Net metering seems like a simple concept. It encourages individual property owners to do something important for the environment and save money at the same time.
With Duke Energy’s program, for instance, a customer whose house is equipped with solar panels can send any excess energy produced to others in their general area to use. The customer gets credit from Duke for the power generated. That can reduce electricity bills to the solar provider to almost nothing.
A bill filed in the Indiana House of Representatives by Rep. Eric Koch, R-Bedford, would change the calculus of how this works. Koch says the idea of the bill is to promote and increase the use of net metering. But clearly, it would protect power companies by reducing the incentive for small-scale power systems to enter the picture. It would reduce the reward for the clean power renewable energy customers contribute to the power grid.
You have to go no further than the first sentence of the summary of the bill on the Legislature’s own website to see it’s written for the utility companies, not the consumers. The digest says the bill “Provides that the utility regulatory commission (IURC) may authorize an electricity supplier to establish certain tariffs, rates and charges, and credits with respect to the acquisition of electricity from a customer that uses distributed generation ....”
In other words, it would pave the way for utilities to establish financial policies favorable to them at the expense of those who have recognized the importance of expanding solar energy usage and committed to it by putting solar panels on their homes — and in many cases — their places of worship. Indeed, religious congregations, including some in Bloomington, who believe strongly in taking care of the Earth, have been some of the early adopters of solar power.
Though current solar users would likely be grandfathered, the changes would cut into the potential savings for new solar customers by 60 to 70 percent, the bill’s opponents say.
Utilities say they need to get more from solar customers to offset the maintenance of lines, transformers and other capital investments in the power grid. Individual solar proponents say their power generation — if their numbers are allowed to swell — would offset the need for constructing new, large utility plants, transmission and distribution infrastructure; and reduce reliance on more expensive and polluting conventional power.
Indiana should be encouraging people to embrace renewable energy such as solar. This bill does the opposite. It’s bad for Hoosiers.
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