EPE = Energy Grinch

This from CalFinder (Nationwide Home Solar Power Contractors and Information). Looks Like El Paso Electric's reputation has traveled all the way to California!

Thanks to various reports coming out of Texas, we have unearthed another clean energy Grinch.

This one is El Paso Electric, which in June of 2010 changed its rate for buying energy from installed residential solar energy systems. That rate, which is set at 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for most of the utility’s service area, is only 3 centsper kWh for the El Paso area.

Meanwhile, since March, the utility has abandoned net metering and gotten approval from the Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to do the following:

• Charge solar energy system customers a $15 service fee (purportedly to integrate their energy into the grid)
• Charge solar customers full price (12 cents per kWh) for electricity they buy
• Pay only 2.5 to 3 cents per kWh of electricity the customer generates from solar panels and adds to the grid (visit this page for a better explanation of events).

This has left some El Paso Electric customers paying up to $100 per month, even where installed solar energy systems are delivering more energy to the grid than the home uses.

El Paso Electric defends itself by saying that the PUC ordered the rate (change). A PUC spokesman demurs, saying current law empowers utilities to lower their electricity buyback rates, but doesn’t demand that they do so.

The solution is, of course, net metering, which spins an electric meter backward for energy generated from solar, and forward for energy purchased. This measure, designed to improve the uptake of “green” energy systems like solar, compensates customers toward the cost of their solar energy systems, reducing the payback period and encouraging homeowners who might otherwise install a pool to think clean energy instead.

Some argue that net metering penalized those without solar energy systems; i.e., the poor, who can’t afford solar energy any more than they can afford larger utility bills. But in fact the burden of cost could (and should) fall on utilities, which like corporations nationwide reap huge profits for shareholders and executive salaries (El Paso’s profit was over $100 million in 2010), yet often pay no taxes.

Economics aside, it’s this kind of behavior that consistently puts our “green energy future” out of reach.