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PUC chair outlines low‑income and market models for community solar; committee urged to avoid rushed design
Summary
Public Utility Commission Chair offered two models for community solar: a low‑income targeted program and a market (utility‑run or developer‑run) model; he urged careful design to avoid large administrative costs or an undue cost shift to nonparticipants.
The Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee on March 12 heard preliminary ideas from Chair Margaret (Tim) McNamara of the Public Utility Commission on potential successor programs for group net metering and community solar.
Two broad approaches: McNamara offered two distinct approaches and urged the committee to treat them separately rather than trying to force a single program to solve both problems.
1) Low‑income‑focused community solar: a targeted program with a clear eligibility definition (for example, based on area median income) and built‑in privacy protections for applicants. The chair suggested coordinating with the Public Service Department’s ARPA‑funded low‑income community renewables work (the “AIGER”/RE4C‑style pilots) and the broader rate‑stabilization study the PUC is preparing to examine ways to lower or stabilize energy costs for low and moderate income households.
2) Market / voluntary models: two market‑oriented designs were discussed. One approach is a developer‑led, purely voluntary “community‑supported” model in which customers contract directly with developers to sponsor projects and receive financial returns; this model sits largely outside utility regulation and avoids cost‑shifts to nonparticipants. The second approach is a utility‑run model (examples exist from cooperative utilities) where the utility contracts for projects and customers make an upfront payment or subscription and receive bill credits; that model connects the subscription to the retail bill but requires careful design, particularly for small utilities and to limit administrative overhead and cost shifts.
Costs, administrative complexity and equity: McNamara emphasized three design risks to avoid: (a) high administrative or litigation costs from a complex statutory design, (b) regressive rate impacts if nonparticipants subsidize participants, and (c) poorly targeted low‑income incentives that produce a large subsidy for higher‑income customers while failing to reach the intended low‑income population. He recommended the committee allow well‑scoped pilots and to coordinate with the Public Service Department’s existing low‑income renewable pilots.
Next steps: the chair offered to return as the committee shapes concrete language and asked the committee to decide first whether it prefers a low‑income carve‑out, a market subscription approach, or both. He also suggested slow, iterative policy development rather than a highly prescriptive one‑size‑fits‑all statute.
