Southern California Edison, which supplies most of Orange County’s electricity, wants to levy a fee on future residential solar users, ostensibly to pay for maintaining the grid.

The monthly fee, condemned by the solar industry and environmentalists and likely to be controversial with solar customers, was described in a proposal Edison submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission earlier this month. It would charge customers who install solar panels on their roofs in coming years $3 per kilowatt of capacity. That means a homeowner with a 5 kilowatt roof solar system – an average size – would pay a fee of $15 per month to Edison just for having the system.

Edison also suggested paying future solar customers less for the electricity they generate, don’t use and end up selling back to the grid.

Edison says the per-kilowatt fee, or one like it, is necessary to pay for the cost of maintaining the power grid.

[link to www.ocregister.com]

What a sweet deal eh?