The Wyoming Supreme Court on Friday affirmed a decades-old state law that incentivizes homes and small businesses to produce solar electricity — a critical win for those who have already invested in small solar arrays and those hoping to take advantage of federal solar energy programs coming down the pike, proponents say.
The Wyoming Public Service Commission erred when it approved a request by High Plains Power to shift from an annual to a monthly compensation scheme with customers who intermittently contribute their excess solar-generated electricity back to the utility, the court’s 17-page decision states.
The court rejected High Plains Power’s plan to compensate solar users for their excess power at a monthly wholesale rate rather than the higher retail rate, erasing the state’s intention to incentivize homeowners and small businesses to invest in their own small solar arrays.
Solar users who supply power to the grid use a bi-directional meter to measure energy pulled from the utility as well as excess energy delivered to their utility system, and they are credited for that extra power through a process called net-metering.
“How ‘credit or compensation’ is valued each month is central to this appeal,” the court said. The court agreed with the petitioner in the case, Sheridan-based landowner advocacy group Powder River Basin Resource Council, which argued that small solar array customers “invested in net-metering systems with the understanding the Legislature incentivized them to do so by offering credit or compensation at retail, not lower, rates.”
The Public Service Commission must now reconsider the monthly tariff it approved for High Plains and potentially two other electric co-ops in the state that were not part of the lawsuit, which will likely result in a refund to their net-metering customers.
“We are grateful that the terms on which we chose to make an investment in a solar system will be maintained,” High Plains Power net-metering customer Elizabeth Aranow said in a prepared statement, via the resource council. “We hope that the rooftop solar industry will continue to grow, providing more jobs and more distributed electricity.”
How it works
In Wyoming, basic net-metering laws apply to residential and small business customers with 25-kilowatt or smaller solar arrays. According to state statute, qualifying residential and small business net-metering customers must be credited for the excess power they generate, but don’t use, and supply back into the system for other customers to use.
For example, if a customer uses 1,000 kilowatt hours in a month, but generates 1,200 kilowatt hours during the same period, sending 200 kilowatt hours of electricity back into the system, the utility must credit that customer for 200 kilowatt hours in the next monthly billing cycle. That kilowatt hour-for-kilowatt-hour exchange occurs at the retail rate. Unused credits rollover month-to-month.
But, to disincentivize net-metering customers from vastly overbuilding a personal solar array to game the system, any leftover credits at the end of the year are paid out to the customer at the utility’s lower wholesale rate. The compensation method struck down by the Wyoming Supreme Court allowed High Plains Power to bypass month-to-month kilowatt-hour credits at the retail rate and instead compensate customers each month at the wholesale rate. That resulted in a major reduction in overall compensation to net-metering customers, according to the resource council.
“Personal solar doesn’t earn you money, it just saves you money.”
Scott Kane, Creative Energies Solar
“If left to stand, it would have paved the path for other electric utilities to enact similar policies rendering customers’ solar investments much less economic and gravely threatening Wyoming’s growing solar industry,” Powder River Basin Resource Council Board Member and home solar owner Bob LeResche said in a prepared statement.
“Personal solar doesn’t earn you money, it just saves you money,” Lander-based home solar company Creative Energies Solar co-founder Scott Kane told WyoFile.
Net-metering opposition
The Legislature has repeatedly considered reforming the state’s net-metering law in response to claims that customers without personal solar arrays are forced to subsidize those who can afford to invest in home solar. Most recently, the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Interim Committee discussed a draft measure in July but declined to move the measure forward. Regulated utilities, member-owned co-ops and others, supported the measure.
Mike Nasi, an attorney for Texas-based firm Jackson Walker, helps direct Wyoming’s Energy Policy Network — a group that advocates for the continued use of coal, including through litigation against proposed coal plant closures in other states. He said Minerals Committee Co-chair Rep. Donald Burkhart Jr. (R-Rawlins) asked him to testify on the proposed measure.
He noted that several states have already restricted net-metering compensation without the consequence of disincentivizing customers from installing solar systems to save money.
“There is a rising movement in our country of civil rights groups complaining about lower income folks in our world being asked to cross-subsidize stuff that only rich people can afford,” Nasi told committee members. “And I don’t fault anybody for putting solar on their roof. But the people who can’t afford to buy rooftop solar are subsidizing it already. Anybody who pays taxes already subsidizes solar panels to a great extent.”
Home solar users and other proponents of Wyoming’s current net-metering law spoke against the measure, saying many people chose to invest in home solar based on Wyoming’s long-established net-metering law. Several pointed to a 2022 analysis of net-metering in Wyoming — paid for by home solar energy proponents — that suggests any customer-to-customer subsidization occuring in Wyoming is so small it’s difficult to measure, given the small amount of home and small business solar generation.
“In every instance, [proposed legislation] meant to handicap the small-scale solar industry has come and gone without success,” said Devon Brubaker, Director of the Southwest Wyoming Regional Airport in Rock Springs, which utilizes solar energy. “It begs the question, why do we keep coming back to the subject that is not an issue when the state faces so many other critical, time-sensitive issues?”
