Utility solar needed to avert power crisis, says CUC boss
(CNS): Richard Hew, the president and CEO of CUC, Grand Cayman’s electricity provider, has warned that the island is facing a power generation crisis because the company has surpassed its ability to meet peak demand with its existing fixed diesel generators and is currently resorting to temporary, leased machines to meet it. With the rapid population growth in recent years, the demand for power has surged, but the national energy plan calls for a transition to 70% renewables by 2037, and only 3% of the Cayman Islands’ power currently comes from green sources. However, CUC can no longer invest in diesel generators.
In February, CUC became embroiled in a new controversy after the Office of the Ombudsman ordered the Utility Regulation and Competition Office (OfReg) to release reports created by CUC, which is now challenging the release in the courts. CUC is also fighting back against allegations that it is undermining homeowners’ efforts to install domestic, renewable equipment such as solar panels and wind turbines.
This is largely due to its piecemeal approach to the Consumer Owned Renewable Energy (CORE) programme, which allows domestic producers without power storage batteries to feed their surplus solar energy into the grid during the day and take from it at night. Officials at CUC deny that they are opposed to “rooftop solar”, as the domestic renewable market is labelled, but say that what is needed to transition Cayman to green energy is utility-scale solar because it will be much cheaper.
During a press invitation at the company last week, Hew explained some of the issues the power company faces. He said that CUC’s management team is deeply frustrated with OfReg’s slow progress on the bid for a much-needed utility-scale project.
While domestic renewables can play a part in the transition to green energy, there is a desperate need to begin the work for a much bigger solar farm in combination with battery storage to make the transition in the National Energy Policy’s target time, make a serious impact of the cost of bills and, most importantly, keep the lights on, Hew said.
Because of the targets in the energy policy, CUC will not be acquiring any new diesel generators. However, the company is undergoing the process of adapting some of its existing generators to use LNG as a transitional backup to renewables. While this also remains a controversial decision, Hew said that there is no way yet to achieve power generation here through 100% green technology, and the gas is cleaner in terms of emissions and still cheaper in the long run than diesel.
Illustrating the difficulties CUC now faces with its obligation to keep Cayman switched on no matter what, Hew said that COVID helped avert a looming energy generation crisis in 2020 as the pandemic reduced the demand on the grid. But since the borders reopened, the population has surged, and CUC’s generators are once again working flat out at peak times as the demand grows in line with the headcount.
Hew said that meeting peak demand remains the biggest issue for the company and keeps him awake at night. This is because CUC has become dependent on lease generators as it awaits the green light to either develop its own utility-scale project on land it owns in East End or buy it from whoever wins the bid. But the company is still waiting for OfReg to open the bid for the solar project.
The regulator conducted a pre-qualification process in April 2022, but two years on, it has still not started the actual bid to build a solar farm. CUC says it is only through large-scale operations that it will be able to offer electricity generated through renewables at around 10 cents per kilowatt hour, cutting bills by some 50% on the current rate of diesel.
Hew denied that CUC is a monopoly generator because it buys power from domestic renewable suppliers through the CORE and DER programmes, as well as from the small solar farm in Bodden Town, and if the project ever gets off the ground, it has agreed to buy the energy from Dart’s waste-to-energy facility. However, those supplying power to CUC through renewable programmes account for only 3% of its energy.
Cayman Renewable Energy Association has blamed CUC as well as the regulator for the delay in a much wider rollout of solar or other greener energy, claiming this is due to the power CUC wields over the regulator and anyone else trying to generate electricity. The non-governmental organisation accepts that rooftop solar cannot yet deliver the potential savings that large solar farms could but says it is still much cheaper than all fossil fuels and would help introduce a new sector for Cayman, generating jobs and business opportunities as well as reducing emissions.
CREA President James Whittaker has said that encouraging rather than limiting domestic renewables would still lower costs to consumers. The association supports having solar farms but wants to see much more utilisation of existing developed spaces for solar arrays, but says the incremental release of access to the grid through CORE and DER has significantly restricted the growth of a potential green energy market in the Cayman Islands.
CUC claims that domestic solar can cause grid instability, which is why it limits the access it offers each time it makes some space available for rooftop solar. But Hew said that when it opens its own battery storage plant in the coming months, that problem would be addressed. However, the cost of buying renewable energy through CORE and DER is still too high, which means that customers with solar panels are being subsidised by non-solar customers.
