Kentucky

The Kentucky Municipal Energy Agency has signed a power contract to purchase most of the electricity from an 86 MW-AC solar power plant, which will begin to offset the loss of coal and gas facilities at the end of 2022.

The racking and tracker maker has secured eight additional manufacturing lines, including in six Southeast states.

The results of a 2021/2022 auction saw an additional 964 MW of utility-scale solar projects bidding in to supply capacity, suggesting a boom in solar.

The semi-public power giant will be passing the fee on to its member utilities, who will choose how to implement it. If passed on, for the average user the fixed charge would be around $6.75 per month.

The bill to allow utilities to impose fees and change compensation for customer-sited solar PV has been sidelined in the Kentucky Senate.

The semi-public power authority is not even trying to hide its attempt to slow down deployment of customer-owned solar and other forms of distributed generation.

In a roll call vote where many concerns were raised about House Bill 227 and its long-term effects on the state’s solar industry, Kentucky’s House of Representatives Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Energy voted this morning to move the bill to the floor.

HB 227, introduced this morning into the Natural Resources & Energy Committee of the Kentucky legislature, would end retail net metering for new customers on July 15.

A research paper by the Solar Energy Industries Association looks at the potential of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy to boost the commercial and industrial solar sector