![]() ![]() Since that agreement, residential installation growth has trended downward. The interim rate, 9.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, equated to 90 percent of the average energy rate. Rocky Mountain Power and solar advocates, including the Utah Solar Energy Association and Utah Citizens Advocating Renewable Energy, but not Vote Solar, agreed to bridge the switch from run-of-the-mill net metering, where a customer is charged or credited based on the net difference between electricity imports and exports, to the longer-term export credit rate. The utility’s current export credit rate is the result of a “transition program” established in 2017. Utah’s residential market, which ranks just below the nation’s top 10, has already faced hiccups in recent years. “That’s literally lower than the avoided cost.” “That’s not even trying to be objective,” he said. The rate proposed by the utility is brazenly low, said Austin Perea, a senior solar analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. In testimony filed with the state Public Service Commission in February, Robert Meredith, the utility’s director of pricing and cost of service, said Rocky Mountain Power based its proposed export credit price on “the actual value for exported energy as it varies across seasons…and time-of-use periods.” “They’ve taken a deliberately narrow view of the benefits that solar can provide.”Ī utility spokesperson told Greentech Media it’s still reviewing Vote Solar’s testimony, which includes the study results. “Rocky Mountain Power is just not looking at the whole picture,” Kobor told Greentech Media. ![]() In contrast, Rocky Mountain Power’s analysis includes just three categories, said Kobor: avoided line losses, avoided energy costs and integration costs. The organization also added in several benefits it was unable to monetarily quantify, such as reliability and resiliency. The group's quantification of solar value takes into account 11 economic variables, including avoided energy costs as well as environmental impacts like the health benefits of reducing air pollution. Vote Solar conducted its own analysis of how customer-owned generation interacts with the grid, signing on more than 3,300 customers willing to provide the organization with their solar-system data. ![]() The solar industry has logged wins in some of these cases but utility challenges continue. In recent years, net metering has met utility resistance in states such as Indiana, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas. States including New York, California and Hawaii have phased out net metering or begun the transition to more complex programs to value residential solar. It may even help set precedent for valuing solar based on an extensive set of positive attributes, rather than just its grid benefits. Last week, Vote Solar presented the results of a study that valued exported self-generation in Utah at 22.6 cents per kilowatt-hour - higher than Rocky Mountain Power’s suggested value by a wide margin.Īlong with determining how much consumers get paid for the power produced by solar installed on their roofs, Utah's regulatory proceeding could have wider implications for net metering struggles around the country. “The outcome of this docket is really going to decide the future for rooftop solar for Utahns,” said Briana Kobor, regulatory director at Vote Solar, an industry group that advocates for solar accessibility. A wide gulf separates the groups’ calculated - and their ideology on valuing the resource. Rocky Mountain Power and solar advocates are now locked in a regulatory tussle over the true costs of solar, as the state’s public service commission considers the value for exported customer-generated power. Under a proposal from Rocky Mountain Power, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway utility PacifiCorp with 915,000 customers in the state, the “export credit rate” given to new solar customers would drop from 9.2 cents per kilowatt-hour to an average of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, a value that analysts say would come in well below the utility's avoided cost. For residential solar customers in Utah, reimbursement for the solar power that installations export to the grid is at risk of dropping precipitously. ![]()
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