The California Public Defender's Office (PAO) released a report on net metering at the end of August, claiming that the state's rooftop solar incentives will cost users without solar energy approximately $8.5 billion by the end of the year. PAO is a state agency tasked with advocating for California regulated utility customers to minimize billing costs as much as possible.

PAO stated that although the new NEM 3.0 net billing tariff (NBT) is an improvement over the previous net metering plan, it does not address the ongoing "cost transfer" issue from traditional NEM 1.0 and 2.0 customers to non solar taxpayers.

PAO suggests that the state government take one of the following two measures: providing compensation to NEM 2.0 customers based on the effective electricity prices at the time of adopting incentive measures, or converting NEM 1.0 and 2.0 accounts to NBT when selling homes or after 10 years of interconnection.

Bernadette Del Chiaro, Executive Director of the California Solar and Energy Storage Association (CALSSA), told Solar World that she is not concerned about the impact of the report on California's solar policies, but she is uneasy about PAO's stance on solar energy issues.

The California Public Defender's Office (PAO) recently released a fact sheet that repeats key points of discussion from utility companies regarding rooftop solar energy and the serious inaccurate costs of rooftop solar energy, advocating for changes to contract terms for 2 million solar consumers. PAO's unprecedented anti solar action is misleading and erroneous, "the PAO said in a press statement.