SB333 Net Metering, Whats In Your Wallet? by Harold Turner, PE Net metering is the process by which small power producers, such as homeowners and businesses, install their own technology (like solar panels) to produce electricity and send what power they dont use back to their utility. In the utility industry, it is part of what is called DISTRIBUTED ENERGY RESOURCES (DER) when those small power projects are added to our grid.

Net metering allows customers to receive credits for any electricity that they generate, but do not immediately use. Some customers get involved in net metering because of an interest in the environment and renewable energy, but the vast majorities do it to save money. A recently published National Survey of customers, utility executives and regulators, performed by West Monroe Partners, showed that: 71% of customers adopt renewable energy sources (through net metering) to lower their utility bill . 17% claim they invested in renewable energy generation in response to environmental concerns.

First and foremost, the rapid growth in Solar PV is driven by customers wanting to lower energy bills, not trying to save the planet. The West Monroe survey makes that very clear. Unfortunately, too much public policy around energy is driven by misinformation by both political parties.

It also doesnt serve the ratepayers interest if the media takes public positions against Net Metering without digging down into the weeds to understand it better. Recent written opinions such as The current net metering program .forces utilities to buy high cost electricity, often when demand is low and Eliminating the cap without lowering rates would be a boondoggle, forcing most ratepayers to foot the bill for those who can afford to build solar simply are unfounded. Thats a debate Im willing to have with anyone who wants to get into the data.

It also doesnt serve ratepayers, especially commercial ratepayers, when some business associations advocate for wholesale rates for all sizes of net metering installations. Currently wholesale rates only apply to projects sized between 100kW and 1000kW (1MW). Projects sized less than 100kW encompass all residential and most commercial installations.

Legislators, especially my longtime Republican friends (I am a Republican), have to stop drinking the utility company Kool-Aid, get informed, and understand that the single most useful thing they can do for their rate paying constituents is to continue to give them access to self- generation through net metering. The current SB333 legislation will affect them for years to come, and it needs their help to improve the bill and raise the cap higher than the paltry 75MW proposed, which is only about 2% of peak load.

Nearly half the states in the country have ongoing regulatory and/or legislatives efforts underway regarding Distributed Energy Resources. This is not just a New Hampshire issue. New Hampshire simply has been behind the curve compared to most of these states for many reasons (too long for this article), but the current combined economics of our high energy rates, greater competition from solar provider companies, and dramatically lower costs of equipment are finally advancing Net Metering in NH to create more Distributed Energy Resources.

Compared to most other states, New Hampshire still has a very low Net Metering system cap of 50MW that was set in statute almost 20 years ago, and that cap limit is finally being reached now in 2016. The real debate is how high the cap should be raised, and should the current rate structure for projects less than 100kW be changed so that customers who do self- generate receive a lower offset on their electric bill than exists today (for the power they send into the grid). Currently, self-generators

Gigawatts (GW) or 51,000,000 kW, of solar capacity was installed around the world, of which 9.8 GW was in the US, a 56% increase.

If New Hampshire legislators fail to raise the cap quickly, and high enough to sustain growth, there are three likely consequences:

1) The businesses, and their employees, who are currently providing Net Metering energy installations in the state will need to go work in other states to survive.

2) All customer classes will be denied the ability to undertake self-generation installations on their property to reduce their electrical energy bills by getting some credit for their power that flows onto the grid at any time of day. Their only other option would be to go completely off grid and store their own power in batteries. Most people want to be connected to the grid.

3) Industrial class customers, who currently have the 5th highest ranked rates in the country, would have one less option to help lower costs in order to stay in NH.

Utility company executives argue that the money they dont collect from self-generators must be collected from the non-generators to help pay for all their costs, excluding just the cost of the energy (juice) itself which you can now buy from other sellers. That is their cross-subsidy message that gets repeated everywhere they go. Of course they dont want to talk about the true value of peak power period savings, renewable portfolio requirements savings, distribution grid savings, transmission wire savings, and line loss savings that are attributable to Distributed Energy Resources. They mostly want to talk about new pipelines and natural gas fired generating projects, and new transmission lines from Canada. I think all of you electricity consumers can figure that game out, right? They have produced no New Hampshire data regarding this claim at the hearings and the best they could do is to state that the Eversource net metering program in Massachusetts has resulted in a of 1% cross subsidy cost to the non-generators. This is a lame excuse for telling us we should drag our feet on raising the net metering cap in New Hampshire, and restructure the rates now when self-generators are only 1% of actual peak load.

New Hampshire currently has the 6th highest residential rates, the 8th highest commercial rates, and the 5th highest industrial rates in the country. Here are three ways to immediately help mitigate the impact of high rates to our large manufacturers who now currently suffer to compete when saddled with the 5th highest rates (77% above average) in the country, all three of which our legislature can do. Why? because we still need large manufacturing jobs in New Hampshire, in fact we need more:

1) Raise the project size limit under net metering from 1MW to 5MW and increase the cap even further. This would immediately enable existing small QF generators, which already reside in New Hampshire, to redirect their power sales from going out to ISO-NE to staying inside to help New Hampshires big energy consumers with lower rates. Win-Win.

2) Re-clarify/re-authorize the rights of