Given its concerns over how CUC’s licence works and the difficulties of having real competition in the energy sector on a small island, CREA feels that people should have the right to access renewable energy. Despite the public support for that during the public consultation on the revised national energy policy, it has not been included in the new draft plan.
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Category: Business, Energy, Science & Nature, utilities
Food for thought for the wise politicians, stop increasing work permits until your infrastructure can handle the growth. Unless you live in a gated community earning more than your expenses, people’s lives are miserable and are dropping dead from stressors caused by CUC and the supermarkets.
CUC has been digging its grave for 20 years. Consistent and planned denial of solar and alternatives both domestic and large scale to protect the monopoly, protect the dividend and protect the parent (foreign) company. To raise the red flag now is an insult to the Cayman public. Shame on CUC and shame on CIG.
Shame is lame, but don’t forget it; elections matter; they will never know what hit them when we fix the real problem.
CUC only ever talks about projects that will make them money, not the ones that people might actually need. A mouth with two sides cannot be trusted.
classic cayman wonderland story…..cayman could have been world leaders in solar energy usage…but preferred to cater to corrupt political business interests instead of doing something for the common good of the islands….
Nearly a year after CUC’s PR misdirection on rollout of EV charging infrastructure, there are almost no working or public-accessible chargers commissioned for use – certainly nowhere that EV owners would want to park and leave their $60k vehicles for 8 hours. The public and the CIG need to stink-test these empty platitudes and false narratives to change the monopolist culture of lying, or pull their licenses for bad faith.
If an owner of a $60K EV needs to leave their vehicle to charge fully at a public charging station then they are stupid for purchasing it in the first place. Surely such EV owners would charge their vehicles overnight at their home. The home charger will very likely be more economical than a public station. Plus I do not see any EV owners presently having any issue because of a lack of public charging stations.
I see the public charging stations as a location where an EV owner can purchase, say, a 1 hour charge if they find themselves running low and need a boost to ensure they get home.
When I finally get a <$35K EV I would hope to never have to use a retail (public) charging station.
Note that there will NEVER be enough public charging stations to facilitate the charging of the number of EV which will be on our roads in the near future. So if you intend to purchase one make sure you have the charging infrastructure needed.
I wonder how all those huge EV batteries smell while they burn at the dump.
But I have to admit it was a good sales pitch “Buy this $60K EV and you never have to pay charging costs for the rest of your life”.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling 🤡🤡🤡
Bury the power lines!
ha ha ha….and political interest lose their dividends….ha ha ha
Rented generators?
Cuc needs to purchase fit for purpose generators that can power the island and more. This would cover them for years. God knows they are making enough profit from us all .
Renting generators? LMAO
Think you missed the point. They’re renting to avoid buying more, hoping OfReg will get around to running their process to bring in big solar and batteries. If they buy more new generators, expect they will run for another 20-30 years. That would be contrary to the whole National Energy Policy targets.
Do you not comprehend that the imbeciles we elected into office have enacted laws prohibiting them from purchasing additional diesel generators? Consequently, we face death until they implement solar power solutions, which will likely be destroyed by the first major hurricane. We will then struggle to survive for years until they can be replaced.
* SMASH the CUC monopoly
* Seperate generation from distribution
* Net metering NOW!!!
It is an absolute disgrace that we cannot use our roof tops to generate electricity and sell back to the grid AFTER we have run the meter back to zero…..
Rememebr telephonic communications on these islands (don’t even think of data) with Cable & Wireless BEFORE competition came in and their monopoly went the way of the Dodo?
Too many in the Golden Circle with way too many vested interests…. Cayman’s plight and residents/consumers’ financial burden…..
Forget selling back to the grid. I just want to produce and store enough for my home. CUC does not want us doing that as profits will be affected, because most would not need to buy power from CUC, and those who are forced to buy from CUC, will have to pay exuberant prices to keep CUC in profit.
In all fairness, only CUC find the prices exuberant.
I like how nonsense always gets the thumbs up.
I don’t work for CUC, but most people know that generation and distribution has been separated for many years. Understandably, nobody wants to compete in distribution.
And yes, breaking the C&W monopoly was a very good thing. After making all of my free calls, I now make approximately $120 per month selling my surplus calls back to C&W.
Propane is the way forward.
