[G]reen Mountain Power is asking the state to raise the amount of renewable energy it can purchase from small, non-commercial installations.
The utility announced last week that it reached its 112-megawatt net metering cap for solar power, a limit defined as 15 percent of a utility’s peak load.
Green Mountain Power has asked state regulators for permission to buy an additional 7.5 megawatts (MW) of net metered solar power.
The cap does not apply to net metering consumers with home-sized solar installations of 15 kilowatts or less, and the company will place no limit on the number of those applications it will accept, Green Mountain Power representatives said.
“That’s what customers say they want,” Green Mountain Power spokesperson Kristin Carlson said. “It lets people go solar on their rooftops, but does it in a way that’s responsible, and doesn’t impact their rates.”
See related story: Vermont’s solar goldrush
The additional 7.5 megawatts would allow consumers who don’t want to install solar systems on their homes to purchase energy from community solar projects that generate up to 150 kilowatts of power.
But that extra capacity won’t be available anytime soon. Asa Hopkins, director of the Vermont Public Service Department’s planning and energy resources division, says the Public Service Board is unlikely to consider Green Mountain Power’s petition in the near future.
“In the short order it seems unlikely,” he said. “They’re going to need to have some process around it, so it’s not going to be an immediate thing.”
Meanwhile, the Public Service Board is drafting new net metering rules for utilities that would go into effect in 2017.
Striking a balance
Net metering allows electric consumers who generate their own power to sell it back to the grid at a substantially higher rate than utilities pay for wholesale power. The program gives homeowners and institutions the opportunity to offset costs associated with renewable energy.
Critics of the scheme say ratepayers are on the hook for the renewable energy subsidy.
Carlson said the extension won’t raise rates.
“For us, it’s a smart, strategic approach,” she said. “We did the analysis, and there’s pretty much no rate impact for what we’re proposing.”
The state’s quasi-judicial Public Service Board may approve Green Mountain Power’s petition only if it serves a statutorily defined public benefit. The board must determine if raising the cap would be in the best interest of the ratepayers.
Potential costs to ratepayers include the higher price of net metered renewable energy in comparison to other pricing arrangements, Hopkins said.
“There’s a difference between getting lots of solar and getting a lot of net metering,” Hopkins said.
Utilities can also purchase commercially produced renewable energy through what’s known as the standard offer program, he said, at a rate of about 12 cents per kilowatt.
Net metered power, on the other hand, costs 19 cents to 20 cents per kilowatt.
State regulators must strike a balance between purchasing renewable energy at commercial rates, typically from large producers, and supporting smaller systems used by homeowners and institutions, he said.
The state’s objective “is not ‘solar at any cost,’ it’s ‘cost-effective pursuant to our goals,’ and there’s some balance to strike there,” Hopkins said.
Other utilities reach cap
Green Mountain Power isn’t the only electric utility to reach the net metering cap, which is statutorily set at 15 percent of an electricity producer’s peak output.
The Hardwick Electric Department, Hyde Park Village Water and Light, Jacksonville Electric Co. and Vermont Electric Cooperative are all at or near the net metering cap as well, Hopkins said.
The remaining 14 smaller electric utilities in Vermont are in no danger of reaching the cap soon, he said.
Vermont Electric Co-op will stop taking net metering applications at the end of November, and won’t resume until 2017, according to Andrea Cohen, the government affairs and member relations manager for VEC.
State law allows utilities to continue taking 15kW net metered consumers without seeking Public Service Board approval, but Cohen said the cost of doing so wouldn’t serve VEC’s members.
“It’s not because we don’t like renewables,” she said. “The concern has to do with pricing and net metering being above market rates, and for a small, member-owned utility that has a lot of small towns with the highest levels of poverty in the state, we didn’t feel comfortable” with expanding the program.
Cohen said she hopes new rules written by the Public Service Board will bring net metered pricing to a level that’s affordable for ratepayers.
“We’re hoping the new program and new rules will be closer in line to what we need to see to make net metering affordable in our communities,” she said.