Hi folks, would someone please educate me as to the rationale behind the assertion that the backyard solar folks are being subsidized by people who don’t have backyard solar? How? Our family has spent many thousands of our own dollars to have solar, and each and every month we pay a fee to MDU that can be used to maintain the grid. This is whether we are over-producing or not. And we buy electricity in the winter, when our array can’t keep up. Our neighbors love that we’re sending juice their way. Rooftop solar also serves to diversify the grid. This “subsidizing” thing is a head-scratcher.
The rest of the world will move forward, with or without Wyoming.
The people who have a solar array have invested in infrastructure and they own the property that it is on so reasonably they should make a profit on there investment as possible
This is good news. I’m going to get another Tesla Power Wall.
I have a house in California I inherited. My father was a early adopter of solar panels. All of our water is heated by the sun. This would be cost prohibitive in Wyoming. We also have photovoltaic energy panels. How much we Gerard and put into the grid calculated and documented monthly on the bill. At the end of the year we pay a true up Bill. Which in some years has been $100.00
Nevada is worse. They promise you rebates, incentives ect. But the homeowner gets nothing. And you must tie into NV Energy so they get your excEssex power for free.
I enjoyed the article. It had the appearances of clear unbiased reporting. It is amusing that the people interested in disincentivizing solar power for small users, primary single family homes, love to hide behind those who can not afford the installations. It is clearly a phony ploy to attempt to hide from the facts and the power companies and their economic support groups that feel threatened by the fantastic benefits small solar offers to all people. Once it is clear that the power companies can not screw over small solar users more relatively “poor” people will be able to go solar which will benefit everyone and the planet with the possible exception of the coal companies which probably explains where the whining is coming from.
Yes that how it should work but the power company’s don’t want it to
Indeed, if power companies were truly looking after the “poor” people they’d stop the rate increases we’ve been seeing.
I’m not sure what to think about this issue. Both sides make legitimate points. What I find laughable is that the same legislators who are so concerned that lower income citizens can’t afford solar panels, have time & again refused to help these same people by approving Medicaid expansion. I believe their ONLY motivation regarding their position on net metering is propping up the fossil fuel industry. Let’s get real.
The consumer will PAY for this. Most people have no clue.
The higher expense will go into the rate base. It will NOT come out of the utility profit! Electric customers will pay.
The vast majority of this excess solar power is generated when there is sufficient power in the grid to meet demand and is EXCESS!
Most of this excess solar power is generated during non peak periods!
Marvin you are right in one way. It takes a company so much in sales everyday to stay profitable and pay expenses like employees and maintain the grid. But look at another way. US government could have been installing solar panels on houses/businesses for last 25 years for citizens rather that starting endless wars in Iraq/afgahistan and elsewhere. How much has all that contributed to this global warming crap we hear about? I would bet 10 times the coal environmental impact.
I don’t agree. Right now, my solar is powering my AC and both of my neighbor’s as well. We all heat with gas in the winter, so our electric demands are lower then. This is the peak time, and our array is providing.
Be thankful for getting credits ,if you want whole sale prices for extra power you can also help to pay and maintain the grid it goes to !
There is a separate fee on all utility bills that is for covering the delivery (physically getting the power to your home) of the electricity. The cost per kWH is for only the electricity that is delivered by the Utility from the producer (not the Utility).
Not always. In most cases the utility ‘s fixed cost recovery is a combo of a fixed charge and the rest is blended into the kWh usage.
Everyone subsidizes the coal industry with costly environmental impacts, abandoned mine cleanups, shortened lives of workers, medical costs of workers, and direct pollution impacts that will impact living beings for centuries, all of which the coal industry does not pay for.
Bad call
With the folks with small scale renewables when they have access electricity they can only put in less than 20% of the actual Watts
Armed with a volt amp meter
You can test at any installation
Multiply your results and get the actual watts it’s closer to 15%, but we’ll just call it 20% for right now so the problem is they want credit for 100%, so how’s the power going to make up for the 85%, they’re not actually putting in yes you guessed it rates going up net metering not looking so favorable for the renewables
It’s called ohm’s law
Think of it like pumping water so once connected to the grid there’s pressure there called volts average line voltage is about 240 volts maximum line voltage is supposed to be 274 because of Enron and by the way it’s kind of the same thing
Getting paid for power they’re not actually putting in the grid
That’s not how meet metering works. It only credits for kilowatts actually produced.
Quite a mishmash you’ve written there. That’s not how net metering works, and I think you’ve also confused the conversion efficiency of sunlight into electricity into there as well — not knowing that the latest commercially available panels are better than that: https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/most-efficient-solar-panels/.
Electrical Engineer here. That’s some words you have there. In short, nope, you have no clue what you are talking about.
Thank goodness, I had no success in following that line of reasoning. Glad it wasn’t just me.