Net metering is the best thing to happen to solar power
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EVER noticed how high-school daughters want to be as skinny as a rake, tote the latest iPhone and iPad, send a million text messages a month, wear moms high-heel shoes, and marry Justin Bieber? And, ah yes, along the way they want to rescue stray animals, feed the homeless and, above all, save the planet. Your correspondents teenage daughter has been nagging him to install solar panels on the roof ever since she was in fifth grade (see Sunny side down, February 15th 2008).Since then, interest rates have fallen, while the price of solar panels has tumbled even more sothanks to Chinese overcapacity. Meanwhile, electricity rates (at least those in southern California) have risen noticeably. Your correspondent reckons photovoltaic solar systems now cost half as much as they did four years ago.Two things could make or break America's affair with solar power.
One concerns the clean-energy incentives ushered in by the economic stimulus bill of 2009. Many of those temporary tax credits are now coming to an end. If nothing is done to extend them, the incentives will fall from a peak of over $44 billion in 2009 to $16 billion this year and $11 billion by 2014. That could bring the solar-installation business to a screeching halt and wipe out tens of thousands of green jobs. The industrys future depends largely on the outcome of the November election.The other factor that has been hanging in the balance concerns an arcane energy-accounting procedure known as net metering. This is a way of ensuring that people who have renewable-energy sources of their own (eg, solar panels, wind turbines, fuel cells or even hybrid cars) can export any excess electricity they do not need to the grid.
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