This is a disturbing trend and one that I hope Missouri and Kansas City Power and Light don't get wind of. I think I'll pull out my contract and see what it says about changing terms of the agreement. I Missouri, we are locked into the agreement for 10 years and we're just over 2 years in at this point. The idea that they could retroactively impose this tax in order to add to the profits of a private company is beyond offensive, in my opinion.
What do you think?
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[The following article was reproduced under the Creative Commons license from TrueActivist.com]
Nevada Penalizes Solar Energy Users with Hefty 40% Tax Increase
An absurd monthly fee imposed on solar customers was just voted in by the Nevada Public Utility Commission (PUC), virtually penalizing net metering (NEM) users of the renewable energy and in a sense, screwing these guys over after making the investment to go solar. Yip-dee-doo!
Such is the current state that Nevada is in right now after it turns out that consumers opting with solar energy in the state are eating up on the potential profit that NV Energy should have. And in order for the company to combat this, they were able to coerce lawmakers to make solar energy insanely expensive – in hopes of convincing people to just stay blindly on the grid and stop being so ‘hippy’.
Of course, existing users of the renewable energy source feel cheated, with one Nevada resident writing to the Las Vegas Sun to pinpoint how she feels ”financially ambushed.” You see, getting your home to be solar-powered isn’t cheap and a huge investment has to be made at first buying all those solar panels and whatnot to get your home solar-ready.
The way it works is that with the amount of money one can save from renewable energy, the system will pay for itself and users will get their investments back in no time. Thanks to this new development, though, that will not happen now and understandably, solar energy users feel screwed.
”With the new pricing for [net metering] customers, the value or price of the energy they produce will be vastly reduced,” the woman writes. ”In addition, the flat service charge for NEM customers will rise to three times that charged to non-solar residential customers, a kind of penalty for producing much of our own electricity. The people with solar on their homes feel cheated; solar businesses are closing or leaving.”
Indeed, solar energy providers have already left the state with SolarCity and Sunrun Inc. packing their bags – causing a minimum of a thousand job cuts.
”Big rooftop solar companies say they just want energy choice for Nevadans. The truth is their plan gives you no choice,” -says a commercial now airing in Nevada, paid for by a Political Action Committee called Solar Energy Fairness.
Stuff like this really makes me mad, but I suppose it isn't surprising. The problem is that companies like Nevada utilities thinks it has a right to certain profits. I'll bet dollars to donuts these folks also have some sort of ad campaign about how much they care about the environment. Sickening.
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