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CA Considers Taxing Solar Power Generation
California is considering a proposal by the state Public Utilities Commission to charge an 'exit tax,' proportional to the amount of power you generate, on electricity generated by means such as solar panels for your own use. I would expect a state like California to try and encourage the adoption of alternative power sources, but this seems a really odd way of doing it. Two groups have started lobbying against this tax. If passed, it sets a precedent that many fear will lead to similar taxes outside CA.
This is the same state that thought it would be a good idea to
give illegal aliens drivers licenses.
Since when does any government have the right to place taxes on unrefined, natural resources like the sun? Pretty soon, they'll be trying to charge for the spinning of a pinwheel or the clanging of wind chimes in a front lawn. If an individual were to sell unused power to other people, I could see how a tax might be warranted.
CA = Canada
its our top level domain. damit
I don't care if California has a bigger economy or not.
we are not giving it up
--meh--
I guess that slogan actually means that California owns the fawking SUN!!!!
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
"increase the cost of using solar energy in California....by up to 40 percent..."
This makes no sense? Why offer incentives if they are going to turn around and tax? California offers something on the order of a 50% rebate+tax credit on solar, why turn around and tax the system? If they are really having problems just lower the incentive to 10% rather then give the person 50% then take back 40%? What are they trying Enron accounting here?
Amazing! Just when you think the most ludicrious proposal comes along, they top it with ease...
While they're at it, they should count the number of compact florescents I installed and tax me on the amount of electricity I'm not using...
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Taxing solar power is as ridiculous as taxing job hunting. It's bad enough that you tax the purchase of the hardware, but why should someone pay the government to use solar energy? It makes no sense.
"You applied for 100 jobs? Okay, that'll be $10 please."
In other news, children are now required to pay to ride their bikes. They will be charged per Newton & per kilometre. Stationary bikes are included too.
testing out my trending skills
Might as well have a Composting Tax and Gardening Tax for producing your own fertilizer and food. I bet it's a bluff, a feint. The commission really wants something slightly less atrocious, and after this they'll get it.
Old trick. Always works too.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
at least Washington State has Seattle to live in and The 'Beast of Redmond' to keep the taxes in line. I guess they are good for something.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I don't understand then. If they tax people for not using the electricity from the grid, that must mean there isn't enough demand for what they have (otherwise they would have no basis). How does that work with the "Real Californians don't do their laundry... except after 7" ads ?
Air.
Someone hates these cans.
Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet
Taxman!
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
Don't ask me what I want it for (Aahh Mr. Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more (Aahh Mr. Heath)
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman
And you're working for no one but me
Taxman!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
are not very efficient, and I'm told it takes more energy to manufacture one than they ever generate in their useful life.
This means solar panel factories are not solar powered, so they must be using something.
Taxing SOLAR PANELS is not so daft as they are not energy efficient (yet).
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Proposed by the "Utilities": the power people. "Considering" could just mean they are deciding whether to laugh milk or coke out their nose. Then again, it might not...
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The article has been /.'ed. Does this relate to solar-powered hot water systems? Would that then mean the government will keep track of who owns such a system, or you would need to be declare them on a tax form? What about if there were proportionally less sunny days in a particular year - could you seek a lower tax levy to that of previous years? Wouldn't the manufacturers of these solar-powered systems also be up in arms as such a tax would disincentivize customers to buy their products?
lessee if I unnerstan' ....
... (at least for the prepetrators of (1) and (2) and their "pets"....)
(1) White-collar criminals conspire to artificially inflate power rates....
(2) Incompetent pols lock-in overpriced longterm energy contracts based on 'classic' non-renewable fuel sources.
(3) Certain individuals/companies go "off-grid",lessening demand on the infrastructure and for non renewable fuels
(4) Those individuals are charged for the power that they DO NOT buy in order to deal with the longterm effects of (1) and (2)
(5) PROFIT
Duhh.... sounds fair to ??whom??
a whole bunch of you idiots are going to blame the government. however, the government is just doing what its constituents want. since most of you are too lazy to vote, never mind really get involved in politics, the real constituents are the ***PRIVATE*** power companies that essentially wrote this proposal.
just like they wrote the energy privatisation bills in california and tons of other states. so all you moronic, short-sighted, ignorant libertarian "privatisation-at-any-cost!" now have *EXACTLY* what you want.
congratulations. go team. ra-ra.
so i really only have one question - why in the hell are you complaining?
