Protectionist licensing schemes hit solar contractors

The request for reliable energy is driving a increasing marketplace for rooftop star panels combined with artillery storage, and 1 happening is certain. Where determination is simply a consenting purchaser and a consenting seller, there’s a California regulatory bureau acceptable to leap successful betwixt them and complicate matters.

In July, the Contractors State License Board voted for 2 caller rules that artifact star contractors from installing batteries, effectual November 1. Under the caller rules, artillery vigor retention systems (BESS) could beryllium installed lone by contractors with a C-10 electrical contractor license, not by a star contractor with a C-46 license.

The quality is that C-10 contractors employment certified electricians. The workforce is much highly trained, and much highly paid.

On Friday, the California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA) filed a suit successful California Superior Court successful San Francisco, asking the tribunal to overturn the caller rules and support the existing grooming standards successful place. Executive manager Bernadette Del Chiaro said determination is nary grounds that determination is immoderate information occupation with C-46 contractors installing artillery systems.

That’s confirmed successful a UC Berkeley Labor Center study commissioned by the Contractors State License Board. “There person been nary important incidents with wounded oregon decease that we could identify,” the researchers wrote.

The statement is implicit whether the deficiency of accidents is simply a credible information record, arsenic CALSSA maintains, oregon if it’s the effect of “data gaps that preclude the quality to reason that risks are low,” arsenic the Berkeley researchers assert.

What’s not successful quality is the aboriginal maturation imaginable of the artillery retention market. The California State Licensing Board has been addressing contractor classification jurisdictional issues for BESS since 2015, but arsenic much and much Californians question energy reliability successful a authorities that has normalized inferior powerfulness shutoffs, products specified arsenic the Tesla Powerwall and LG RESU are expected to go progressively fashionable among residential customers.

The Contractors State License Board accepted the proposal of the labor-friendly UC Berkeley researchers, who noted that certification requirements “increase workers’ income and mobility.” Without specified a standard, the study said, the effect is “inconsistent grooming carried retired by contractors connected the job, poorer wages and benefits, and less opportunities for transferability and vocation advancement for workers.”

Of course, it’s truly not the intent of the Contractors State License Board to find ways to rise wages, which raises costs and prices. The justification for CSLB licensing is the request to guarantee safety. The study can’t amusement that determination person been immoderate problems with BESS installations completed by C-46 star contractors successful California, truthful it cites imaginable information issues arsenic justification for prohibiting the star contractors and their workforce from participating successful the marketplace for artillery installations.

But it’s wide that information is not their lone concern. “A CSLB ruling to let C-46 to instal BESS would, implicit time, effect successful downward unit connected wages for electricians and greater competitory pressures connected C-10 contractors who put successful a higher skilled workforce,” the Berkeley study states.

That gives the crippled away. Government licensing requirements are excessively often a “pull up the ladder” instrumentality to support an existing radical of workers astatine the disbursal of opportunities for newer workers, often radical of color, to get a foothold successful a assemblage that offers an accidental for fiscal security. That’s not helpful.