A controversial new study on the costs and benefits of net metering requested by California regulators appears to be obsolete on delivery and may be objectionable to both the solar and the utility industries.
“In 2020, with a complete build-out of systems to the existing net energy metering (NEM) cap, the costs associated with NEM electricity exported to the grid under the current NEM tariffs are approximately $359 million per year, or 1 percent of the utility revenue requirement,” reports the draft version of the California Net Energy Metering Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation prepared by the California Public Utilities Commission for the California legislature from a technical report by Energy and Environment Economics (E3).
“The costs associated with all NEM generation are forecast to be approximately $1.1 billion per year in 2020 (in $2012),” the report adds. “This is approximately 3.2 percent of the forecasted utility revenue requirement.”
