And the state of California screws you over. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Customers of clean energy programs hit with fee increase
The California Public Utilities Commission voted Thursday to allow a nearly 100 percent price increase on exit fees for customers leaving Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for green energy programs like CleanPowerSF and Marin Clean Energy, which will make those and similar programs more expensive.
Many of the programs — where local governments buy green electricity for their residents, while private utilities own and operate the electrical grid — will be undermined financially by the uptick in the charge, called the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment, their officials say.
“We are not surprised that the increase was approved,” said Marin Clean Energy spokeswoman Alexandra McCroskey. “We are disappointed. Our primary frustrations come from the fact that we are becoming almost liable for the market fluctuations for both ourselves and PG&E. If PG&E isn’t planning appropriately for people leaving for community choice aggregation programs, the PCIA will continue to increase. It’s poor planning.”
So the poor customer deiced to go all-in and spend $45K on a full-house solar system with the intent of selling excess energy back to the utility and they get their rates jacked up.
And, of course, PG&E is a public utility - a state regulated monopoly - so no accountability there.
A bit more:
In San Francisco, the proposed exit fee for residents moving to CleanPowerSF would jump by 100.26 percent. Because the city energy program is designed to absorb costs for its customers, it would decrease the program’s revenue by $8.4 million.
CleanPowerSF (which is not scheduled to become an entity until this coming Spring - they could shut it down right now without having to build any bureaucracy) is another utopian fever-dream so no accountability there either.
People need to learn that the alt.energy chimera is very elusive. There are cases (rural homes, emergency backup power, etc...) where it is a great alternative but for baseload generation, forget it. The only way that it will ever work is for it to enjoy massive government subsidies (ie: taxpayer revenue redistribution) and those are starting to go away now.
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