House committee advances bill to change net metering for co‑ops and munis after hours of testimony

The Minnesota House Energy Finance and Policy Committee on Feb. 25 voted to place House File 845 — legislation that would change compensation for customer‑owned distributed solar in cooperative and municipal utility territories — on the general register after adopting an author’s amendment.

Representative Dave Baker, the bill’s author, said the measure would stop requiring cooperatives to pay the full retail rate for excess generation and instead align compensation closer to wholesale values. “This bill does not eliminate net metering,” Baker said when he introduced the measure, adding that his amendment would grandfather existing contracts and interconnection applications.

Supporters of the bill, including several electric cooperative leaders, told the committee that the current retail compensation for exported solar shifts costs to non‑solar members and has grown rapidly in a short period. Justin Johns, president and CEO of East Central Energy, said his cooperative serves about 67,000 accounts and that its engineers have found limited system‑level peak benefits from roof‑top arrays; he described the current practice as…