In 2018, BC Hydro began discouraging the production of solar power in British Columbia. The crown corporation had allowed customers with PV panels a two-way connection to the grid. When consumers fed surplus electricity to the utility, credits were recorded.

If credits were not used to buy electricity from BC Hydro within a year, the utility would pay homeowners a price roughly equal to the average rate paid to independent power producers, or about one-half what Site C power will cost if it goes into service in 2025.

BC Hydro now says that drought is affecting the production of hydroelectricity. That claim is suspect. It may be part of a strategy to promote new contracts for private power and to justify massive increases in the utility’s liabilities and contractual commitments. BC Hydro executives and public relations people have long been guilty of compulsive lying when it furthers their spending plans.

The federal government reports water levels in various watersheds. Williston Lake behind the Bennett Dam is BC Hydro’s most important reservoir. Water levels there seem not to have varied materially in recent years.

Like counterparts in other major utilities, BC Hydro executives worried that solar power expansion would reduce customer demand and limit the company’s expansion. Under pressure from investor-owned utilities, California followed British Columbia’s lead in 2022.

Before new rules were applied in 2022, Professor Mark Jacobson explained that California’s effort to cripple the rooftop solar industry was misguided. It will damage climate and health and require use of electricity generated from climate damaging sources:

Utilities should instead promote rooftop PV to reduce the need for long-distance transmission and to eliminate natural gas from new and existing buildings. Almost all building owners pay for both natural gas and electricity, and this helps to drive up overall energy costs. There is no need for two sources of energy in a building. There is nothing that natural gas can do that electricity cannot do better and cheaper...

The primary justification for the proposed rule is that, as more homeowners put solar PV on their roofs, fewer will pay grid charges, so the cost of maintaining the grid will be spread over fewer kilowatt-hours of energy passing through the grid, raising bills to non-PV owners. However, if instead of taxing solar, utilities encouraged replacing natural gas with electricity, the cost of air pollution deaths and illness due to natural gas would decrease and demand for electricity among non-PV owners would increase, not decrease.

California is poised to kill rooftop solar, damaging climate and health

Part of Dr. Jacobson’s work shows that Canada can meet foreseeable energy needs with electricity generated by onshore and offshore wind, solar photovoltaics (PV) on rooftops and in power plants, concentrated solar power (CSP), geothermal, hydro, tidal, and wave power. Wind-water-solar (WWS) equipment includes electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, heat pumps, induction cooktops, arc furnaces, induction furnaces, resistance furnaces, lawnmowers, etc.

It seems clear that we should not allow utility executives and captured regulators to establish energy policies. The issue is too important to be decided by people driven by self-interest.