We are uniquely blessed to reside on the doorstep of endless free untapped geothermal and hydrothermal power. Solar is also half of what it cost a year ago. We need fewer entrenched shareholder conflicts contaminating this problem solving. It doesn’t serve us.
Were you finding that geothermal? Last I looked, we don’t have any near surface magma chambers to get that good heat?
The trench
A leeeeeetle too deep you will find.
There’s the equivalent of several megawatts of free power from just one of the “cleaner” black smokers 20 miles south of GT. We also have access to an expansive thermokinetic water column, hundreds of feet from shore. OfReg seems to want us all to buy fuel from SOL forever.
Parliament. Lots of hot air generated in there.
As usual Caribbean Utilities Compamy (CUC) is using scare tactics. Do not beleive them and demand the truth.
OfReg “regulators” want Cayman to be buying fuel forever, and someone might ask why.
Here’s an idea. Just spitballin’.
Raise the minimum wage to something an entry level Caymanian can live on, say $14.00/hour. Let them work the hospitality/bartender/waiter jobs that have been relegated to low-paid expats.
Positive Consequences? Less expats. Less traffic. Housing crisis abated. WHOA! Might even solve the energy crisis, at least for now.
Negative Consequences? Government makes less on work permits. Insurance industry makes less on mandatory WP insurance.
requirements? We need to curtail giving concessions to foreign developers that allow them to build boutique hotels that also allows them to unfairly compete with existing Caymanian businesses. The trickle-down stops about halfway from where it makes a difference. These hotels, while bolstering government coffers via expat work permits, also cause a load upon the existing underfunded, undermaintenanced infrastructure, and a drain on the resources. The expats aren’t the enemy. As Pogo said, “we have met the enemy, and they are us.”
We need to do MUCH better for Caymanians leaving school and embarking upon their new lives. Nine low-income houses on the Brac are wonderful, and I applaud them for doing something, but it is not enough as a territory/country.
More Caymanians hired at a living wage. Less expats, less traffic, less energy requirements, more peace, more health, better life.
No, I’m not willing to run for office. Only a madman(or woman) would choose such a fate.
“No, I’m not willing to run for office. Only a madman(or woman) would choose such a fate.”
Sadly, as experience teaches us when intelligent Caymanians with integrity shy away from running for office, it is not the insane who get elected, it is the unscrupulous, the unintelligent and the criminals who get elected.
I hope that you will reconsider – the quote the 19thC philosopher JS Mill – “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
Caymanians don’t want to work those entry positions at any price. It’s beneath their birthright. Their Social Studies workbooks taught them to abhor both tourists and “Johnny-come-lately” expats in equal measure, and by extension, the expat boss they’d serve under. Showing up might be 80% of career success, but it’s 100% of service delivery. It just doesn’t get accomplished with reliance on Caymanian labour. How many permits do you think are issued and outstanding for the service industry? Have a look at the construction sector…
8:31, could you let us know what these social studies workbooks were called, what schools they were used in and where we all could see copies? I’m an ex teacher in the government school system and never saw such a thing but perhaps the private schools are using them? Whatever, any assistance you can provide for us would be most welcome. Thanks.
14/04 @8:56,
the social studies workbooks are in all residents homes, called vindictive humans. All nationalities including Caymanians gossip and spread rumors about each other which creates the division. Up until the early 1990’s we were peaceful and tranquil after that the majority of people coming here only came for there own selfish reasons hence the start of the divide. Also remember the almost 3000 STATUS grants, x 5 = 15,000 minimum, in early 2000’s. “selfish people call Meee, MEEE.
Sooo…want to explain how you can replace the expats with Caymanians, even after you get past the hurdle of getting Caymanians to do jobs they consider beneath them, when the number of unemployed Caymanians is a small fraction of the number of expats doing those jobs? Over 36000 work permits for heavens sake. Only 22000 working Caymanians in total! Expat substitution as a means of reducing population is limited to the number of Caymanians available.
Nuclear power is really the only viable option.
That might be true in a more enlightened environment. Can you begin to imagine the total and complete cock up that would almost certainly ensue if we tried to create a nuclear power plant here???
Saaaaay, are you a relative of Mr. Bush? Hey, why not an oil refinery while we are at it? Let’s just screw up the whole Caribbean, not just us.
First please enlighten us of which town/city of <100K has their own nuclear power plant.
Not nuclear power but LNG.
And how would you deal with the waste?
Same way we do now.
Most likely as Japan and other nuclear islands do.
