SRP solar fees ruin its reputation

• Salt River Project proposes a fee that would average %2450 a month for new rooftop solar customers
• Barry Goldwater Jr.%3A This is not what one expects from innovators who brought water to the desert
• SRP encouraged customers to use solar. Now%2C it attacks them for doing so

Let's be clear. The $50-a-month solar tax that Salt River Project is proposing to impose on customers is nothing more than a tax on rooftop solar imposed by a utility with little or no public accountability.

When Arizona Public Service tried to impose its solar tax last year, the people fought back, and the elected members of the Arizona Corporation Commission reduced the $50-a-month tax to $5 a month. Sadly, SRP ratepayers have no such protection.

The SRP tax will also hurt the economies of the communities it serves by driving up the cost of power, and discouraging new development and investment.

Ultimately, the tax will devalue one of SRP's most prized possessions: its reputation. This $50-a-month solar tax will feed a bloated bureaucracy and kill competition, all while soaking ratepayers. This is not the storied SRP that used innovation to deliver water to the desert.

Surprisingly, The Arizona Republic seemed to endorse the tax in a recent editorial citing statistics and studies that don't exactly tell the whole story.

​The editorial claimed a University of California study showed a typical Southwestern utility company will start losing revenue seriously once about 2.5 percent of its customers have gone solar. The study actually said that at 2.5 percent penetration, the impact of solar on utility revenues and cost reductions "are roughly equivalent," meaning the utility is not losing money that isn't recouped through avoided costs.

The editorial praises the way the utility would give those customers a way to minimize the increase by reducing the amount of peak-demand power they take from the grid.

What the editorial fails to point out is how difficult and complicated the SRP cost minimization plan would be. ​

It's also worth noting that current customers were paid by SRP​ to go solar, without an emphasis on which direction their panels should face. In 10 years, those customers will be penalized for making a decision that the utility initially told them was good for the utility.

The editorial's claim that the solar industry will survive because SRP just signed a 21-year deal to buy solar-generated power near Florence don't ring true when you consider that the vast majority of Arizona's 10,000 solar jobs are in rooftop solar, not the boom and bust, short-term jobs that utility-scale projects provide.

It wasn't long ago that SRP was encouraging ratepayers to go solar. Now that ratepayers took that advice and reduced their demand, SRP is attacking solar.

I still have faith the SRP board will remember its primary obligation is to its ratepayers and not to the highly paid bureaucrats behind this tax on the Arizona sun.

Barry Goldwater Jr., a former California congressman, is chairman of Tell Utilities Solar Won't be Killed (TUSK), a rooftop-solar advocacy group.