Dive Brief:
- A bill in front of Missouri lawmakers would allow the state's smaller, rural cooperatives to enact new fees and create a separate rate class for customers with distributed generation.
- House Bill 340 was authored by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, but Midwest Energy News reports the changes could apply more broadly to the state's electric sector as it garners support from investor-owned utilities Kansas City Power & Light and Empire Electric.
- The proposal comes less than two years after the Missouri Energy Initiative released a study finding net metering was a positive for all electric customers in the state by reducing costs and emissions.
Dive Insight:
Missouri's electric cooperatives are entering a familiar battle seen in Arizona and Nevada over how to compensate distributed generation customers for the excess energy they export to the grid. Despite the 2015 study that found net metering a benefit for all Missouri customers, the state's electric cooperatives want to limit net metering over claims those customers shift costs onto non-DG customers' shoulders.
The bill would mean utilities, including municipal utilities, serving less than 20,000 customers could propose new fees that would make net metering less attractive. Those utilities serve roughly 20% of Missouri's electrical customers, according to Midwest Energy News.
The bill also specifies that the state's Public Service Commission "may require that the customer-generator obtain and maintain a reasonable amount of liability insurance coverage or other equivalent respecting the installation and operation of the qualified electric energy generation unit."
It is not the first time net metering has come under scrutiny in the Show Me state. Three years ago, solar advocates sued the Missouri Public Service Commission to stop it from granting the utilities' requests to end solar rebates in the state.
