By Patrick O’Grady | Phoenix Business Journal
Solar installers and Arizona Public Service Co. are engaging in an increasingly tough exchange on rooftop solar, and the heated debate that likely is to continue into summer.
The battle over how homeowners are paid for excess energy produced by solar systems has been the latest wedge between the two groups, and each is using ratepayers as the potential victim if it doesn’t go their way.
The reality is this is a fight among players that earn hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, in a year. Each is battling for a new, emerging market.
Ed Fenster, co-CEO of the California-based financier SunRun, was among several people on a panel at last week’s Greentech Media Solar Summit that took on APS over its stances on net metering, the technical name for the process by which homeowners are paid for that excess electricity.
“Arizona Public Service is probably the most hostile utility towards solar,” he said following the conference. “At least in the top three.”
Fenster’s company does big business in Arizona. It has a lot of partners that use its leasing model funded primarily through tens of millions in equity investment and millions in credit.
Its biggest competitor for solar isn’t necessarily a company like SolarCity. It’s APS, which wants to own solar facilities and sell power to people in its traditional utility model.
While APS has preached its love of solar — the company recently was named one of the top utilities by the utility group Solar Electric Power Association for its deployment of solar — Fenster calls those claims “disingenuous.”
If you’d like to discuss energy issues, contact Court Rich, Co-Chair of Rose Law Group’s Renewable Energy Department at crich@roselawgroup.com