OMG could you even imagine the terror of having nuclear power under the oversite of Caymanians???????????????????
I agree 100% – the following has to stop: ” that customers with solar panels are being subsidised by non-solar customers.”
I cannot afford solar panels and storage batteries, and I do not want to pay for solar panels and batteries for those who can afford it.
Mr Whittaker’s company, Greentech Solar, should not rely on selling solar panels and batteries by incentivising rich clients to buy solar systems and to have this ‘investment’ paid back by selling their excess power to CUC at high rates. The general public then subsidises the cost of these systems.
Mr and Mrs Big Stuff should pay their own way.
That’s all I gotta say.
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. The way it works is that you have to SELL all the solar you collect (unless there’s a power outage, which seldom happens) — and BUY all the power you consume from CUC. But the “sell” rate for solar power (sold by the solar owner to CUC) is only about half the “buy” rate — which means that CUC is making a 100% profit on the customer’s solar. Read the rules and verify for yourself! So who’s being subsidised? Certainly NOT “Mr. & Mrs. Big Stuff”, as you claim. Maybe you ought to study up before shooting off your mouth?
CUC makes zero profit on the solar you sell them. It is passed through directly on to all consumers as part of the “Renewable Energy” part of the bill, with no mark-up. I would recommend you follow your own advice.
Sorry PYOWMB,
You are totally wrong with your claim. Owners of private solar systems (whether solar or solar/ battery systems) are forced under the terms of CIG and CUC CORE rules to sell everything the collect to CUC at a discounted rate. Then 100% of what they consume is charged to them at a higher “retail” rate. The difference is pure profit to CUC as transmillion lines are already there and paid for years ago and must be maintained for GRID customers not solar customers who generate their own power. There is a reason why CUC solar customers have TWO meters and solar customers everywhere else in the world have only ONE.
CUC constantly speaking out of both sides on it’s mouth on domestic solar. Seems they only approve of the projects that can make them more money, not the ones people actually need.
Distributed Community (rooftop) solar. Its better for the community & environment. CUC saying the system can only work with industrial scale is diesel smoke and solar mirrors. All OfReg have to do is say (a) install X amount of additional battery capacity as part of the distribution license, (b) X amount of solar is now open on CORE (or whatever replaces it to account for the new centralized battery), then and only then (c) put the next tranche of industrial scale solar+battery out for bid. (I don’t care if CUC are best placed to win the bid; they probably are because lets be realistic about ROI and technical capacity – its why the last industrial solar nearly went bankrupt early.) One year to go from 0 to (c). (Remember that (b) is open-ended so its not filed before (c) starts.)
What CIG needs to do is, through the Cayman Development Bank, provide soft loans for rooftop solar with battery backups to allow more people in the community to tap into the benefits of distributed solar energy production. CIG also need to be looking at ‘district’ battery banks at public buildings (especially emergency shelters) for (b) emergency power but (a) providing the ‘firm’ component of distributed community solar generation. (Puerto Rico is a case study of why islands need these sub-systems in case of emergency. Lets never get like Puerto Rico.)
It will be a little more expensive but the benefits outweigh the costs (costs & benefits to the nation). Just do it.
CUC still has the option to invest in diesel generators, pending approval from our politicians and a departure from adhering to the misguided mandates of #UN2030.
When will the people of these islands wake up and realize that these sustainability mandates could lead to death and famine? We’ll be forced to choose between keeping the lights on or shutting down power to hospitals, all due to what some fraudulent climate change science.
Any country that cedes its sovereignty to the UN on anything is doomed. Hell they can’t even fulfill their core mandate which is to maintain peace and prevent wars! Completely useless and politically corrupt organization stuffed full of trough feeding bureaucrats.
8:02, Absolute nonsense. The European Union is a group of countries that gave up their sovereignty and I regret to say, the UK broke from the pack. Now we see that for 5 years the UK has had negative economic growth while all the countries of the EU have seen economic growth.
