2022-12-12What to expect from California’s new rooftop-solar plan? More batteries Attribution: Art Hunter To understand why batteries will be so important as the rooftop-solar market changes under the CPUC’s expected decision, it’s important to know how rooftop solar makes money for homeowners. In simple terms, that happens in two ways: by reducing how much electricity customers buy from utilities and by allowing customers to sell excess solar power back to utilities. Retail electricity rates are much higher in California than in other parts of the country, due to a number of factors. And, like everywhere in the country, they’re also much higher than the prices for power on wholesale power markets. That’s because retail rates encompass costs for lots of things beyond electricity, like the expenses of building transmission lines and other grid assets, hardening the grid against the threat of sparking wildfires, investing in energy-efficiency programs and offering subsidies to low-income customers. It’s that gap between the portion of rates that pays for the cost of generating electricity and the portion that pays for all those other things that causes so much strife and confusion over net metering.