Iowa Utilities Board Ruling Will Strangle Solar Industry in Iowa, Says Ideal Energy, Inc.
FAIRFIELD, Iowa, Feb. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) recently accepted a proposed rule change from Alliant Energy, one of Iowa’s two major electric utility providers. This new ruling will drastically change how net metering works in Alliant Energy’s service territory and will reduce the financial viability of new solar installations. The new rules are scheduled to go into effect on April 1st of this year. Alliant Energy services over 488,000 electrical customers across Iowa.
In 2016, the IUB asked Iowa’s utilities to develop net metering pilot projects “for the purpose of expanding renewable distributed generation (DG) in Iowa.” According to the IUB, the aim was to encourage development of more solar and wind projects. Alliant Energy’s proposal will have the opposite effect, according to solar industry experts.
Alliant Energy’s new net metering rules will add a cap on how much solar generation is eligible for net metering. Under current rules, net metering is naturally capped by a customer’s total annual energy usage – how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity are used in a year. Under the new, more complex rules, net metering will be capped based on an arbitrary percentage of a customer’s annual energy usage the year prior to the solar installation. Typical small business and residential customers will see a 65-70% reduction in net metering eligibility.
Channing Congdon, Director of Design at Ideal Energy, one of Iowa’s most senior solar firms, said that the result will be a 70% or greater reduction in solar installations for residential and light commercial customers in Alliant Energy’s Iowa service territory. “You typically only want to install what you can net meter,” he said. He went on to say that because of the reduction in system size and the fixed costs associated with each solar project, “this ruling effectively ends residential solar for Alliant.”
