Friends, I hate to be the bearer of slightly less awesome news. I have spoken with Tim Harvey, AE's Solar Manager, and he was surprised to learn that the billing was crediting our current utility bills as the billing department assured him that they were prepared for the policy change (actually they told him that they never credited the rest of the utility bill). Whatever benefit you are currently seeing on your current utility bill will shift toward a carryover credit on your future electric bill...as soon as they figure out how to do it. He also mentioned the following:
1. Any annual credits forfeited by the solar owner would be rolled in a customer benefit fund. I don't know if this is the fund for electricity assistance for low-income customers or if its part of the renewable energy fund itself.
2. AE may be amenable to shifting the reset date from January 1st to October 1st. I might suggest a mini-online petition to collect interest before submitting to AE.
I hope this helps clarify the situation.
Dusty
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I also spoke with Tim today and he repeated the same thing he told Dusty. Additionally he said that he had run a number of analyses and that the only customers that would lose money in the new structure were high usage customers. He plans to either provide details in writing and/or schedule a town hall meeting to discuss/explain.
I am thinking about getting solar installed from Lighthouse. Does anyone have any experience negotiating with them? I suspect that they're going to a lighter period over the winter, and solar's not a must-have for me, but if there's some concession on price then I might be persuaded to pull the trigger.
Please do share any tactics and successes, thanks.
I love Lighthouse, and highly recommend them. If you can get some neighbors in on installation at the same time, they will most likely negotiate price with you.
They are very reasonable in their pricing, and their warranties exceed other vendors. There were a lot of numbers floating around from years ago, and you might be able to dig around on the forum and find them. They definitely aren't just trying to sell as many panels as they can and truly believe in what they're doing. That being said, I doubt their price has that much room to give.
This is for an upcoming meeting that the Public Utilities Commission will be holding on Dec 18th & 19th to set policy on how much of the TX energy mix should be renewables.
------- 2. AE may be amenable to shifting the reset date from January 1st to October 1st. I might suggest a mini-online petition to collect interest before submitting to AE. -------
If they're really willing to do that, I think we should definitely push them to do it! At least for my family it would make a substantial difference in the total bill, and I guess we can't be the only ones. Is there anyone here who's interested and knows either of
1) how to set up an online petition, 2) where to send it at AE once we're done?
If nobody knows I will try to figure it out myself...
