The pace of solar development in Maine, and whether it grows through thousands of rooftop installations or a limited number of utility-scale projects, has been the subject of debate this year in state government. The outcome is important to homeowners, because a key part of the discussion has centered around net metering.
Net metering is an existing law by which utilities provide a one-to-one credit to customers on their bills for power they generate and feed back into the grid. Homeowners who make more electricity than they use each month get a credit toward future bills.
At least 40 states have net metering laws. But as more and more homes go solar, utilities are pushing back, saying the system won’t fairly compensate them for the full cost of providing service to all customers. At the same time, many utilities want to control rate impact and, some say, the future of solar, by lobbying for policies that encourage large, gridscale projects over rooftop installations.
Attempts to undermine existing net metering laws have led to drawn-out battles in some states, including Nevada and Hawaii. Maine has relatively little solar development by comparison, but proposed changes here have attracted national attention, especially from trade groups representing installers. That’s because most of the solar development in Maine is at homes, and home customers depend on the net metering law to make their installations economical.
In Maine, net metering has been criticized by Gov. Paul LePage, who says it’s a subsidy that raises costs for other electric customers. Clean energy advocates, meanwhile, say net metering is crucial to Maine’s renewable power growth.
This past winter, a stakeholder group that included utilities, the state’s Public Advocate, clean-energy advocates and solar installers, reached a compromise that would do away with net metering for new solar customers and replace it with a 20-year price guarantee. The plan contained a goal of expanding solar generation in Maine from its current capacity of 18 megawatts to 250 megawatts in 2021.
In early March, the details were being fashioned into a bill for consideration in the Legislature. It was unclear at publication time how the issue would be resolved by lawmakers or by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, which is charged with reviewing the status of net metering this year.
Either way, it seems that net metering in its present form is facing some sort of change. For these and other reasons, this is an important period for the future of solar energy in Maine.
More on this topic: Harnessing the sun: The state and opportunity of solar
