[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 3, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S533-S535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              SOLAR ENERGY

  Mr. KING. Mr. President, the Democratic leader has just outlined the 
issue that is before us today. I want to put it into some context. The 
first thing I want to say is that what we are talking about today is 
the most fundamental of American economic principles--free-market 
competition. Free-market competition is what we are talking about here.
  Now, as the Democratic leader outlined, for 135 years, our electrical 
system worked basically in the same way that it works today. It has 
worked because of central powerplants, wires, distribution and 
transmission systems, and homes. Homes and businesses and offices were 
the passive receptors of electricity. The utilities have done a 
wonderful job. I have worked with them over the years. They have done a 
complex job where the power has to be there when the switch is thrown. 
They have done a terrific job of serving the American public, but what 
the American public wants is not necessarily electricity itself, it 
wants what electricity can do.
  A friend of mine once said, for example, that in this country every 
year, 5 million people buy quarter-inch drills, but nobody wants 
quarter-inch drills. What they want are holes. What the American people 
want are microwaves and televisions and computers and electricity and 
hot water in their homes. How that power comes is really not what they 
are concerned with, but they do want options.
  A revolution has occurred. Without a doubt this system served us well 
for 130 years, but a revolution has occurred in the last 25 years. This 
chart dramatically shows what has happened. This is the price of a watt 
of solar energy. In the 1970s it was $76. Today it is 36 cents. This is 
revolutionary. This is disruptive. This is change. What this has 
enabled is for us to now tap into that very large, fully permitted 
nuclear fusion device in the sky that delivers power wirelessly to 
every city, town, village and hamlet on Earth.
  That is what we are talking about. Why is this important? For a 
number of reasons. If you combine the cheaper solar power with smart 
appliances that can use their power only when it is the most 
efficacious for the grid--smart meters that many of our grids now have, 
demand response that allows customers to diminish their demand at times 
of high demand on the grid, and new storage technologies, if you add 
all of those together, it is an entirely new world of electricity 
development. This is where we are today.
  We still have central powerplants. We still have wires, but we have 
homes and businesses making their own electricity and storing their own 
electricity from that big nuclear fusion

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plant up in the sky. This is a good development. No. 1, it empowers 
consumers. It empowers families.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  It is also true, is it not, as we speak, that there is tremendous 
work being done on battery storage. That will change it even more; is 
that right?
  Mr. KING. That is absolutely correct. That I will touch on in a 
moment. That potentially changes the relationship with utilities and 
with the grid system. This is a good thing. This provides competition. 
Our whole system is based upon competition. Everybody here talks about 
the power of the market. That is what we are talking about here.
  It strengthens the grid by making it more resilient because power is 
going in two directions. We had a huge ice storm in Maine in 1998. The 
power went off. Everybody lost their power--600,000 people. The people 
who had generators in their homes could make their own power, but those 
were very few people. Now we are talking about a grid that is not 
wholly dependent upon a central powerplant but power goes in both 
directions.
  I am on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. This is a 
national security issue. One of the great vulnerabilities of this 
country is a cyber attack on critical infrastructure. To the extent 
this infrastructure is self-healing and distributed, it is less subject 
to a catastrophic attack.
  It saves money because it saves money on distribution and powerplants 
if people are making their own investments and you don't not need the 
level of transmission and distribution wires. Of course it could 
substantially reduce our dependency upon fossil fuels. There are two 
possible reactions to this from the utility companies. One is to adopt, 
adjust, and reinvent themselves, as companies have done. I remember New 
England Tel. New England Tel is now Verizon. If they were still focused 
exclusively on landlines with the old black telephones, they would be 
long gone. Instead, they reinvented themselves because of a change of 
technology, and now they are one of the Nation's leading wireless 
providers. AT&T used to be Ma Bell. Now it is a leading wireless 
provider because they adapted, and they changed their whole business 
model based upon new economic realities. That is one option.
  There are utilities in the country that are adopting that option; 
that are finding new business models, relationships with their 
customers, in order to participate in this system and be counselors and 
energy providers and consultants to their customers in this new world. 
On the other hand, they can fight, resist, and try to delay. That is 
what we are talking about here today. That is what has happened in 
Nevada, imposing high fixed fees that ostensibly are to recover the 
costs, but everybody knows the real purpose is to strangle this 
industry in its infancy.
  I think those companies should think about the examples of Packard, 
Kodak, and Polaroid that failed to adapt, that failed to take account 
of new technological realities and ultimately failed. I don't think 
that is the future these companies want. This amendment is not a 
Federal takeover of State utility regulations. It provides guidance. It 
uses the term ``take into account.'' All it says is that if you are 
going to change a net metering regime, or if you are going to impose 
fees, they have to be based upon data and analysis, not arbitrary fees 
that are designed to strangle the industry. It is not a mandate for net 
metering or any other kind of payment. Again, what we are trying to do 
is to make sure that the benefits to the grid from a home 
installation--whether it is demand, response, storage, whatever--are 
measured as well as the cost.

