Dive Summary:
- Three Louisiana electric utility cooperatives, Washington-St. Tammany Electric, Northeast Louisiana Power and Panola-Harrison Electric, have stopped offering net metering to customers with solar panels.
- The utilities are invoking a little-known rule that allows public utilities in Louisiana to no longer offer net metering if they receive more than 0.5% of their peak load from their customers' rooftop solar systems.
- The move represents a serious impediment to the rooftop solar movement in the state. The Louisiana Public Service Commission will discuss the issue when it meets again in August.
From the article:
Washington-St. Tammany CEO Charles Hill said the rule allows him to hold all new net-metering applications in abeyance while the PSC works on verifying that WST has indeed reached the cap. But solar advocates said the utility is putting its thumb on the scale to reach that verdict.
For instance, Hill said WST hit the cap because its peak load in April was 154 megawatts and its “net-metered generation capacity” is 1.039 megawatts, or 0.67 percent. But critics of the cap complain that the maximum capacity of what all solar customers can produce is not the same as what they actually do produce at a given moment.