Investors urge Nev. PUC to recant solar order; pro-solar crowd clogs PUC hearing

Jan­u­ary 14, 2016 — A group of 18 ven­ture cap­i­tal investors have writ­ten Nevada’s pub­lic util­i­ty reg­u­la­tors, with copies to Neva­da Gov. Bri­an San­doval and state leg­is­la­tors, urg­ing the reg­u­la­tors reverse new fees on util­i­ty cus­tomers with solar that reg­u­la­tors imposed effec­tive on Jan. 1. The investors, Bloomberg News report­ed, includ­ed John Fish­er of Drap­er Fish­er Jurvet­son andNan­cy Pfund of DBL Part­ners. Their let­ter to Neva­da PUC Com­mis­sion­er David Noble, prin­ci­pal archi­tect of a PUC order adopt­ed Dec. 22 that changed the pri­or com­mis­sion rule applic­a­ble to solar customers.

As a result of the Dec. 22 order, the two lead­ing solar installers in the state, SolarCi­ty and Sun­run, imme­di­ate­ly stopped mak­ing solar sales and instal­la­tions, effec­tive­ly end­ing their busi­ness in the state and the loss of hun­dreds of jobs that went with it. The order raised fixed month­ly fees, that util­i­ty cus­tomers with solar must pay, by 40% while cut­ting and phas­ing out pay­ments that util­i­ties make for solar gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty that solar cus­tomers pro­vide to the util­i­ties. Adding insult to injury, the com­mis­sion applied the new rule retroac­tive­ly to exist­ing cus­tomers who had pre­vi­ous­ly installed solar, which no state had ever done.

To read more, vis­it Elec­tric­i­ty Pol­i­cy.