By Eric Wesoff | Greentech Media
The rift over how to equitably compensate distributed solar power producers for the electricity they generate has just gotten a bit more stark.
The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), a downstream solar advocacy group whose members include SolarCity, Solar Universe, Sungevity, Sunrun, and Verengo, just sent out a release revealing that the conflict has escalated to the point of requiring a decision from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
An electric utility can pay a producer of distributed generation like rooftop solar using a value-of-solar tariff (VOST) or through net energy metering. NEM spins the power meter backward and pays the consumer the retail rate for power exported to the grid, whereas a VOST calculates the “value” of solar and pays the consumer that rate for all solar produced by the rooftop system. However, the true “value” of solar is highly open to interpretation.
