Loosening the Rules for Net Metering

Net metering—the practice used in most states for compensating customer-generators for power they supply to the grid—has about as many different versions as there are states.  Some act the way they should, as encouragements to citizens to deploy clean energy, while others are nothing less than unfriendly to the whole concept of distributed generation.  (For a state-by-state scorecard of net metering performance, check out the IREC/NNEC report Freeing the Grid).

Today, some states are loosening up their net metering rules, giving individuals and groups more ways of benefiting from installing solar:

In Massachusetts, under the ‘Neighborhood Net Metering’ provisions of the 2008 Green Communities Act, ten or more individuals can invest in a single renewable energy facility and receive net metering credits as if it had a single owner.  Similar programs are run in Maine and Vermont.

In California, a ‘Virtual Net Metering’ clause exists, and can be used for multifamily affordable solar housing.  The benefits of solar power generation, in terms of utility bill offsets, can be distributed to units as a percentage of the total credit.

Finally, the states of Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island allow meter aggregation, under which an owner of several separate renewable energy units (e.g., solar arrays) can combine all their meter outputs, so that the net metering credits for all accounts on the property are treated as one.  This simplifies the formula under which the owner avoids some of his utility payments.

What’s your state doing to make net metering for solar installations more attractive to you?