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Those of us in Washington state already know that California likes to screw up the electrical industry for the rest of us. They already messed it up a few years ago when the government stopped putting any control on their power stations. Now they have to drain a lot of their energy from stations still under government mandate in Washington which makes our rates go up.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
Speaking of taxes that fly in the face of logic, Massachusetts has instituted a tax on perscriptions. Each perscription costs you an extra $1.30 or so on top of your insurance co-pay.
They call taxes on things that government wants to discourage (like tobacco and alcohol) sin taxes. I guess that makes these virtue taxes.
"just like they wrote the energy privatisation bills in california and tons of other states."
Ah... where did you get that idea??? Liberals wrote the law not the power companies. The supposed deregulation set up a fix rate for the consumer but the distributers still had to pay the whatever the wholesaler wanted. Which is to say that it wasn't deregulated it was infact regulated. As demand rose the wholesalers started to charge more so that they could afford to build new cabling to supple the demand. Only problem was that the distributer was not allowed to raise the rates to cover his increased cost because his fess where, say it with me, REGULATED!
"so all you moronic, short-sighted, ignorant libertarian "privatisation-at-any-cost!" now have *EXACTLY* what you want."
If it was truely private the government wouldn't be making all these laws to, say it with me again, REGULATE the market.
What this is, is an example of QUINN'S FIRST LAW - "Liberalism generates the exact opposite of its stated intent."
What they want to do is tax CA citizens for the amount of power they use. Regardless of where it comes from. Regardless of if you bought it from one of the big 3, or if you generated it yourself.
What is the incentive for spending thousands of dollars to put solar panels on your roof, to try to help out the state, and then get TAXED for the amount of power you produce for yourself?
I thought CA was interested in reducing their load. I guess the rolling blackouts were for other reasons.
Politics as usual.
This would be the Enron version of events.
Another version would go like this; because of high electricty prices, California decided to privatise it's power generation system, but thanks to only partial deregulation, and market manipulation it ended up with large increases in the cost of power, and blackouts to go with it.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
If you think they are actually interrested in solar power or any other environmentally sensitive issues, take a look at any other socialist nation where the people DON'T have the option of complaining (or of joining the opposition) and you will find rampant pollution, and criminal administration.
This is why they tax whatever moves, without regard for common sense, or empirical logic. When they take away your ability to spend they also take away your right to move freely, to vote with your feet, or your pocketbook.
I recall when Grey Davis was merely a superintendant of a school system, he was ambitious then, instituting many of the policies which have served to destroy one of the best school systems in the country. Unless you move to Cupertino, your chance of getting a decent school is pretty much nil.
If you built a solar power system in hopes of avoiding the cost of utilites and the hidden taxes attached to it, think again. Citizen Davis has calculated the exact amount of pain to inflict upon California to push Joe sixpack into the party of the miserable. Using two-faced promises to the power industry, he used them to orchestrate the largest finantial meltdown in American history, as many with mortgages in the silicon valley may already know.
Citizen Davis does not have the welfare of California or America in mind, but rather is using a cynical minimax scheme to enact as much destructive legislation as possible before his party looses power, knowing that the opposition will not be able to undo the mess without getting their blame as a result.
I remember when this scoundrel was merely a petty low level opperatchik, but does anyone remember when he was a member of the American Socialist Party?
These guys know that as long as the opposition plays by the rules, they will always win, since they fully intend to cheat. When they levy a tax on solar panels, they are doing it because they cannot believe you actually trusted them when it came to what you thought to be a sacred cow. Thus internet taxes, solar power taxes, next taxes on clean air.
If you are kept a margin of misery, you are exactly where they want you, in a position to vote for the guys who "Feel your pain". Hmmm. aren't these the same guys who faught against freeing the slaves, who fought for segregation, and who insist on "no eye contact" when they enter the room? (One of the more persistent traits of the American Democratic "Peoples" Party.
The California government has become, for all intensive purposes, a socialist one. Socialism at its heart is based opon the principles of active appropriation. Where appropriation is a polite word for legalized theft. Leave it up to the Democratic party hacks in California who have control of the entire state government to create as many taxes as possible before being swept away in the next elections.
By the time people figure it out, it will be too late, since the strategy they are using engages ignorance and the law of averages to control the population.
