Belco and the Regulatory Authority have described the new electricity rate structure as a move towards greater transparency and fair, cost-reflective pricing. While separating generation and grid charges will make bills easier to understand, transparency alone is not enough. The charges themselves must also be fair.

The biggest concern is the increased facilities charge for customers with rooftop solar. The Regulatory Authority argues that distributed generators should pay more because they use the grid to both import and export electricity. While everyone should contribute to maintaining the grid, charges should reflect actual use.

Under the new structure, a homeowner with a small solar system that exports very little surplus electricity pays the same facilities charge as someone with a much larger system that exports significantly more power. If pricing is truly meant to be cost-reflective, treating all solar customers the same regardless of their impact on the grid is difficult to justify.

The inconsistency becomes even more apparent when compared with Bermuda's largest electricity users. Approximately 209 commercial demand customers consume about 40 per cent of the island's electricity, placing substantial demand on the grid, yet they pay comparatively far lower facilities charges than many residential solar customers. These large commercial users require fat, expensive cabling, extra transformers, etc, to operate their systems. However, their facilities charge has decreased and is now going to be less than the small solar household.

This raises a simple question: if facilities charges are intended to recover the cost of maintaining the grid, why are some of its largest users paying proportionately less while homeowners who have invested in clean energy are paying more?

Rooftop solar benefits the entire island by reducing fuel consumption, lowering emissions, easing demand on central generation and diversifying energy supply. Public policy should encourage these investments, not weaken the financial incentive to make them.

The greatest irony is that a reform promoted as increasing transparency has created a transparency issue of its own. The public have not been shown why all solar customers are treated the same regardless of the size of their systems, or why the largest electricity users appear to receive more favourable treatment.

True transparency is more than clearer bills. It requires a pricing methodology that is open, evidence-based and demonstrably fair. If Bermuda is serious about building a cleaner and more resilient energy future, electricity pricing must reflect both the costs and the benefits that different customers bring to the system.

Sunny Side Solar has helped many lower and middle-income homes and business afford a solar system where they otherwise wouldn't have been able to do so. This includes charities such as Meals on Wheels, the Christ Church Feeding Programme and the Transitional Living Centre. These organisations may not be able to afford the Belco increases in monthly costs without reducing the services they provide to some of the most vulnerable in our community. The changes Belco and the RA have brought about are prejudicially and retroactively penalising hardworking Bermudian charities for choosing to reduce pollution and the amount of money that leaves our island to pay for oil.

In many Bermudian solar households with low energy usage, it will now become cheaper to take the solar off their roofs and revert to a “regular” Belco bill! As such, as it stands, these Belco and RA proposed changes of increasing solar homeowner facilities charges by 300 per cent (tripling them) is a social injustice. The facilities charges could, and should, remain graduated based on usage, whether someone has solar or not, if we truly want to be equitable.

Sunny Side Solar stands together with those who have been marginalised by these unjust changes in protest to them. We will use all means available to ensure Bermuda progresses to a truly affordable and clean energy future.

Bermuda needs an energy and policy road map that works for the majority of Bermudians, not just the monopoly utility's profitability and the wealthiest. This present situation shows that the energy system is broken and we need a better way forward more than ever. Stay tuned as we continue to focus on our motto: Power to the People.

• Stuart Kriendler is the chief empowerment officer of Sunny Side Solar