The Missouri House Utilities Committee held the first in a series of discussions on proposed fees for residential solar customers.
The fees were introduced as part of HB 539, legislation from Rep. Jeff Knight (R). The bill would require customers using solar panels to pay a fee and would add a grid access fee for customers who sell generated energy back to their utility.
The bill also would require equipment to meet a certain standard and for retail electric suppliers to allow consumers to use the energy they generate whenever they need it.
Knight told the local press, “I’m not against solar; I’m not here to kill jobs. I’m simply here for fairness in the industry.”
He argued that net metering solar customers should be looked upon to help fund the system involved in delivering electric power. He explained the bill as an attempt to establish a cost to grid usage.
Grid access charges are not the only type of fee typically imposed on residential solar customers, but all such fees carry the potential to cripple a region’s distributed solar market. In Missouri, a state with just 281.5 MW of installed solar capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), residential solar has been a consistent source of new capacity.
SEIA predicts that the state will add 851 MW in capacity over the next 5 years, a volume that could be hampered if the proposed fees are enacted.
During the bill’s next scheduled hearing, set to take place next week, representatives from Renew Missouri are expected to testify against HB 539. HB 539 has also faced opposition from some of the state’s residential installers, who say that pinning any necessary grid upgrades onto solar customers moves the state in the wrong direction.
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Why do solar advocates accept the political accusation that we alone are the only thing that reduces grid power consumption, endangering profits and unfairly passing necessary utility costs to non-solar customers? Necessary costs like, you know, like guaranteed profits, shiny trucks and imposing buildings? What about gas BBQs, water heaters, HVAC and ovens, LED lights, cool roofs, low-E windows, CHP, attic insulation, triple pane windows, silicon caulking? Where are the utility fees for those? For the time being they surely reduce power purchases more than distributed solar.
Not sure about MO utilities, but in other states utilities often get a guaranteed return on their assets, so are somewhat protected, making part of his argument moot.
If the owner of a home with solar was putting mw’s of power back to the grid I could see some case for arguing about line maintenance fees, but that is not the case.
He says he is not against solar, but seems he is. Utility companies have a broad reach!
I don’t get his argument that “net metering solar customers should be looked upon to help fund the system involved in delivering electric power”.
Seems like a double charge: 1. The system delivering the power is the solar system, and he wants a fee on that, and
2. the customer will still be paying all of the applicable rates and tariffs for the electricity they use during the hours when not producing via solar.
Can we get a bill that requires payments to residential renewable owners when their inverters clean up dirty grid sine waves? Or when they save utility energy by reducing line loss? Or how about when they provide extra energy to the grid during peak demand? Or when the utility saves money by reducing their need to build extra reserve generation? Or maybe when the utility benefits by charging full delivery costs to the neighbors for the energy produced by the panels right next door just like it came from their generation facility miles away?
When are we going to stop utilities from perpetuating their Big Lie that net metering neighbors are free loaders using the grid and not putting any value into it. This myth has been debunked in study after study. It’s okay for you as a reporter to point this out when it comes up. The opposing viewpoint (if you’re going for fair, unbiased reporting) is not lies about facts but would be different conclusions based on those same facts.
Call this claim by this legislator out for what it has been proven to be. A Big Lie!
Some people just don’t get it….. Rep Knight (Republican) told the local press, “I’m not against solar; I’m not here to kill jobs. I’m simply here for fairness in the industry.”
Perhaps he can explain how it is fair that fossil power plants can pollute the air, use all the water they want, using coal that pollutes everything around the mines and DOES NOT PAY A PENNY for damage caused to public or private property, environment and health, besides collectively killing… you can count the bodies.
I agree there should be a fair and level playing field.