SCC Regulations Undermine Multi-Family Shared Solar
Virginia’s multi-family shared solar program is designed to bring the benefits of net metering to residents of apartments and condominiums.
The SCC’s regulations for the program tack on expensive administrative fees that will likely make the program more expensive than it’s worth.
The multi-family shared solar program could instead be subject to the same $74.90 minimum monthly bill that has been proposed for Virginia’s shared solar program.
The General Assembly in recent years has taken action to make renewable energy more accessible to all citizens and institutions of Virginia. The adoption of renewable energy brings new jobs, creates new avenues for private investment, and improves the quality of public health through the reduction of carbon emissions. That’s part of the reason why the General Assembly acted in 2020 to prohibit homeowners associations from placing unreasonable restrictions on solar installations within their communities. Another law passed in 2020 that expanded access to renewable energy in Virginia established a shared solar program, allowing multiple customers to tap into the clean energy being generated by nearby solar panels.
Recognizing the need to provide access to renewables to those who live in apartment buildings and condominiums, the General Assembly established the multi-family shared solar program, which permits residents of these types of communities to power their homes using solar panels installed on their building. The program is very similar, but not identical, to net metering, which gives owners of solar panels the ability to earn credit on their monthly electric bill for energy generated. Through multi-family shared solar, residents purchase a subscription to the energy generated by their building’s solar panels. And just like with net metering, residents receive credit on electric bills for energy generated by those panels.
Unfortunately, the State Corporation Commission, which oversees public utilities and other state business and economic interests, has approved regulations for the multi-family shared solar program that will likely make it more expensive than it’s worth for customers. Under the law, utilities are permitted to impose a fee on customer electric bills in order to recover the administrative costs incurred by the program. A close reading of the new SCC regulations, however, reveals the inclusion of excessive fees, the administrative nature of which is dubious.
Among the costs the SCC is considering to be administrative and thus able to be tacked on to customer bills include transmission and distribution costs; standby generation and balancing costs; non-bypassable charges; and other administrative costs such as banking, balancing, and storing fees. Perhaps most egregiously, the SCC has ruled that some of these costs will be determined “in parallel rate proceedings.” This implies that the fees associated with multi-family shared solar will likely be the same as those associated with Virginia’s shared solar program. This wouldn’t be a problem if Dominion Energy wasn’t proposing that the minimum monthly cost of shared solar should come to $74.90 per 1,000 kWh of energy.
A minimum monthly bill of nearly $75 is too much for solar energy. This excessive cost undermines shared solar in Virginia, and will undermine the multi-family shared solar program as well.
Expressing the will of their constituents, the General Assembly has established several programs that make access to renewable energy easier for all in the state. These programs are rendered obsolete by excessive fees that benefit investor-owned utilities like Dominion. The SCC should revisit its regulations regarding both the shared solar program and the multi-family shared solar program in order to facilitate a distributed energy system that is affordable for all Virginians.