Action Alert!: Post a comment to the Public Service Commission’s web site expressing your objections to WPS’s net metering service In a popular Simpsons episode, the diabolical Montgomery Burns builds a giant disc to block the sun’s rays from reaching Springfield, forcing city residents to become even more reliant on the power plant he owns. Seemingly inspired by Mr. Burns’ audacious gambit, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. (WPS) has unveiled a plan to discourage customer use of solar energy, albeit in less spectacular fashion. In its pending application to increase electric rates, WPS proposes a number of punitive rollbacks to its net metering service. A summary of WPS’s net metering service for 2013-2014 appears below: Limit maximum system size to 20 kilowatts. The current limit is 100 kilowatts. Limit the output from new systems so that they cannot exceed consumption at the host customer. Customers who “overproduce” may get kicked off the net metering tariff. Limit net metering service to energy-only customers. If you pay a demand charge as part of your electric service, you would be ineligible for net metering. WPS is also the only investor-owned utility in the state that currently calculates the net every month. This practice forces new customer-generators to downsize their PV installations to avoid being credited at the utility’s avoided cost rate. WPS proposes to continue this harsh practice. If the proposed net metering service is approved, it will become virtually impossible for WPS customers to economically justify installing a PV system, even if the utility is allowed to increase electric rates on all of its captive customers. The service will effectively deny net metering service to entire subsets of customers such as manufacturers, schools, and dairy farms. On behalf of its members who are WPS customers, RENEW Wisconsin has filed a request to intervene in WPS’s rate case and document how these provisions would stifle customer use of solar energy. You can help! Please post a comment to the Public Service Commission’s web site (psc.wi.gov) (Docket 6690-UR-122) expressing your objections to WPS’s net metering service, which, if approved, would deny WPS customers fair and reasonable access to generating electricity from solar energy available at their premises. No other Wisconsin electric provider goes this far to discourage customer-sited solar generation. Ask the PSC to reject WPS’s harsh and punitive proposal and let the sunshine in. Your comment can be posted between now and September 27, 2013, which is the date of the public hearing.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 21:25:18 +0000
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