LOS ANGELES — Even on rare rainy days in LA, all Andrew Hoesly can think of is the sun.

“I’ve been in the solar industry since the beginning of 2011,” Hoesly said. “I have a passion for sustainability and renewable energy.”

He’s a regional sales manager for SunPower. His territory expands all the way from LA to Santa Barbara.

But Hoesly says he has become increasingly concerned about the future of his industry, after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has proposed changes to net metering, the system that allows homeowners to sell surplus power back to the grid.

“It’s going to be very damaging and I’m highly confident that I would lose my job,” Hoesly said.

That’s because the proposal by the CPUC, would make big changes to the economic benefits for customers like Harry Kraushaar.

“I’m nothing more than a consumer and I’m being taken advantage of and it’s really frustrating,” Kraushaar said.

The proposal, would retroactively change Kraushaar’s net metering agreement from 20 years to 15, which means the rate at which he sells energy back to the grid would go down five years earlier than he was promised.

“They should compensate me for my losses, because we have a contract. It’s binding,” Kraushaar said.

But for people who go solar after May 27, 2022, the proposed changes would be more significant. The proposal would impose a flat fee across the board (for Southern California Edison customers it would be $12 plus $8 per kilowatt, for someone like Kraushaar that would add up to almost $70 a month). It would also drastically cut the credit customers would get for putting energy back into the grid from 20-30 cents down to five cents.

“It’s literally going to reduce the savings by 88%, thus making it not economically viable to go solar,” Hoesly said.

CPUC says the proposed changes are necessary as poor customers are subsiding wealthier ones who are transitioning to solar, and to pay for maintenance and keep rates low.

The public utilities commission sent us a statement also highlighting the importance of the battery incentive in the new proposal:

“The proposal determines that NEM must be modernized to incentivize customers to install storage paired with rooftop solar to help California meet its net peak shortfall and ensure electric grid reliability. Among other actions, the proposal would charge Net Billing customers for the electricity they receive from the grid based on high differential time-of-use tariffs, creating more benefit for customers who install storage and incentivizing them to store solar energy and shift exports later in the day. The proposal is subject to changes based on comments received.”

A new decision could come down as soon as January 27.

There are concerns among climate activists that the proposal as it stands could reverse California’s progress on renewable energy and goal to carbon neutrality by 2035.

But at a higher level the debate is also about who will own the future of solar. Will it be democratized and de-centralized, or will power companies have solar farms and distribute that power to us as they do now?

“The utilities, they want to produce solar energy. They want to own the generation, but they’re basically telling home owners, you as a home owner, we are not going to allow you to produce your own power,” Hoesly said.

And that’s what it boils down to, who has to power to generate and regulate the power we consume.