Schreiner letter: Idaho Power and solar

Sunday, Aug. 13, an Idaho Power spokesman explained their proposal to eliminate home solar power installation in the future by telling us that it costs $65 a month to provide power to residential customers and that it is unfair to net metering customers to not pay that amount. I recently installed solar power on my roof and in the process calculated my average monthly costs in the preceding years. It came to an average of slightly over $60 a month. Isn’t that interesting? Is Idaho Power proclaiming that the cost of generating power is nothing and that the whole cost of power is their infrastructure? The Nevada power companies two years ago managed to convince their legislature of this idea and so killed the home solar installation industry in that state. It would appear that Idaho Power is hoping to do the same in Idaho. We know that the power utilities have been in fear of individual power generation for 20 plus years and now that it is coming to fruition they will try anything to stop it cold. Appeals to fairness will probably work no matter how they cook their books to get those results.

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 10:07 PM with the headline "Schreiner letter: Idaho Power and solar."