The Solar Land Grab

And the Eternal Rate Hike

The Nevada Legislature, in its boundless wisdom, has taken up the noble cause of rescuing the common folk from the clutches of high energy bills—or so they say.

Assemblymember Howard Watts, with a heart brimming with benevolence and a keen eye for rooftop real estate, has unveiled AB458, a bill designed to allow renters the privilege of solar power, a heretofore reserved for the landed gentry. “I’ve toiled with housing advocates, clean energy prophets, and community sages to craft a policy that not only makes fiscal sense but also delivers salvation in the form of savings,” proclaimed Watts, no doubt with the gravity of a man carving his name into the annals of history.

The bill, in short, seeks to remove the pesky legal obstacles that have kept Nevada’s renters from enjoying the golden rays of government-approved sunshine.

Meanwhile, Assemblymember Tracy Brown-May has thrown down the gauntlet against NV Energy with AB452, a bill that would prevent the utility from gleefully foisting the full cost of fuel price increases onto the weary shoulders of its customers. “Even as families shivered in the dark, their bills kept climbing,” lamented Brown-May, who seems to suspect some measure of corporate greed afoot—an allegation that, if true, would surely shock the nation.

Of course, NV Energy is not one to sit idly by while the legislature gallops forth with its grand ideas. The utility, ever the visionary, has already charted its path to 2028 with renewable energy, battery storage, and a smidgen of natural gas to keep the lights on when the sun decides to clock out early. Representatives insist that while batteries are improving, they are not yet ready to shoulder the burden alone, so some good old-fashioned fossil fuel reliability is still required—an assertion that has not impressed the more fervent disciples of clean energy.

Local activist Jackie Spicer, with the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition, suggests that NV Energy is simply taking “the easy route” by continuing to use natural gas. NV Energy spokesperson Meghin Delaney, ever the realist, counters that “batteries are getting better at long-term storage, but they’re not fully there yet.”

And so, the great tug-of-war continues. But let us not be distracted by the particulars of energy production, for the real news is this–the cost of it all is about to go up, as it always does.

NV Energy has a grand scheme to improve infrastructure and to pay for these improvements, a mere nine percent rate hike looms on the horizon—though, in an act of extraordinary generosity, they assure us that if we use precisely the same amount of energy next year as we did this year, we might, by some mysterious arithmetic, end up paying less. Nevadans, meanwhile, are growing increasingly weary of the ever-rising price of simply existing.

And so, as NV Energy busies itself, drafting its next grand plan for 2029 and beyond, the rest of us wait, wallets in hand, to see just how much lighter they will become in the name of progress.