New Hampshire Net Metering Veto Could Crush Rooftop Industry

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

New England is one of the hottest solar areas of the country, with New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts getting all the attention. Unfortunately, New Hampshire may not be joining them after their governor vetoed a bill designed to raise an arbitrary 1 MW cap on net metering.

The Concord (N.H.) Monitor reports on the turmoil into which the veto has thrown the rooftop solar industry. As David Brooks writes:

Not surprisingly, the governor’s veto of a bill to make large solar projects more profitable has put a number of municipal solar projects on hold, or at least up in the air.

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Under current law, any project over 1 MW is not eligible for net metering. The bill would have raised that cap to 5 MW had the governor not vetoed it.

But Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the bill anyway, arguing that net-metering compensation would hurt other non-solar consumers, who would pay for grid upkeep that solar consumers don’t pay for. In other words, it’s the old cost shift argument raised to the level of the governor’s office.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the “cost shift” argument, it is the erroneous lie that solar consumers don’t pay their fair share of costs for grid upkeep. The truth is that the cost shift doesn’t happen until at least 10% of a state’s electricity is generated from solar – currently only the case in five states, of which New Hampshire is not one.

And even in those five states, the cost shift is only only a fraction of a penny per kilowatt-hour. In other words, it’s not even worth talking about.

It’s the one disappointing part of Brooks’ article, which otherwise is quite good. He accepts the cost shift argument without challenge. It’s a common error among the popular press, who aren’t as familiar with the reality of the solar industry as some of the rest of us are.

It’s up to us to point this out in an effort to educate more people about this pernicious lie so that utilities – and their politicians like Sununu – can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the general public.

More:

Veto of net metering bill puts solar projects on hold

Liberty Utilities Wants To Own Your Behind-The-Meter Battery System (And Why That’s A Bad Idea)

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Liberty Utilities, New Hampshire’s largest utility currently has a docket before the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission that sounds like a good idea.

At issue is the state’s largest pilot program in history that would allow New Hampshire solar users to install batteries at no cost to them. Sounds good, right?

And although the intent of the program – to see how batteries will affect grid resiliency and performance – is pretty benign, solar advocates in the state have concerns about the size of the program and what it could mean for the long-term future of battery storage in the Granite State.

After all, the proposal as it is currently written gives only customers with utility-owned batteries access to time-of-use rates or monthly peak reduction payments, meaning the goal of the pilot program isn’t really to test how batteries operate on the grid. It’s to give the utility an unnecessary monopoly on battery storage, which should be granted only when a clear market failure demands it.

Instead of attempting to grab new monopoly powers where they don’t clearly exist, advocates suggest that Liberty Utilities should scale back its own pilot program and let other companies – in some cases local companies employing New Hampshire citizens – compete on a “Bring Your Own Battery” system. In other words, set rates based on performance and let the market – not a state-sponsored monopoly – decide who should handle the solar + storage systems in the state.

As it is, battery storage is something new for monopoly utilities in most cases (and most certainly in Liberty Utilities’ case), whereas multiple companies in the private sector are already deploying solar + storage in many states, giving them insights into the particular challenges and opportunities such systems provide. Why should New Hampshire residents become the guinea pigs for a large-scale pilot program that would effectively shut out the competition?

No one is suggesting Liberty Utilities shouldn’t set up a pilot program or that that the NHPUC shouldn’t grant them one. But make it a reasonably sized one that forces utilities to compete in the market – which would allow all ratepayers, solar consumers and non-solar consumers alike, to win.

Jeff Flake Doesn’t Understand Baseload Power

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: People, I know he’s darn purty, but seriously, if you care about the future of energy in this country DO NOT think Jeff Flake is a 2020 savior, no matter what Sean Penn tells you. He doesn’t even understand the basics of energy baseload.

In a recent speech at St. Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, in what was widely reported as the first speech of the 2020 Presidential campaign, Arizona (Short-Time) Senator Jeff Flake said that maybe, just MAYBE, the Republican Party should consider accepting climate change science and consider doing something about it.
But before you give him a standing ovation, in literally the next breath – the next breath – Flake insisted, all evidence to the contrary, that the country needs more nuclear power as “baseload” power if we’re going to have more renewables added to the grid.
(*Ring, ring* Senator Flake? It’s Germany. They’d like to explain how they were able to add wind and solar and still commit to shutting down all their nuclear plants by 2022.)
(On the plus side, he pronounced nuclear right.)

SolarWakeup’s View: So Senator Jeff Flake, who is leaving the Senate in November because of the “divisiveness” of Washington politics in the age of President Donald J. Trump, went up to New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College last Friday to discuss said divisiveness and, as mentioned above, reportedly launch a 2020 Presidential campaign.

That would have been largely unremarkable, even for a political junkie like me. But then a woman, in the last question of the session, asked this:

“Do you see a path forward on climate change?”

And at that moment, Flake would have done well to heed Mark Twain and kept his mouth shut. But he just had to weigh in.

He started off OK, talking about how great solar has been in Arizona and how increased energy storage (particularly utility-scale storage) is offering market-based opportunities that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. He added that it might also be a nice change for the Republican Party to accept that climate change is real and maybe try to do something about it. And if he’d just stopped there…..but, well, he just couldn’t.

Democrats, he says, need to accept that the United States needs a carbon-free baseload power source and – wait for it – nuclear power is the answer.

Oh, Jeff – you were this close.

See, here’s the thing: Not only is “baseload” an increasingly irrelevant term in a world of electricity storage – something you had just praised seconds ago – but even if that were a true thing, nuclear is definitively not the answer (at least not new nuclear power plants).

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I live in Ohio, and I am still paying for the Perry and the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plants built around 30 years ago through my electricity rates – and that’s after Davis-Besse’s containment cap started to rust away, forcing the plant to shut down for a year to get it fixed. They are expensive, they take a long time to build and they are dangerous.

(Ask me sometime about the story I once wrote about Davis-Besse’s advice to its neighbors in case of a meltdown – advice that included long sleeves, sunglasses and a hat).

And sometimes, even when you throw billions of dollars at these plants, they still don’t get built (South Carolina anyone?).

Look, I know Jeff Flake looks the part, but if he thinks nuclear power is the answer to bringing more renewables like solar on to the grid, then I’m sorry – he won’t get my vote. He shouldn’t get yours either.

More:

Jeff Flake: The Key To Solar Power Is More Nuclear Power (Sam Seder Podcast)

Jeff Flake delivers ‘Politics and Eggs’ speech (full video of speech; question comes at 45:26) (WMUR 9, Manchester, New Hampshire)

South Carolina Spent $9 Billion on Nuclear Reactors That Will Never Run. Now What? (Governing)

Germany’s nuclear phase-out explained (Deutsche Welle)