  The issue is very simple. It is fair compensation to the customer for 
the energy they produce or save and fair compensation to the utility 
for maintaining the grid.
  I know there are costs to the utility for maintaining the grid, and 
they have to be fairly compensated. But the question is fair. What is 
the right number? An arbitrary exorbitant fee that essentially makes 
the development of solar or storage unfeasible is not the right number.
  The Democratic leader mentioned storage, and this is really an 
essential part of the discussion. As storage technology improves, this 
is where the utilities are most exposed. In my view, utilities are in a 
race with battery technology in order to determine who is going to 
provide the backup to the solar, wind, and demand response facilities 
in the house. Who is going to provide the backup?
  If the utilities insist upon high, unreasonable fees, eventually--and 
I think ``eventually'' is within 5 years; it is not 10 years, 20 years 
or 30 years--people are going to say: I am going to do my own storage, 
my own backup in my basement, and cut the wires. Then the utility has 
lost the customer all together, and I don't think that makes any sense.
  The real point is that change is coming anyway. The only question is 
whether it happens fairly, deliberately, and expeditiously and is fair 
to the customers as well as the utilities or whether it goes through a 
long series of individual fights State by State.
  Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. KING. I yield to the Democratic leader.
  Mr. REID. I am wondering if my friend is aware of a couple of 
examples. In Nevada there is Tesla and Elon Musk. It is a massive 
company. He is building batteries for his vehicles and other things.
  The Tesla plant I toured a few months ago is under construction. As 
to the floor plan, the only place in America with a bigger 
manufacturing facility is the Boeing plant in Washington. That is how 
huge it is. The man who is running that plant for him indicated to me 
that they had found that the price, as indicated by the Senator from 
Maine, was so cheap with solar that it is going to be basically mostly 
solar, nothing else. Was the Senator aware of that?
  Mr. KING. Absolutely, and I think that is what has to be part of the 
discussion, because if the utilities insist on fighting and trying to 
overprice their storage, people are just going to say: I am going to 
buy my own storage, put it in the basement, and cut the wire.
  Mr. REID. And remember what he is manufacturing in this huge facility 
is batteries. So I would think Elon Musk, who has been sending people 
and cargo into space, is going to come up with an idea to make better 
batteries.
  I would also suggest to my friend that the example of Packard and 
Kodak were very good examples. But more modern, I read a book a few 
months ago about Reed Hastings, the owner of Netflix, who had already 
been successful in another line of work when he went into Netflix. We 
all remember Blockbuster, where we would go to rent our movies. He went 
to Blockbuster and he said: I have an idea; here is what I would like 
to do.
  They said: No, that is just a niche business. We are not interested.
  Blockbuster is gone, and Netflix is every place. So the same thing is 
going to happen one way or another to these monopolies that have the 
power in our States. They should work something out to make sure they 
are ahead of the curve. Otherwise, they are going to be behind the 
curve--and fairly quickly.
  Would the Senator agree with that?
  Mr. KING. I would agree, and that is exactly where I would conclude. 
I am not anti-utility. I am pro-customer. I am pro-competition. I am 
pro-free markets. I believe the utilities have a tremendous opportunity 
here to modify and adapt their business model to maintain their 
relationship with their customers. But if they do not, then I am afraid 
that technological changes such as storage are going to overtake them, 
and they could go the way of Kodak, Blockbuster, and Polaroid. I don't 
want to see that happen because I think they have a tremendous value to 
contribute to this discussion.
  I conclude by saying that this amendment is really a modest one. It 
is not a takeover of the regulatory process. It simply urges and 
advocates that the State public utilities commissions take into account 
the positive factors of solar as well as the costs in order to reach a 
fair compensation agreement between utilities and their customers.
  This is the future. It is going to happen. The only question is 
whether it happens efficiently, fairly or by fighting. I would prefer 
the former option. I think this is an important part of the future of 
this country, and we have an important role to play in this body.

[[Page S535]]

  I urge support for this amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

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