GRIDLEY, CA (MPG) - A controversial topic for the last few months, the City of Gridley and its council members consideration of revising the City’s master fee schedule, which would ultimately affect distributed generation for electric service rates, has brought many concerned residents to the podium.

In a nutshell, the California State Senate passed a bill, SB 594, governing public electric utilities and net metering program as an incentive of sorts for customers interested in installing solar systems. SB 594 allowed solar customers to “bank” their overproduced energy during peak daylight times to be used during the evening. This “banking” would be on the cities electrical grid at no cost to the customer - in fact, the solar customers were also privy to a lower buy-back rate that matched the cities cost of electricity.

The city has been reviewing its net-metering rate for solar customers and considering revisions to the master fee schedule since October 21, 2019 as it is has reached and exceeded requirements outlined in SB 594. At a the December 2, 2019 city council meeting, after holding public study sessions for feedback on the topic, the motion to pass the revised measure died lack of a second.

The revision returned to the January 20ths City Council agenda. Beginning January 1^st, 2020, the State of California now mandates that all new homes built in the state must be outfitted with solar panels. With this new law, the City of Gridley’s electrical department and its current non-solar customers would be significantly impacted, especially with multiple new housing developments planned for the area. If the master fee schedule were to remain the same and distributed generation for solar customers was to continue at $.04 buy-back rate, the City would see a drastic loss in revenue. Also, customers with standard electricity throughout the city would see a drastic jump in utility charges.

This time, the measure was met with no hesitations and went to the vote. Council felt that they understood the issue and had done enough research to make the best decision, in their opinion, for the future of the City and passed the measure 4-0. The agenda states “The proposed Master Fee Rate revision will strengthen the overall financial condition of the City’s Electrical Enterprise Fund and will reduce the pressure to increase customer rates in the future.”

Residents with current solar installations will be grandfathered in and not impacted by this revision. Those considering installing solar arrays in the future will still be encouraged to do so, but will can expect to be subject to the City of Gridley’s new rate schedule.