House committee hears bill to add consumer disclosures, interconnection rules and new payment methods for rooftop solar

TOPEKA — The Kansas House Energy Committee on March 6 opened a hearing on House Bill 21‑49, a broad rewrite of state rules for distributed energy systems — chiefly rooftop solar, customer-sited storage and the payments and interconnection procedures that govern those systems.

The bill, explained by committee reviser Nick Myers, would require retailers who sell and coordinate financed distributed energy systems to give prospective customers a standalone disclosure document before a financed contract is final. It also would amend parallel generation and net‑metering statutes to clarify interconnection timelines, remove fixed size caps for residential and commercial systems, authorize locational market pricing for one cooperative utility, and increase the statutory purchase-cap the utilities must accept from parallel generation from 4% to 10% of historic peak demand.

Myers said the disclosure form would list system descriptions, guarantees of expected energy production and remedies if those guarantees are not met, the total cost to the customer, details about ownership and transferability of the system and any tax credits or rebates, the installer’s certification or master electrician license, prominent disclosure that the retailer is not affiliated with a utility or government agency, and a clear statement of fees — all in at least 10‑point type and in a customer-requested language. A failure to deliver required disclosures would render the financed contract null and void, he said.

Proponents told the committee the bill addresses a mixture of consumer protection failures and the need for consistent rules across Kansas’ many municipal, cooperative and investor‑owned utility territories. Jessica Lucas of Watkins Public Strategies, representing the Clean Energy Business Council, and Mark Horst of King Solar said they want the disclosures applied to all systems (not just financed deals) and that they support changes to compensation and sizing that provide consistent rules for installers and customers.

Mark Horst said the bill also attempts to standardize an "appropriate sizing" formula so utilities do not each apply different, evolving measures that leave customers and installers uncertain. "Our industry is at a place where we're not in our infancy anymore," Horst said. "It's time to set the baseline, close up those cracks." He also said the industry supports a trial of locational marginal price (LMP) compensation at Midwest Energy for up to 10 years to evaluate how it works.

Utilities and municipal systems largely opposed the bill as introduced but said they are negotiating amendments. Kimberly Genscher Savati, representing Kansas Municipal Utilities, said municipal utilities had developed a distributed‑generation toolkit over the past year and want to be sure any statutory changes preserve safety, local authority and compliance with federal rules. Terry Pemberton of the Kansas Municipal Energy Agency and Reagan McLeod of the Kansas Electric Cooperatives raised concerns about the bill’s scope, saying it could sweep in large facilities and market arrangements that raise federal‑jurisdiction issues and operational risks for small utilities.

Midwest Energy’s Mike Morley and Heartland REA CEO Mark Schreiber urged the committee to align exported‑energy compensation with market prices. The draft bill preserves the existing statutory premium for small systems — payment at 150% of the utility's monthly average cost of energy (or the utility's avoided cost) for systems 200 kilowatts and below — and 100% of avoided cost for larger systems. Myers said the bill as written keeps those figures but adds a clause allowing Midwest Energy to use LMP for its customers; that LMP provision carries a sunset date of July 1, 2035.

Opponents said market‑based pricing raises operational and billing complications for utilities with multiple pricing nodes and for municipals and cooperatives that lack advanced metering or staff capacity to implement LMP immediately. They also flagged concerns about negative wholesale prices in SPP real‑time markets that can push hourly LMP below zero, and asked for guardrails and a phased on‑ramp.

Other changes in the draft include: eliminating fixed statutory size limits (current law limits residential systems to about 25 kW and commercial to 200 kW), authorizing utilities to charge nonrefundable application fees with a maximum schedule (which stakeholders suggested should be revised or made nonstatutory to avoid repeated legislative updates), permitting witness testing and certificates of inspection before permission to operate is granted, and establishing a 24‑month maximum for customers to return a disconnected but nonfunctioning system to service before the utility can reclaim that parallel generation allocation.

Supporters emphasized the consumer‑protection component. Laura Lutz, Evergy's director of government affairs, described calls Evergy receives from customers who said robocalls or door‑to‑door sellers represented themselves as affiliated with Evergy and who later found the lease or financing costs exceeded expected savings. "Evergy does not partner with rooftop solar marketers," Lutz told the committee. She urged the panel to preserve meaningful consumer protections and a clear process for complaints.

Several conferees described ongoing negotiations. Mark Horst and others said the industry and utilities had narrowed disputes and expected a balloon amendment to be circulated for committee review before the committee considered further action next week. Chair Delpeddang said parties had offered amendments and suggested the committee circulate them to members before Tuesday’s next meeting.

The committee did not take a formal vote on the bill. Chair Delpeddang closed the hearing and said the committee will reconvene on Tuesday, March 11, when Evergy CEO David Campbell and other witnesses are scheduled to appear.

Votes at a glance: none recorded at this hearing.

Ending: Committee members and stakeholders said talks remain active; legislators signaled a preference for a negotiated amendment that keeps core consumer protections while refining operational, compensation and sizing language for utilities and installers.