In an unfortunate bit of news California Public Utilities Commissioner Mark Ferron is stepping down due to prostate cancer. The CPUC is among the most influential and forward looking in the nation, responsible for helping to manifest California’s ambitious 33 percent renewables mandate by 2020. Ferron’s farewell letter is blunt and honest about the future of the CPUC and how renewables will impact relationships with utilities.

He writes:

We are fortunate to have utilities in California that are orders of magnitude more
enlightened than their brethren in the coal-loving states, although I suspect that they would
still dearly like to strangle rooftop solar if they could. Modern utilities are subject to a rapidly
evolving business environment, and I wonder whether some top managers at our utilities
have the ability or the will to understand and control the far-flung and complex organizations
they oversee. And I am very worried about our utilities’ commitment to their side of the
regulatory compact. We at the Commission need to watch our utilities’ management and their
legal and compliance advisors very, very carefully: it is clear to me that the legalistic,
confrontational approach to regulation is alive and well. Their strategy is often: “we will give
the Commission only what they explicitly order us to give them”. This is cat and mouse, not
partnership, so we have to be one smart and aggressive cat.

Ferron is presaging the coming fights ahead between public utility commissions and utilities. The first will likely be over rolling back net metering which will itself be a foreshadowing of the type of major fight we can expect when utilities start demanding “connection fees” from rooftop solar customers. The day of reckoning is coming for utilities in terms of acknowledging the impact of rooftop and the added costs of putting renewables on the grid. Public utility commissions will play critical roles in holding utilities accountable and protecting the rights of consumers to choose their power generation option.