"NV Energy, PUC price solar energy beyond residents’ reach"

Solar power is under attack in sun-soaked Nevada.

Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, has an op-ed featured in the appropriately named Las Vegas Sun, which begins:

During the 30 years I have fought efforts to bring the nation’s highly radioactive waste to Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, nuclear power supporters would ask, “So how do you think the lights will stay on without nuclear power?” My answer was, “In Nevada we have enough sunlight and solar power potential to keep our lights on and share some with you!”

So when the price of solar panels for residential installations dropped significantly, we tapped $8,500 from our retirement savings — after taking into account an NV Energy rebate and federal tax credit — and become a solar household. We were solar-powered all of last year, and our annual savings showed our system would pay for itself within 14 years. Moreover, it was right for the environment.

But with what’s happened in recent weeks, we feel financially ambushed. We’ve penciled out the recent increase for residential solar customers that NV Energy proposed and the Nevada Public Utility Commission approved and allowed to begin this month. Bottom line: Our system will never pay for itself. In fact, because rooftop solar is a different NV Energy rate class, an ordinary, modest-sized home in Southern Nevada will have larger power bills with rooftop solar than without, even though we will not tax the power grid and will generate renewable power for other NV Energy customers. This outrageous outcome overturns years of policy advances in Nevada to expand the use of renewable resources.

(Read the entire op-ed here.)

Judy, along with Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force's Steve Frishman, told their sad and shocking solar sabotage story on Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia radio show.