California law established tranches of favored installations. The early birds -- the first tranche -- received the biggest subsidy -- via a term-limited contract with the Poco -- sancitioned by the State's PUC. (The whole idea came from Sacramento.)
Lest the drain be too much, after X amount of installed, qualifying, capacity was added the tranche was full.
Then a new tranche would start at new, lower rates of subsidy. Each tranche was equal in size. ( megawatts, peak ) IIRC, they ran about 400 Megawatts-peaking.
The subsidy existed within the terms of power pricing when sold -- and when bought back from the residential PV array.
IIRC, at this time, the Poco subsidy has run out the calendar.
IIRC, the Federal subsidy was to end 12-31-2012; but it's the kind of thing that always gets ammended -- even retroactively. The Federal subsidy consists of a hard-money rebate of 30% against the actual installed cost of such a green energy source. (Small hydro and wind also qualified.)
Of course, in the larger scale, all of these schemes are wealth destroyers. They are entirely uneconomic on their own merits -- and by quite a distance, too.
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The California scheme is but an echo of the Spanish scheme. That one had no tranche step-downs. It bankrupted their national economy. It grew that large. For a time, it made Germany the world's largest PV manufacturer. (!!!)
The associated trade debts are at the heart of Spains national insolvency within the Euro Zone. Naturally, the MSM both here and in Europe dares not utter a word about the flow of events. Spain's distress is laid in every other direction.
Now, since it's a bleeder, the Poco was and is authorized to supercharge all other Poco rate-payers with sumptuary rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_taxHence, a McMansion has to pay $0.45 per kW-Hr for top Tier electric power. That rate bears no relation to the cost of provision -- it's a tax levied by the State of California in a round-about manner -- using its PUC to goad all the Pocos into line. In this way, the massive tax increase is kept off the State's books.
The average rate-payer has no conception that this tax is ramping the cost of his food -- as every grocery store has to pay large for HVAC power -- and deep into the top tier rates -- even for a commercial user.
(There is no provision for the scale of a business operation. Not surprisingly, such business targets are running around like crazy installing PV arrays -- not for the juice -- but to stay off of the supertaxed billing catagory.)
Consequently, PV installations are exploding.
So is retrofitting LED lighting and smart HVAC.
All conventional EC work is dead.
All of the smaller players are shutting down/ retiring.
And, no EC wants to pay/ can pay for 0bamacare.
CraigsList shows a fantastic ramp in 1099-only job solicitations -- across all trades.
{
California has 5 Tiers within its residential power pricing. The first two are ordinary, not punitive. Tier 3 is $0.25/ kW-Hr ish; Tier 4 is $0.35/ kW-Hr ish; Tier 5 is $0.45/ kW-Hr ish.
Some variation exists depending where you are on the grid and what time of year it is ( Summer | Winter ) but you get the gist. The PUC has already established that even these rates are headed up another dime per kW-Hr by 2014 ish.
}
Our trade sells the installation of equipment that uses electric power. Period, stop.
When that commodity rockets way ahead of inflation and the earnings of the common man -- the need for our craft utterly collapses.
At this time my market is solely concerned with scrapping equipment, swapping to LEDs and to ducking the sumptuary Poco power rates, thereby.
Business is punked.
