Solar Tax

Slap the Beatles’ songs “Here Comes the Sun” and the “Taxman” together and you’ll have pretty good idea of what’s going on in Arizona this summer. Last month Arizona’s largest electric utility, Arizona Public Service, announced a new proposal to start charging solar paneled homeowners a “fee” of up to $100 a month to sell clean power back to the grid. APS refers to it as a “convenience charge”. This plan to drastically change net-metering, which is the way homeowners with solar paneled rooftops sell their excess power back to the grid, would in essence negate the economic attractiveness of having rooftop solar panels. So why does a state that certainly isn’t lacking in sunshine suddenly decide to “tax” solar power? Well, perhaps APS has read the “writing on the wall” and is trying a desperate attempt to ward off the eventuality of their own slow demise. The more popular and affordable and widespread the use of solar power becomes for the average consumer, the more it equates to lost sales for the electric utilities. For now, instead of taxing net-metering, perhaps electric utilities should focus on providing electricity at a rate that’s competitive and affordable.