Sheehan vs. OUC: Orlando commissioner fights the city’s utility for solar power
Patty Sheehan’s rooftop solar panels typically make enough electricity for her modest home and often some extra to feed into the utility wires, cutting a $100 power bill to nearly nothing. Last week, Orlando’s utility announced a plan to upend that happy arrangement for Sheehan and thousands of other customers who have solar: It is proposing a steep reduction in the value of the extra ... Orlando's utility, Orlando Utility Commissioners (OUC), is proposing a reduction in the value of the electricity generated by rooftop solar panels. This proposal comes as part of a broader effort to incentivize customers who have solar to contribute more carbon-free electricity to the city's climate crisis. The dispute is seen as a central issue in Orlando, a city known for its commitment to climate change and embracing efficiency and sustainability. Sheehan, a member of the city council, has argued that the proposal is more punitive to solar generating customers. The city-owned OUC argues that net metering, a practice that buys customers’ surplus electricity at the same price they sell electricity to customers, is not equitable. Critics argue that customers with solar panels are canceling out their monthly power bills while contributing little to utility infrastructure maintenance.
Publicados : 3 semanas atrás por Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel no Environment
Patty Sheehan’s rooftop solar panels typically make enough electricity for her modest home and often some extra to feed into the utility wires, cutting a $100 power bill to nearly nothing.
Last week, Orlando’s utility announced a plan to upend that happy arrangement for Sheehan and thousands of other customers who have solar: It is proposing a steep reduction in the value of the extra electricity coming from their panels.
Sheehan is the longest serving member of Orlando’s city council, where she’s known for past firebrand moments. Those may stand in pale comparison to what’s coming.
“Every time I meet with them, the proposal gets worse, and is more punitive to solar generating customers,” Sheehan said in a letter she sent to Orlando Utility Commissioners, bypassing the unyielding OUC executives she met with several times. “I’m not backing down to a bully,” Sheehan added in an interview.
For those who give scant attention to their monthly bills and know little about solar, the rising conflict may sound trivial or obscure.
But it cuts to the core of Orlando’s municipal identity in a city that proudly showcases itself as a leader in the fight against climate change by embracing efficiency, sustainability and nearly total reliance in the not-so-distant future on solar energy. Should a city that has adopted that ethos make a move so deeply unfriendly to solar power users?
The dispute also taps into what feels like a right and responsibility to many residents including Sheehan – contributing as much carbon-free electricity as quickly as possible amid a growing climate crisis.
City hall and OUC have been closely aligned in eliminating climate-heating pollution from fossil fuels.
“We do understand that this proposal may cause concern for rooftop solar customers,” said Mindy Brenay, the utility’s chief financial officer. “That is why we are recommending a balanced approach that recognizes rooftop solar’s contributions while also making sure that everyone has access to affordable power.”
Traditionally, OUC and utilities nationwide have bought customers’ surplus solar electricity at the same price they sell electricity to customers.
That practice is called net metering. It has drawn the ire of many utilities who say customers with solar panels are canceling out their monthly power bills while contributing little to the upkeep of utility infrastructure – poles, wires, transformers, substations, plants and more.
Florida lawmakers tried in 2022 to do away with net metering for the big, stockholder-owned utilities, including Duke and Florida Power & Light.
Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed their legislation, explaining “the state of Florida should not contribute to the financial crunch that our citizens are experiencing.”
Now, in its quest to phase out net metering, the city-owned OUC is arguing that the practice shifts costs to customers without solar. That’s not equitable, the utility contends.
Covering Orlando, a part of Orange County and St. Cloud, OUC has about 248,000 residential electric customers. Of those, 9,800, or four percent, have rooftop solar. Nearly all use net metering.
By the end of this year, according to OUC, utility customers without solar will have paid $9 million total, or an average of $3 each, to cover infrastructure costs arising from but not paid by customers who have rooftop solar. OUC expects those figures to rise steadily.
Just as OUC has infrastructure costs, proponents say, so do residents with solar systems that come with purchase, financing and maintenance costs, and which OUC does not account for.
And apart from providing electricity, rooftop solar systems lessen OUC’s expensive burden of having to build power plants, proponents contend.
Sheehan is amenable to an OUC charge calibrated so that residents with rooftop solar panels pay a fair share for infrastructure costs. What’s proposed by OUC is exploitative, she said.
The city utility sells power to residents for 11 cents per 1,000 watts of electricity consumed for an hour.
That’s also how much OUC credits for surplus electricity coming from rooftop solar panels. OUC wants to cut that amount to four cents per 1,000 watts an hour.
“That’s legalized robbery,” Sheehan said, outraged that OUC will profit from reselling that power to her neighbors for 11 cents. Meanwhile, she said, her rooftop solar investment is gutted.
Because she is a city council member, Sheehan has had an advantage in getting early indications of OUC’s proposed changes. Others – from homeowners to environmental groups – are anxious to learn more.
The Sierra Club filed a formal request for OUC information about its proposed rates changes, which the utility has scheduled for review Thursday during a workshop of presentations and public comment.
Also to be considered Thursday are other proposed rate changes, including to make power more costly during times of peak demand.
Heaven Campbell, Florida program director for Solar United Neighbors, a national nonprofit that helps homeowners with rooftop solar, said OUC’s early talking points on net metering are telling. “They are weaponizing the word equity to justify changes,” she said.
Among city council members and OUC commissioners, Sheehan is an expert on rooftop solar panels and minutely educated in their dollars, watts and potential for helping to keep her eventual retirement financially doable.
She has owned her two-bedroom bungalow in Colonialtown for 30 years. About five years ago, she decided on a home improvement on the scale of a kitchen remake but with a social conscience.
Sheehan borrowed nearly $20,000 to cover her roof with solar panels, enrolling in a city program that encouraged and facilitated solar adoption. The arrangement was based on a clear calculation: Sheehan could use the money that would have gone to power bills instead to pay off the system on her roof[, a common arrangement for those who adopt solar.
“I am deeply offended that I am being told that I am wealthy and privileged because I have solar panels,” Sheehan said in her letter to OUC commissioners. “I am a public servant who wanted to set an example in responsible stewardship of our environment.”
And now, as OUC frets over what to do about residents with solar, the world is engulfed in a five-alarm climate blaze, Sheehan noted.
The National Weather Service punctuated that with its May climate report for the Orlando area: the month was the hottest May on record.
Orlando had 26 days reaching 90 degrees or higher, beating the previous record of 24 days in 1975 and 1933, according to the weather service.
For the planet overall, every month since June last year has been the warmest recorded.
Tópicos: Green Energy