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Committee advances bill removing 8% net‑metering cap, leaving utilities to manage local saturation
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Summary
Senate Bill 239, presented by Representative Frank Burns, deletes lines in Title 26 that referenced an 8% rooftop solar/net‑metering cap; utilities will retain line‑level discretion to accept new rooftop solar based on distribution‑line capacity, and the committee voted to release the bill.
Representative Frank Burns told the committee Senate Bill 239 deletes four lines from Title 26 of the Delaware Code that referred to an 8% cap on rooftop solar and net metering. He described the change as aligning statute with current utility practice, which manages additional rooftop solar by distribution‑line characteristics to avoid back‑feed into transmission when local usage is low.
"The four lines that are deleted refer to an 8% cap on rooftop solar and net metering installations," Burns said, adding that utilities, in coordination with stakeholders, prefer to evaluate individual distribution lines rather than maintain a fixed statewide cap.
Committee members asked whether removing the cap would increase costs for low‑income customers. Burns and others said a value‑of‑solar study showed benefits to all customers when more solar comes online, and that utilities already limit interconnections on lines nearing saturation. Options utilities may use to allow additional solar include installing battery storage, adopting non‑exporting meters for customers in constrained areas, or larger utility‑scale storage projects in constrained regions.
Jamie Nutter, representing Delaware Electric Cooperative, told the committee the cooperative supported the bill and participated in stakeholder drafting. Nutter noted the cooperative has pockets of saturation and described planned utility‑scale storage and a residential storage pilot that should free constrained areas, and confirmed the cooperative has used non‑exporting meters to accept customers’ distributed generation without exporting to the broader distribution system.
There were no remote public comments on SB 239. The committee moved to release the measure and, after roll call, confirmed it had received the required number of votes to release SB 239 from committee for further consideration by the House.