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!
This is all about trying to fill in the billions is dollars in debt that Davis managed to hide until after he was re-elected. Combined with the energy boondogles of the last few years, and that there are no new plans for power plants to be built in CA, state residents should be pissed.
recallgraydavis
I'm confused on what your point is or if its any different than what I said:
because of high electricty prices which were caused by an increase in demand.
California decided to privatise it's power generation system, but thanks to only partial deregulation which was written into the laws by the liberal government that could not let go, because we all need managed, left to our own we would all perish. (that last part was sarcastic!)
and market manipulation I assume you mean the fact that the wholesalers didn't lower their prices and the distributers had to layoff their workers that maintain their systems.
it ended up with large increases in the cost of power caused by the fact that the wholesalers still needed to build new infastructure to supply demand. And the distriubuters now had to replace infastructure that had not been maintained due to lack of a paid work force.
and blackouts to go with it. caused by the fact that the orginal law did nothing to solve the problem of demand outstepping supply. It just swept it under the carpet for a few years. When the lights started to go out it suddenly became a huge issue.
The weather. I live in Canada. For 6 months of the year, our weather is comparable to what you would have in California - in the winter. The rest of the time, it's just cold.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Every time the word taxes appears in the story, everyone goes crazy flaming the government.
First of all, whoever told you that "it takes more energy to manufacture one than they ever generate in their useful life" was incorrect.
Perhaps you should try to figure out if it is because that person needs education, or because (s)he has a vested interest in deceiving you.
Second, the point of solar panels is not always lifetime efficiency anyway, it is often control of power generation by the person(s) needing the power - intelligent people act to secure the resources they need to survive, and the power grid (in California, at least) is not reliable and cannot be secured by consumers.
There is a wealth of data available online from the IPP and Sandia that will refute your claim. Or you could directly contact a vendor such as Siemens (German) or AstroPower (Delaware, USA).
The proposed tax is simply the latest move in the long-running war between the centralised dirty energy producers (championed by GWB and Cheney, among others) and the promoters of distributed clean renewable energy production (a grassroots movement championed principally by the Home Power crew).
This war is primarily being fought in and around California; mostly because of the high availability of sunshine and engineering talent in that area. The recent fake energy crisis that the Enron crowd purposely created was the most effective offensive in the same war so far.
Hopefully, the decentralized nature of grassroots opposition will prevent the current administration's attempt to crush distributed renewable energy producers. The "Solar Guerilla" movement was started for just this reason.
In fact, since 2000, California has:
If you put solar panels on your roof, Fairfax Virginia county will allow you to deduct the value of the panels from the cost of your roof, for tax purposes. HOAs sometimes prevent this when they're obtrusive, but they don't have to be.
In short, way to backpedal California! I have an idea. Why don't you also give tax breaks for the rich, and support failing business models based on absolute control of copyright? Same mentality involved there, also. Kill your own economy early off for a few extra bucks before your die.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Reading through the document it looks like this is designed to only add a tax/surcharge to customers generating their own power that actually feed their excess back into the power grid (known as banking).
So no, a geo-thermal heating/cooling system or turning off your air conditioner on a hot day could not be taxed.
This proposal appears to hide behind an attempt to say "running+managing the grid costs money, even power producers should pay if they are hooked up." That is only true to a point. Until a significant number of customers start doing consumer power generation (10%, etc) this makes no sense whatsoever except when you realize that the PUC would rather consumers live in completely cold black boxes that need tons of light and heat with no way to generate their own power and efficiently use it.
The PUC companies would be better served by scrapping this law and adjusting their variable rate schedule power prices at different times of day to recoup their grid operation and management enrichmet costs from consumer generation.
But LIBERAL means open-minded or free-thinking. And CONSERVATIVE is related to CONSERVATION; it means one is unwilling to change things that already work. But that's only the dictionary definition, by those definitions one could easily be strongly in favor of both!
It seems that for most Americans CONSERVATIVE means "willing to go along with whatever radical agenda the wealthy plutocrats are currently backing" and LIBERAL means "willing to go along with whatever impractical scheme the bleeding heart do-gooders are currently preaching".
Both sides put up straw-men for you to fear and hate. Fearful, hateful people are easily manipulated.
Free your mind.
