Dive Brief:
- The Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) ruled on Wednesday to maintain the state's existing net energy metering (NEM) program, which allows customers to receive bill credits for solar at the retail rate.
- The PUC voted 3-0 "to maintain the status quo for the net metering program and close the docket," a spokesman for the agency told the Boulder Daily Camera. The ruling appears to have been an oral decision, with a written decision not yet available but expected within the coming days.
- Xcel had petitioned the PUC to examine the NEM rate and find that, under the current rate design and retail NEM rate, customers with distributed generation (DG) are receiving a hidden incentive. Xcel asked the PUC to find that DG customers are not paying their share of grid costs and thus a cost shift is occuring between DG-owning customers and non-DG-owning customers.
Dive Insight:
As in many other states before them, Colorado regulators have decided to keep net metering as is, at least for now.
Under the current NEM rate, solar customers are reimbursed at the retail rate of 10.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Xcel Energy estimated in its filings that solar's value is less than half of that, at 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Predictably, solar advocates were elated by the news that the PUC decided to maintain the current NEM program, while the utility was not.
In a statement, Rebecca Cantwell, the executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, lauded the decision as "the outcome we have been working towards" over the last year.
Xcel Energy said it was "dissapointed" by the ruling.
"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," spokesman Mark Stutz told the Daily Camera.
While Xcel says it will wait until the written decision comes out before making a final decision, Stutz indicated that the utility does not plan to appeal the ruling.
"There's really nothing to appeal," Stutz said. "They've come to the conclusion that there is no need to do anything at this time, and that's the decision for now."
Correction: A previous version of this article claimed Xcel petitioned the Colorado PUC to reduce the NEM rate. That is incorrect. Xcel petitioned the Colorado PUC to examine whether the NEM rate is fair and to find that distributed generation-owning customers are receiving a hidden incentive under the existing program, thus not paying their share of grid costs and causing a cost shift between DG-owning and non-DG-owning customers.
