California is about to side with PG&E – again – to kill community solar projects

Overall context

• Commenters see California’s electricity system as highly complex and distorted by decades of overlapping regulations, utility incentives, and political compromises.
• Many think the editorial overstates the “villainy” of PG&E and underexplains concrete policy details, though most agree PG&E and regulators have done a poor job for ratepayers.

Net metering, fairness, and rate design

• Strong theme: retail-rate net metering is viewed as financially unsustainable for utilities and unfair to non-solar customers, especially low-income households who can’t afford panels.
• Argument: customers who net out at zero kWh still depend on the grid’s fixed infrastructure but don’t pay proportionally for it.
• Proposed fixes: explicit fixed “grid connection” fees plus per‑kWh energy charges; California is already moving toward higher fixed, even income-based, charges.
• Counterview: in the absence of a carbon tax, generous net metering is a justified subsidy for clean energy and a way to internalize environmental externalities.

Solar saturation, batteries, and community solar

• Several note California already has abundant daytime solar; wholesale prices can go very low or negative, and utility-scale solar must be curtailed.
• This is cited as a core reason for cutting rooftop net metering and limiting new feed-in schemes like community solar unless paired with storage.
• Others argue the grid could absorb more rooftop solar if utilities invested more aggressively in large-scale batteries and transmission.

High prices, profits, and regulation

• Widespread frustration that Californians pay among the highest retail rates yet don’t enjoy superior reliability.
• Explanations offered: PG&E’s guaranteed return on capital encourages high spending rather than cost control; wildfire liabilities and deferred maintenance; complex regulatory mandates.
• Debate over whether “letting the market work” makes sense given monopolies and environmental externalities.

Reliability, outages, and grid structure

• Disagreement over why California avoids large capacity shortfalls: some credit mild climate and imports via the Western Interconnection; others emphasize big deployments of battery storage and rooftop solar.
• At the same time, commenters note frequent local outages and wildfire-related shutoffs.

Future directions

• Ideas include: microgrids and municipal utilities, more local ownership, explicit carbon pricing, stronger push for storage and demand-shifting (EV daytime charging, better insulation), and possibly public takeover of grid assets—though feasibility and desirability of state ownership are hotly debated.