This is the opportunity for Arizona Public Service leaders to have the conversation about net metering they told GTM they wanted.
APS VP Jeff Guldner said the utility wants to “make decisions based on what the costs are. But the solar leasing companies and TUSK, the Arizona activist organization led by Barry Goldwater, Jr., are trying to shut down that discussion.”
“It is not credible for them to say the solar industry doesn’t want a discussion,” responded Court Rich, Rose Law
Group Renewables Chair. But APS (NYSE:PNW) wants to control the discussion, while the solar industry wants it in front of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), which will ultimately decide the issue after a hearing before an administrative law judge, Rich explained.
The debate is over whether net metering creates new costs for utilities’ non-solar customers. Homeowners and businesses with solar are reimbursed at retail rates for the solar-generated electricity they send to the grid. But when their utility bills roll back to zero they escape most of the infrastructure surcharges that are part of other electricity users’ bills.
“To the extent that we don’t recover transmission and distribution fixed costs,” Guldner said, “we create a surcharge that assesses those costs to all customers. And the way metering works, that means non-solar customers.” APS insists this is a cost shift.
“Claiming that net metering is a ‘cost shift’ is disingenuous and completely ignores the benefits side of the equation,” responded SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) Policy Director Meghan Nutting. “To have an honest discussion about this, we need to acknowledge and fairly value both the costs and benefits.”
Studies by Crossborder Energy of the California and Arizona markets and studies by Clean Power Research of the Austin Energy and CPS territories found benefits gained by the utilities from adding solar are worth more than the costs they would incur. An SAIC study conducted for APS found something different.
