Proposed AB 2205: good idea, bad idea, or a trojan horse?

This is for California, so if you don’t want to read about yet another California-only post, click away now.

An Assemblyman (Republican, if that matters) proposed a new bill that would mandate the CPUC to reduce electrical rates to consumers by at least 30%

Since the vast majority of homes in the state are served by the big-three utilities, which charge some of the highest rates on Earth, most Californians would love to see some relief on their power bills, whether they have solar or not.

However, this proposal is very specific. it would “require the commission to reduce the kilowatt-per-hour rate for electricity” meaning the energy part of the charge, not the delivery part of the charge. If AB205 (the income-based grid fees law) is repealed or invalidated by a court, the Legislature could approve this bill and then utilities and CPUC could simply shift the price from energy to delivery. This would have no effect on non-solar bills but could make NEM 3.0 customer credits even lower.

Even if AB205 is allowed to go into effect in January this new bill would lower the bills of most people for one year before the utilities got the CPUC to raise the tiered grid fees to make up for the lower energy rates, further destroying the payback times for all solar accounts while not affecting the non-solar bills by much