There is a price to pay for those countries that think a country is doomed by giving up sovereignty.
right. remind us again how whacked out the covid policies were handed down by the WHO. But by all means keep driving that cool-aide
The 3% of capacity solar farms have so far been nothing short of consumer rebilling abuses. The land is re-invoiced at 5 times cost, and panels at up to 20x true market cost. Rest of the world full retail (Home Depot) cost is down to USD$0.60-0.70 per watt. Utility scale is around 2 cents. Commercial scale PV is 3 to 5 cents, amortised over a useful lifespan of 20 years. Latest PV technology and equipment is half of what it cost a year ago. Any figures outside of that general framework can be easily be search-tested as untrue. For comps, Hawaii’s Energy Smart 4 Homes [ES4H] happily offers residential efficiency programs, rebates, and solar incentives, and long ago worked out any of the gridleveling and net metering problems that apparently still confound Richard Hew. CUC shareholders should take note.
Hawaii has higher rates than here and pervasive energy affordability concerns. Is this really a successful case study to apply here? Or is it an object lesson that rooftop solar doesn’t lower Costs (big-C for all consumers), but rather lowers a cost (small-c for the minority who install the system). What solar does do, regardless of who or how it is installed, is lower emissions. Let’s do that, but in the most affordable way.
If all you look at is ‘affordability’ you run into the problem that of CUC & OfReg now of not getting solar up and running from when we should have been on the basis of ‘its not cheap enough yet’. As you said the whole package needs to be looked at from a national perspective: costs (all costs including land costs), emissions/pollution (including transport pollution), and social benefits (including power redundancy through distributed generation; and the benefit of soft loans to property owners). At which point in time distributed solar trumps industrial solar.
To put it another way, would you prefer to see a 4 acre solar farm, or a 5 acre housing development with solar covered roofs & parking? One people can live in, the other the cost of land for housing just went up again but at least your CUC bill will cost a penny less.
these have to be national benefit decisions. Not what is in the best interest of an individual or individual company.
It’s worth acknowledging the trade-offs. To your point about land use, though, we’re only ever going to get that “constrained” in a meaningful way in a future scenario with a population size much, much bigger than the one we have now (think 300,000+, on the basis of current land development use for the 80,000 or so we have now).
I would argue that’s undesirable in its own right, so wouldn’t put too much weight on the land-use argument as a driver for housing prices vs lower energy costs.
CUC have literally blocked CORE capacity applications for solar renewable deployment for years – panels which are available now at <50% of the cost from a year ago. Even their limited number of pay-to-play Zef Energy EV kiosks aren’t being commissioned on any timely schedule. CUC shareholders might take issue with leadership talking out of both sides of their mouths, since these ruses do not win hearts and minds. The CIG should consider canceling their license renewal for non-performance if they are not keeping to their required timeline.
CUC has been like an evil company from a movie in relation to solar and other renewables.
Can’t trust a word they say.
solar should be way more affordable on this island and we should be focused on renewable energy just as much as we can fall back on CUC. they should not be a shareholder company trying to make profits for anyone other than those who work there.
“The non-governmental organisation accepts that rooftop solar cannot yet deliver the potential savings that large solar farms could but says it is still much cheaper than all fossil fuels.”
This is what they say now, but if you reference what they stated in submissions to OfReg during various public consultations, they have been advocating for a rate HIGHER than the historical cost of the fuel it would be replacing.
Ask the head of CREA why his personal solar business has sent out sales proposals with anticipated rates which are much higher than the highest rate fuel-generated electricity has ever cost consumers.
Then ask the members of CREA that sell rooftop solar whether it would be more or less difficult to sell their product if the cost of energy in Grand Cayman is lower. It’s very clear that they have a vested business interest in keeping energy costs as high as possible for as long as possible to position their sales proposition against.
There is clearly a conflict between the head of CREAs business interests and the Public Interest and unfortunately he is not the best person to be advocating on the Publics behalf. He seems to be motivated by selling rooftop solar to his customers!!!
Why are people so reluctant to speak the truth?
It makes it difficult to view CREA as the non-profit they state to be when their predominant membership, and certainly their core leadership, profit handsomely from the activities they lobby for.
At least CUC is more open about their interest in railing us.
And CUC speaking doom and destruction has nothing to do with protecting their copperfastened monopoly?
We can have cisterns for our water, C&W had theirt monopoly done away with an yet CUC is the last dinonsaur thrashing and flailing when teh game is almost up…..THET CANNOT HOLD BACK PROGRESS.
The past is the past – all those large utility comapny’s have had their day…the future will be entirely different – get out ahead of it and try to shape it, or be like the man with the Red Flag walking in front of the first cars (that the horse and buggy and the vested interests imposed to rescrict the modern motor car), to prevent the car frightening the horses….see how that worked out in the end….