Maybe more sun but not more energy...Think about it, if you got more energy from the sun than California YOU'D be growing citrus, tomatoes, and grapes instead of carribou and glaciers.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
We may not do so, but I think it's a safe bet that the idea has passed or will pass through the mind of more than one idle bureaucrat. Consider the following scenario - which is easy to envision in California:
Due to the continued degradation of air quality, the state is going to mandate a pollution control tax which will be used as a subsidy to assist polluting industries in fulfilling the cleanup laws passed by the state. This tax can be considered a use tax; the more you use, the more you pay.
Never overestimate the depths to which a lazy, no account bureaucrat will stoop when searching for ways a) to spend your money, and b) to justify his own salary.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
And I do live in CA, by the way.
And if they try, I think this would be a great court case. Of course, it would probably only apply to those people who get entirely off-grid, which won't be much. But maybe not - does an existing business relationship make spyware from a private organization legal? Can such an exclusivity agreement be made part of a contract - particularly with a monopoly, and a utility (both of which are usually held to higher standards than typical companies)?
From a pragmatic point of view, Davis needs to crush this. If he still has ANY hopes of running for Pres in 2004, he better not let it go through - pissing off the Sierra Club crowd would be political suicide.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Disgruntled Californians, dressed as Native Americans, boarded a solar panel-carrying cargo ship in San Francisco Bay last night and dumped all the contents overboard. Shouts of "No taxation without representation!" were heard all across the bay.
No I'm not trolling.
With governments losing all sorts of tax revenue due to basic economic factors, they are looking all types of problems. This one is not unusual:
* Governments tax electricity, if you generate your own or conserve they loose tax money.
* Governments tax gasoline. If you use fuel cell cars or more energy efficient cars they loose tax money.
* Governments tax cigarettes. If you smoke less of them they loose tax money.
Use taxes and sin taxes often seem like a good idea, but the government quickly get used to the income, and when one activity falls out of favor they must hit up some other activity with a new use or sin tax to pay for it.
"We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter."
...since in all likelihood it will put him in the poorhouse?
In other news, California Public Utilities Commission Chairman C. Montgomery Burns was quoted as saying, "Since the dawn of time man has longed to destroy the sun. We shall do the next best thing, tax the energy it provides."
Seriously, this is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever heard. On the other hand, it makes me feel better about living in Philadelphia, PA, where we pay a 4% tax on our income for the apparent "privilege" of having a job.
This country gets more ass-backwards every day. We're supposed to conserve fossil fuels, but people get a tremendous tax break when they buy gas-guzzling, killing-machine SUVs. And now some shithole state wants to tax the energy people collect from THE SUN??? If you're going to start taxing the use of solar energy, will Californians have to pay tax based on how tan they are? Where will the madness end?
~Philly
Reminds me of when I had just moved to the Chicagoland area.. starting 7th grade and got a police ticket for not having a licensed bike.
As the other poster stated, it's a difference of emphasis.
This piece by Paul Krugman, presents another view of the power crisis.
As I understood it, the deregulation bill was passed under the earlier Republican government, if this is true, then your comment about the liberal government not being able to let go, should apply to the conservatives as well.
Interestingly one can test these two competing views. One observation is that the highest prices hit not during summer when power usage is highest, but during a cooler period. The market manipulation theory is fine with this observation, as it predicts that the crisis was caused by power companies cutting supply rather than trying to meet demand. How would you explain this observation?
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
I suppose everything bad that happens is the fault of these awful liberal conspiracies.
Never said it was a conspiracy! It's more of a socialist agenda, or the belief that people need managed and can not think for themselves.
For you, I suspect phrases like "reverse discrimination" and "giving in to multiculturalism" and "liberal media" have some meaning.
Not really the only one that I have ever used is "liberal media". Feel free to disagree but most of the major media outlet's top journalist admit that they are leftist and call themselves liberal.
But LIBERAL means open-minded or free-thinking.
So how come only the judges that think like they do get approved? While those that think different are not allowed to proceed? Why are they not open-minded to them? Why is their freedom of thought not allowed?
And CONSERVATIVE is related to CONSERVATION.
Yes, conservation of the ideals and values that this country was founded on. Things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I missed where in the constitution or the declaration of independence it stated that everyone was entitled to be rich and not have to work.
