Offsetting utility rate increases with solar in California

Across the United States, local utility rates are rising year after year.

The utility that services Ventura, California is Southern California Edison (SCE). Rob Harvey, owner of Ultra Storage, forecasted that SCE would soon increase the price of electricity—an outlook shared by The Solar Contractor, a Ventura County-based solar installation company.

Raising prices was one course of action SCE took to help recover losses caused by the tragic Thomas Fire the Ventura area endured in 2017, along with the 2018 debris flows in Montecito. For Ultra Storage, investing in solar in 2024 was a sensible business decision to get ahead of upcoming rate increases.

Confirming Harvey’s strategy of saving money through solar, an August 2024 statement from SCE announced that approximately $55 million dollars would be recovered from customers through the implementation of new, higher rates.

The Solar Contractor is an experienced solar installer with a strong reputation.

Safety and reliability are among the key factors its team considers when designing and installing solar systems for their clients. As Wayne Pendrey, owner and president of The Solar Contractor, explains, “the reason we used Enphase for this commercial solar installation was based on our years of successfully installing Enphase on the majority of our residential solar projects.”

Servicing various types of local customers, Pendrey shares that “when Enphase released the new 208 V, three-phase commercial microinverters, I quickly found a project that could utilize them. My goal was to learn more and experience installing the IQ8P-3P, and we had a small learning curve thanks to our standard residential installations using Enphase technology.”  

After a positive experience, Pendrey sums it all up: “We’ll definitely be using the Enphase commercial solution on any 208 V, three-phase projects coming up in the future.”