I’m a long-term California solar owner. Monopolies have turned me into a scapegoat | Opinion

I have become a solar scapegoat — an object of blame for California’s ever-rising electricity rates.

What happened? Once upon a time, California warmly welcomed rooftop solar. In 2006, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed for a million solar roofs. Back then, I took a bold leap, going to great expense to install rooftop solar at my home. Once switched on, my system not only generated power for my family, it also put surplus power into the grid for my utility to sell to the neighbors. As a science teacher and sustainability advocate, I felt great about this: My system was generating clean power from the sun, and my family was saving about 80% each month on our electric bills.

I beamed as homemade solar power charged up my early model electric vehicle. I shared my story with family and friends, feeling a bit like a hero. Other solar homeowners began to multiply around me. A good thing getting better — or so you would think.

In the beginning, my San Diego utility shared in the excitement of growing rooftop solar. Before long, however, it began to worry. While benefiting from re-selling cheap surplus energy from rooftops, utilities began to sense a threat. People making their own electricity might be better for pocketbooks and the planet, but such a thing would be bad for business. If you’re a monopoly, one thing you don’t want is competition. What you want above all else is ownership and control over a product everyone needs.

And so, the utilities hatched a plan to undermine rooftop solar. They started saying untrue things about us, suggesting we were greedy grid freeloaders, not paying our fair share. They funded dubious “scientific studies” designed to link soaring energy rates with rooftop solar. While making huge donations to key politicians, they launched clever campaigns to promote their own virtue, recasting solar homeowners as scapegoats.

One of the features of scapegoating is deflecting attention away from your own misdeeds. A closer look reveals abundant evidence that the real reason for rising energy prices is not rooftop solar, but an unprecedented utility spending spree. In the weird, inverted world of California utilities, the more infrastructure they build, the more money they make. If asked, they’ll say they support solar, just not the kind that people put on their roofs. They support the kind that they themselves build, own and control.

Remote solar farms? They are all for them. Of course, getting that power from way out there to where it is needed means building endless rows of towers and miles of long-distance transmission lines. All of this self-serving spending means utilities have a readymade reason to ask the subservient California Public Utilities Commission to keep rates rising ever upward.

Currently, my utility is pouring money into an upbeat ad campaign, in both English and Spanish, designed to show the public how wonderful they are. At the same time, they are quick to vilify anyone arguing that it would be smarter and cheaper to use our community’s abundant rooftops for clean energy.

California utilities, despite strong public opposition, recently succeeded in getting the rules changed to make rooftop solar a far worse investment than it was just a few short years ago. On top of that, they have managed to push through the legislature a fixed monthly utility charge, affecting all ratepayers — solar or not. That’s hardly an incentive for anyone to conserve energy. Now, there is even a proposal to break years-long solar contracts in order to further erase the former benefits of putting panels on your roof.

In the meantime, new solar installations have plummeted, and thousands of solar industry jobs have vanished. As this story keeps unfolding and the utilities keep maneuvering to push aside rooftop solar, we need to stand up and protest, remembering who the real solar heroes are, and how every desperate monopolist loves a good scapegoat.

This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "I’m a long-term California solar owner. Monopolies have turned me into a scapegoat | Opinion."