Solar Power - Another burden on the back of the middle class.

                   The Yuma Sun article, (“Charges being added to APS electricity bills,” February 05, 2013) said that APS needed to raise their prices in order to cover fixed costs like infrastructure and power poles.

                 I think we need to look deeper into the real reason APS is raising its rates. There are other factors besides the fact that we aren’t buying enough power to maintain their infrastructure.

                 One factor is that the APS consumers are funding solar energy projects all over the state.  APS gives $2400 to $7000 rebates to every person who installs a solar energy unit.  They have to raise our rates in order to fund the generous rebates.  Does it make sense that those of us who are struggling to pay our power bills are expected to pick up the tab for generous rebates to people who are wealthy enough to afford solar panels?     

                  APS is also raising our rates in order to fund the huge megawatt renewable energy power plants they are building all over the state. That’s pretty expensive infrastructure and somebody has to pay for it.  Supposedly we’ll reap the benefits somewhere down the road, but I am not counting on it.

It’s another example of how government doesn’t solve problems; it creates problems.  In 2010 the Arizona Corporation Commission passed rules requiring utilities to cut their customers' annual energy use by at least 22 percent by 2020.  The federal government mandated green energy initiatives.

                    You will notice that the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation District power costs are about 60 per cent of what ours are.  They are not members of the corporation commission.  They’re run by a local board of directors, so they are not bound by the demand to build expensive renewable energy plants.  Their customers pay for the energy they use.

                   We have to pay for the energy we use and a little more for the cost of building plants like the 100 acre 15 megawatt solar plant located at Luke Air force Base. It will be a couple of generations before the plants begin to pay for themselves and by then they’ll be broken down eyesores just like the hay bale drying plant on the north side of Highway 8 that was obsolete before it dried one bale.