
What particularly rubbed people the wrong way in Nevada, however, was abandoning the concept of "grandfathering." When other states, including Arizona and Hawaii, increased rates for their solar customers or rolled back credits, they did so for new customers; existing customers were grandfathered into existing policies. Nevada changed the rates across the board.
Defying the request of solar advocates, Nevada regulators announced their decision on Dec. 22 to approve immediate rate and credit changes for both future and existing solar customers. Those rates will increase, and the credits will decrease every year until 2020.
For a typical Nevada homeowner, the basic monthly bill increased $12.75 to $17.90, with the credit for energy returned back to the grid decreasing from 11 cents per kilowatt-hour to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. When the full rate change goes into effect in 2020, the monthly bill will be $38.51 and credits will be 2 cents per kilowatt hour.
Read more at Nevada's Sunshine Just Got More Expensive and Solar Customers Are Mad
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