Rooftop Solar Energy Tug of War, Part 3, Proposed Resolution?

Even as I was writing parts 1 and 2 of this series, and thus reviewing the original ruling (issued about a year ago, ditto parts 1 & 2), there was no doubt in my mind that the chances of this ruling standing intact were slim to none. This perception was mainly because the solar industry felt that this ruling was highly unfair to them and was likely to seriously hurt future rooftop solar energy deployments. Also, the solar industry is strongly viewed as a positive environmental influence in our state, is financially very powerful, and thus strongly influences many political leaders. Thus, this decision was set aside last summer, and the CPUC (on Nov 10) issued a new proposed decision.

I don’t intend to revisit the new decision in detail, because it builds on and modifies the original decision. What I will do with this post is to outline significant differences between the prior decision, the current draft decision, and reference my papers describing the original decision to expedite this process.