Comment Bundling fixed costs into per-KWH ... (Score 2) 335
"Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."
The entire problem stems from the fact that the per-KWH charge is actually some gross amalgam of actual cost to deliver an additional KWH plus fixed costs like (in theory anyway) keeping the grid maintained. The fixed costs increased even as the per-KWH price of generation tanked and so the inflated per-KWH rates drives solar adoption until they finally decided that you can't recover the delivery charge part.
Instead, the evenhanded to do it would be to actually align the fixed portion of everyone's bill to the fixed costs of the grid (e.g. they would go way way up) and the usage based part of to the marginal cost of generation (e.g. they would go way down). Then you wouldn't need "special" rules for solar that counts against your usage at all -- the desired policy would fall out totally naturally.
The other enormous benefit would be that shifting the bills to fixed and slashing the rates per-KWH would massively favor environmentally friendly policies like EVs and electrification of heating and water heaters. At the current PG&E rates, those things are money losers (even with huge tax credits!) whereas in a world of 10Â/KWH power, an EV would be 3x cheaper per-mile than gas and pay back in ~5 years without a tax credit. The carbon emissions benefits would be enormous and would fall out naturally.
To me, the fact that the industry and the State pretend to be environmentally-conscious but won't do the basic thing to promote electrification is illuminating. Draw your own conclusions.