Colorado’s Public Utility Commission ruled Wednesday afternoon that no changes were needed to the state’s net metering process, meaning that homeowners with solar installations will continue to receive retail rates for energy they produce.
“The PUC voted (3-0) today to maintain the status quo for the net metering program and close the docket,” PUC spokesman Terry Bote confirmed via email.
Net metering provides a credit for every kilowatt-hour an array puts on the grid at the same price residential customers are charged for electricity.
Wednesday’s ruling essentially rejected a proposal by Xcel which would have allowed it to quantify the subsidies all of its customers pay to support the solar rewards program. Xcel officials were hopeful the decision, by establishing that a subsidy existed and attaching a cost to it, would make the costs more transparent to the public and regulators.
Representatives from Xcel Energy said the company was “disappointed” by the decision.
“We have concerns about the long-term impacts of this direction and the ramifications it will have on customers and on the energy grid that everyone depends on,” said Mark Stutz, senior media representative for Xcel.
But net metering customers and solar advocates contested Xcel’s efforts, saying that it was a move on the company’s part to attach infrastructure costs to the solar rewards program and then to use those costs to justify reducing the amount of money they were paying solar reward customers.
“This appears to be the outcome we have been working towards in more than a year of work on this docket,” said Rebecca Cantwell, executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association in a statement. “We have worked in full collaboration with other members of the solar industry, and this represents a tremendous amount of hard work from many people.”
More than 25,000 solar systems have been installed since 2006 under Xcel’s Solar Rewards program, according to the PUC.
Bote said that although the PUC’s decision is technically open for appeal, the informational nature of the docket makes that course of action unlikely.
Stutz said Xcel is awaiting the written decision, expected in the coming days, before deciding how to move forward, but that “there’s really nothing to appeal.”
“They’ve come to the conclusion that there is no need to do anything at this time, and that’s the decision for now,” he said.
This article has been changed to clarify that the PUC decision did not concern reimbursement rates for net metering customers but rather the issue of whether non net-metering customers were helping subsidize the program and if so, how much those subsidies were worth.
Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com, @shayshinecastle
