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.
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.
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