An investor-owned utility petition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to essentially federalize traditional state authority over solar net metering is getting negative comments so far, The comment period closes next week (June 15).
Even the Edison Electric Institute, which has long opposed various state net metering programs, has declined to comment on the petition filed in April by the New England Ratepayers Association, seeking to require that net metering – payments by utilities to customers with solar photovoltaic panels that produce more power than they need personally and sell the excess to the grid – be federalized under the terms of the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act.
The petition argues that when excess power from a customer’s solar panels is sold back to the distribution utility’s grid, it becomes a wholesale transaction in interstate commerce. That’s an expansive jurisdictional approach to interstate commerce that FERC has long been unwilling to take. The commission has kept its hands off of the distribution grid, while regulating the transmission grid.
In a 2016 Electricity Journal article, Jim Rossi at the Vanderbilt University law school, wrote, “FERC has consistently rejected opportunities to regulate net metering, holding that energy flowing from a customer to the distribution grid is not a wholesale sale.”
The New England group bills itself as a grass roots organization of “families and businesses that are served by regulated utilities” in the region, but that description has more than a slight smell of astroturf. According to work done by Public Citizen, and reported in Utility Dive, the group has 12 company members, who paid about $20,000 each in 2018. That’s based on the group’s IRS 990 non-profit tax filings.
Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s veteran utility analyst, said, “NERA isn’t some rag-tag punch of dreamers. They are a well-financed corporate front group pursuing a smart, aggressive playbook.”
So far, with the major investor-owned utilities on the sidelines, opposition has come from state regulators, who see the move as a power grab to slow solar photovoltaics. Tim Echols, a Republican and vice chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, and a strong solar advocate, said, “The harm would be minute in Georgia right now because we only have about 2,000 customers net metering. It would stall rooftop growth for the future.” The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners is preparing comments on the petition, with former FERC Commissioner Suedeen Kelly working with the group of state regulators.
Twenty four Democratic members of Congress have also weighed in on the NERA petition. In a May 26 letter, they argue that the proposal “would upend the long-held tradition that retail level transactions involving end-user electricity customers fall under the jurisdiction of the states.” They also called on NERA to identify the 12 companies that funded the petition.
— Kennedy Maize