California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is the California state governmental organization that regulates privately owned natural gas, water, electric, telecommunications, rail transit, railroad, and passenger transportation companies. In December 2022, the CPUC announced the latest rules—the net billing tariff (NBT) that will decide how excess solar energy generated by customers of the three major investor-owned utilities (IOU) will be compensated for. These decisions were made after a multi-year process during which the CPUC heard opinions from many interest groups, including customers with and without solar installations, IOUs, solar industry groups, environmental groups etc. In this paper, we will summarize the decisions made by the CPUC in December 2022, and we will discuss how they differ from the past programs approved by the CPUC, and what the latest decisions mean for the economics of residential solar installations, and the implications for future policy making.
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