In one of the most blatant examples of the potential challenges that California utilities are facing, SolarCity has publicly announced that it is seeking to take over some of PG&E’s energy distribution functions.
SolarCity is widely known as the largest provider of residential solar in the state of California. But over the past few years, the company has begun to expand their purview to include other energy-related products and services. Now, it seems that the company is looking to add utility-scale distributed energy resources and third-party distribution level solutions, shifting these functions away from the utilities where they have traditionally resided.
As part of IBEW 1245’s ongoing effort to track and combat competitive threats to the energy industry, the union is speaking out against SolarCity’s efforts to cut into utility operations and Local 1245 jobs.
“SolarCity’s overt desire to take over utility functions presents a major threat, not only to our members who work for utilities, but also to the millions of people and businesses that count on reliable power and the experienced workers who provide it,” said IBEW 1245 Business Manager Tom Dalzell. “By endeavoring to convince the CPUC to farm out utility functions, the solar company is attempting to set a dangerous precedent that could lead to devastating consequences for our entire grid.”
In comments submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission on August 26, 2016, SolarCity wrote:
“SolarCity believes extensive reliance on utility-owned assets is inconsistent with the goals of the Distribution Resources Plans (DRP) and Integrated Distributed Energy Resources (IDER) proceedings which are focused on reforming the utility planning process to ensure that: the utilities’ distribution systems can accommodate increased deployment of DERs; that the utilities are fully leveraging DERs to provide utility-facing services; and … the utilities pursue sourcing mechanisms to animate the market for the actual provision of those services.”
SolarCity’s comments revealed that the company sees itself as well-suited to take over some aspects of grid services as well, and thinks the CPUC should favor non-utility companies over the existing utilities when determining where to allocate resources and responsibilities.
“Allowing utility ownership to play a central role in this effort represents a missed learning opportunity as it sacrifices or limits the opportunity to test the ability of the utilities and developers to come to acceptable contractual terms to provide grid services, as well as the ability of the utilities to integrate customer and/or third party owned systems into their operations. Although SolarCity is not opposed to utility ownership per se, we believe there should be a rebuttable presumption in favor of non-utility owned solutions and that absent a compelling and evidence-based rationale for pursuing a utility-owned approach, third party solutions should prevail.”
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