"willing to go along with whatever radical agenda the wealthy plutocrats are currently backing"
Did you know that the average Democrat in congress has more wealth that the average Republican? But believe me I don't agree with every repub on face value... They can and do support and vote for bad laws. It just seems to me that they don't do it as often.
As I understood it, the deregulation bill was passed under the earlier Republican government, if this is true, then your comment about the liberal government not being able to let go, should apply to the conservatives as well.
The legislature was democrat dominated, but that is beside the point, since I think the vote was unanimous (maybe 1 dissenter).
Interestingly one can test these two competing views. One observation is that the highest prices hit not during summer when power usage is highest, but during a cooler period. The market manipulation theory is fine with this observation, as it predicts that the crisis was caused by power companies cutting supply rather than trying to meet demand. How would you explain this observation?
As for what caused the crisis, it is simple. One of the reactors at San Onofre Nuclear plant was down during the entire so called crisis. From memory I think it was a 1200 Megawatt reactor. Which is something like 5% of all the power used in the state. Initially it was down for refueling, I don't remember the exact timeline, but it was early in the crisis, and I don't think there were any rolling blackouts at the time. It came back online for about two weeks, before a turbine blade was destroyed. This downed the reactor and took about 60 (give or take) days to replace (could have been a lot longer, but the vendor really pulled through on this one.) As I recall all of the blackouts and stage 3 alerts, etc. All occurred after the turbine blade broke.
What does this suggest... Simple, there was just barely sufficient capacity to keep things going with the reactor down for refueling. Maintenance at other power plants was probably scheduled for after the reactor was refueled in order to guarantee enough power. But, with the turbine failure, the reactor was down longer than needed and the other plants started scheduled maintenance which pushed everything over the edge. This was also exacerbated by reduced hydro-electric available from the Pacfic Northwest due to drought. And, finaly the trader's jumped in to make a killing.
So, what was the correct way to deal with power short falls.
1) Tell the truth. San Onofre was down, tell people they need to conserve in order to prevent blackouts. This also makes profiteering traders look really bad, since instead of taking advantage of a bad system they are taking advantage of basically an Act of God failure.
2) Put up extra money to get the turbine blade done early. i.e. The power company pays the normal cost for the blade. The state puts up $xxxxx per day before a certain date that the reactor comes up.
One other point, I think that nuclear reactor produced more power than all the plants that came onlien in the next year or two combined. i.e. they kept shwoing Davis celebrating the building of 100-200 megawatt plants. Which is a joke.
Dastardly
and market manipulation I assume you mean the fact that the wholesalers didn't lower their prices and the distributers had to layoff their workers that maintain their systems.
Wholesale prices were lower. PG&E and SoCal Edison made a killing buying the much lower priced electricity on the open market and selling at the higher fixed price. Right up until the one time when demand outstripped supply because a San Onofre reactor was down and there was drought in the Pacific Northwest. Then they went crying to the government about how they got screwed for a few months after screwing ratepayers for years. And, government turned around and said "Here we will raise rate so you can screw ratepayers some more."
This piece [pkarchive.org] by Paul Krugman, presents another view of the power crisis.
Doesn't really present anything different, he just attempts to spin all the bad on to the power companies. Hell he starts the article with "unlikely that California would ever get anything back from the energy companies" which is the battle cry of the left. "We are entitled to cheap energy. It doesn't matter if we set up bad rules and they used them to their advantage."
"the deregulation bill was passed under the earlier Republican government"
I don't know this either... but this is California where even the Repubs are leftist. To explain, I would consider myself a constitutionalist not a repub. I just happen to aggree with more Repubs than Dems.
How would you explain this observation?
I would say that the power companies reacted in their best interest. The rules were perverted by the government and then everyone acted surprised when the power companies played by those rules.
To say it another way they left a kid in a candy store alone and then were surprised when they kid started eating candy.
Now before you jump on your horse about how this proves that a free market doesn't work allow me to counter that this was not a free market. It was still infact regulated, as very very few new power companies were allowed to enter the area and provide the power. This was due to regulations on both who could provide power as well as green activist who would not allow new power plants to be built. ( As a side note I remember reading about a gold mine that shut down mining gold and sold their power to the distributers. Why? Cause they could make more money selling their power than MINING GOLD!!!)
To put it another way if your buddy is selling porkbellies and making a 500 percent profit, are you not going to look into doing the same thing and maybe only making a 499 percent profit?