Virginia Ranks #35, “D” Grade on Solar Power. Thanks for Nothing, Dominion-Controlled General ASSembly!

Great job Virginia’s (mostly Republican) state legislators, you’ve really hit the ball out of the park on this one! Oh wait, no you haven’t; in fact, you suck, with a ranking of #35 nationally and a grade of “D” when it comes to our state’s 2016 Solar Report Card by SolarPowerRocks.com. Just to break down the awfulness a bit more, here are the highlights lowlights.

• Virginia gets “F” grades in several crucial areas: our pathetic Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and “Solar Carve Out” provisions, plus our meager tax incentives for solar power. There’s no excuse for this, of course, other than that our bought-and-paid-for, “legally corrupt” legislature is doing what its masters at Dominion Power and in the fossil fuel industry want them to do.
• Virginia gets a “D” grade in “net metering,” which is crucial for rooftop solar power, since there will be times when the meter “spins backwards” and you’re actually sending power back into the grid. Obviously, you want to be fairly compensated for that power, but nooooo…not here in Dominion-owned-and-operated Virginia!
• “The state’s big utility company, Dominion Power, offers an anemic performance payments program, which will help homeowners now but isn’t guaranteed to be there in a few years.” So here’s an idea: instead of getting rid of Dominion’s “anemic performance payments program,” how about we get rid of (break up/dismantle) Dominion? Just a thought. 🙂
• Thanks to our state’s unfriendly policies towards clean energy, we manage to rank above only a few states, all deep-“red” politically (shocker, eh?), and mostly states that have been dominated historically by fossil fuel producers.
• Also interesting is that, in spite of the fact that Virginia is a mid-Atlantic state with tons of sunshine, we lag FAR behind states much further north of us, like Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Minnesota and Oregon. We also rank behind our neighbors in Maryland (“A”), DC (“B”) and North Carolina (“C”). Great job, huh?

So, you know how Gov. McAuliffe likes to say “I want to be number one in everything?” Well…here we are, stuck at number 35 when it comes to solar power, and what on earth are we doing about this situation? Uhhhhhh.

P.S. Not at all coincidentally, Virginia also gets a “D” grade when it comes to corruption in state government.