As they say, the only reason Texas doesn’t fall into the Gulf of Mexico is because Oklahoma sucks!
Oklahoma residents who produce their own energy through solar panels or small wind turbines on their property will now be charged an additional fee, the result of a new bill passed by the state legislature and expected to be signed into law by Gov. Mary Fallin (R).
On Monday, S.B. 1456 passed the state House 83-5 after no debate. The measure creates a new class of customers: those who install distributed power generation systems like solar panels or small wind turbines on their property and sell the excess energy back to the grid. While those with systems already installed won’t be affected, the new class of customers will now be charged a monthly fee — a shift that happened quickly and caught many in the state off guard.
“We knew nothing about it and all of a sudden it’s attached to some other bill,” Ctaci Gary, owner of Sun City Oklahoma, told ThinkProgress. “It just appeared out of nowhere.”
Because the surcharge amount has not been determined, Gary is cautious about predicting the impact it will have on her business. She has already received multiple calls from people asking questions about the bill and wanting to have solar systems installed before the new fee takes effect. “We’re going to use it as a marketing tool,” Gary said. “People deserve to have an opportunity [to install their own solar panels] and not be charged.”
For my sins, I lived there for a while. Ever since I’ve never called it anything but that Dreadful Flat Place.
This news doesn’t surprise me at all. The whole state is owned and pwned by the oil and gas industry.
US gas and oil oligarchs don’t want to be in the position of their opposite numbers in Europe. They simply want to keep polluting groundwater and causing earthquakes; and their hirelings in Oklahoma are scrambling to suck up.