Again, Ideas so good, they have to be mandatory. I am a proponent of solar power, but not a fan of the government compelling individual homeowners to have them on their homes. Distributing out the production of power to home owners forces them, and developers, to assume the burden of installation, maintenance, replacement, and financing, causing massive inefficiencies in all of these, (including the installation in many poorly-placed locations) rather than having the power company responsible for this. This law FORCIBLY takes money out of the pocket of home owners, & puts it into the hands of developers, installers, and financing companies, rather than finding ways to INCENTIVIZE investors & homeowners to adopt the technology (tax credits, easing of other environmental constraints to building, etc). This makes an already expensive place to live, even more expensive.
California wants to reduce dependence upon fossil fuels, and foreign sources of energy - both good ideas - though how we are going about it is poor execution, and largely inefficient. If the state were serious about it, the legislature would work to get PG&E to install large scale solar energy production facilities, taking advantage of economies of scale, centralized locations (land is dirt cheap in the central valley, Mojave desert, etc), and the existing grid, making the entire enterprise much more efficient, and less expensive for everyone.
Steve (& others) who are involved professionally in the industry - I do appreciate the information & experience you are sharing on this thread, & I agree there is a lot of miss-information about solar. I am a proponent of solar power, just not of home owners & investors being compelled to adopt it whether they want to or not. I recall back in graduate school having an discussion on plausibility of solar power, & calculating that the entire needs of the US power grid could be satisfied by installing PV cells on just the Nevada triangle (which is already largely owned by the federal government).