Dear Editor:
The sudden SDCEA rate changes are troubling.
They were done without warning and without public input. They were supposedly the result of a study which has not been made public. And they appear to be the result of “single philosophy” thinking.
Yes, I agree that giving the retail rate for solar generation is not sustainable for the long term. The idea for giving the retail rate is to help develop the solar industry–which has worked wonderfully with solar prices dropping by 80 percent over 10 years. Perhaps it is time to scale the generous rate down, but doing it suddenly penalizes the people who helped develop the industry.
The economy works best with gradual changes–we want to smooth out likely shocks to the system. It is clear that we need to move off coal and we need solar in the near future. We don’t want to shock the system by suddenly moving everything to solar in 5-15 years. And we don’t want to shock the people who recently bought solar.
If SDCEA are trying to fix all wrongs, why don’t people in remote areas pay more for the grid, including wildfire mitigation? (I don’t agree with this.) These are complex things and single philosophy approaches are always limiting.
Submitted,
Christof Stork
Buena Vista
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