Solar Alliance

Act Now

With more wildfires and blackouts on the way, making and storing energy from the sun is the best way Californians can protect themselves from outages and rising electricity rates.

Solar and storage also lets people voluntarily reduce their burden on the grid, which reduces wildfire risks and helps the environment.

But even as the utilities struggle to keep the lights on, they make it harder and more expensive to choose solar.

  • Surprise fees that punish you for having solar. One utility recently tried to hit all of its solar customers with a $40-$60 per month fee that would have devastated consumers and killed off the local solar market.

  • Red tape. It should be easy for you to add battery storage in your home or business, so you can keep your extra energy rather than giving it away to the utility. But the utilities often force customers to wait months or longer before they can use their batteries.

  • Attacks on net metering. You should get a fair credit for your extra solar energy. It’s local, clean and cheaper than energy piped in from far away. But the utilities tried to kill the net metering credit in 2016, and we expect them to try again this year.

  • Taking control of your solar energy. They recently proposed forcing you to surrender your solar energy to the utility, and then buy it back from them.

The utility attack on solar is an attack on freedom, and increases the risk of wildfires.

State lawmakers continue to look the other way, even as they are about to spend billions of tax dollars on wildfire prevention.

This makes no sense. It’s time for a Solar Bill of Rights. Tell your state lawmakers: 

“Any wildfire prevention plan is incomplete unless you also stop the utility attack on solar, defend our freedom to protect ourselves from blackouts and skyrocketing rates without unfair fees and red tape, and let us all do our part to reduce the risk of wildfires.”