LNG is a crazy idea. The cost of that infrastructure will be more than the cost of installing large solar farms. And the danger of LNG cannot be overstated! Do we really want a large explosive tank in town? OfReg and CIG, please stop this and tell them to add more solar.
I thought they were vying for propane generators. Propane is not LNG. Propane still MUCH cleaner than diesel. Baby steps.
Nope they have purchased convertible LNG generators so they can import and control the LNG market and recharge the customer for the infrastructure.
Meanwhile we have several established Caymanian firms offering propane solutions to meet their requirements.
Costs more. About 7-8 years ago propane tried to compete for a solicitation run by OfReg for new generators. It lost on cost to diesel by a big margin.
Easy way to think of the current fuel options:
Diesel, middle cost, higher emissions.
Propane, higher cost, middle emissions.
LNG, lower cost, lower emissions.
Solar, lowest cost, no emissions, but only during the day. Solar plus some battery, lower cost and no emissions, available in the day and part of the evening. Solar plus lots of battery, higher cost, no emissions, available anytime.
In the long run, the hope is that the last solar mix option will become the cheapest, but that level of storage (be it batteries, compressed gas or liquids, or something else like hydrogen) is not viable as a technology yet and probably won’t be for another 10-15 years.
So the sensible view should be replace diesel with LNG for the evening and nighttime use, and then put in lots of solar with some batteries for daytime and some of the evening. This will create the lowest costs and lowest emissions.
Anyone who thinks a small island can go without some kind of traditional generation at all without having lots of power outages is full of it. And anyone who thinks we should stick to diesel if there are better options on price and emissions is just trying to keep higher prices for their own vested interests.
Or … Add solar instead of new LNG and keep the existing diesels for your nighttime off-peak use times that you feel solar is currently impractical for. The disagreement with LNG is that somehow adding more new fossil fuel to the mix – with a whole new import & distribution infrastructure and the financial and pollution costs associated with it – will be better than going solar and keeping the existing diesel infrastructure until, as you said, it can be fully replaced with solar in 10-15 years.
Re-read the last sentence. The LNG should be viewed in contrast to the diesel. Solar is coming in any instance.
Guido,
Guess the government and people in wealthy Aruba are crazy. LNG works there and is very cost effective for that fast growing Caribbean Island.
Aruba has a combination of both LNG and solar.
Check it out. Beautiful beaches there too.
Fortis is the parent company of CUC. They have all sorts of expertise in LNG. Just look at British Columbia in Canada. Furthermore, there are massive amounts of LNG being produced in the American Gulf states and the Eastern Seaboard states at reasonable costs.
The facilities there export LNG to Antigua and other Caribbean islands.
What danger of LNG? You must know something nobody else knows.
Please explain?
GHGE from combustion for one.
As compared to what? Coal or diesel fuel?
Why is there no laughing emoji in the “How do you feel after reading this?” section?
Anyone who understands that both CUC and CREA will say anything to help their bottom lines knows these quotes from them are laughable.
I just cant understand how to reconcile cutting down mangroves and forests for solar arrays, especially on what little land we have now.
We have car parks island wide that could be solar, charging cars and back up batteries to generate solar and provide shade. Obvious starting place could be airports, government car park and supermarkets.
Place them over the quarries that have already been excavated and now serve no further purpose.
CUC needs to wallow in its monopoly of diesel power but keep its greedy, dirty hands off solar. Solar needs to be set free, into the hands of the consumer and anything short of OfReg making this happen is straight up collusion.
The permitted uptake on solar energy is an absolute disgrace.
If we had stupidity generated electricity, we’d even be able to sell off surplus!
If only we had a way to make lies, corruption, self-interest, and poor educational attainment into fuel, we’d be set for life!
I call BS. I was under the impression that CUC was required by Ofreg to have a specific minimum amount of power generation on hand which is supposed to be the max load plus some extra percentage? Is that not the case?
Regardless they’ve stifled the solar programs for years on purpose. If you do just a tiny bit of reading on the rates for DER solar you’ll read that they are some of the worst in the world and have some of the most punitive “ratchet clauses” and highest “ratchet rates” on the planet.
This is a problem of their own making. And if they need utility solar to fix it then they need to buy the damn utility solar equipment now and get it installed. Cry me a river about it not being a monopoly…bunch of crap
Or, hear me out, the barriers preventing people from generating their own power could be lowered a bit..