Summary:

In 2016, a new law in Massachusetts scaled back credits to 60% of excess power for most new community solar projects, with exceptions for municipal and residential customers. The change was promoted as a way to control costs for ratepayers, but advocates say this discourages the growth of solar systems in the state. Two concurrent bills in the state Senate and House of Representatives are now trying to restore the full net metering credit. 

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Main Article:

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), solar energy in Massachusetts generated 2,465.48 MW of power in 2018, putting the state among the top ten in the country in this category.

To put it in perspective, that’s enough solar energy to provide electricity to 416,697 homes. And many of these don’t even have solar panels on their roofs. They are tied to a community solar project, where you purchase or subscribe to a share of a nearby solar farm, allowing you to receive credits to your electric bill from the energy produced by your solar share. 

Sometimes those solar farms produce much more power than what is needed for the members, and they sell that extra energy to the utilities.

However, some provisions of a 2016 law lowered the price community solar projects receive for the energy they send into the electrical grid. 

But now a pair of concurrent bills in the state Senate and House of Representatives in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are trying to reverse that. 

The bills - H. 2877 by Rep. Russell E. Holmes and S. 1931 by Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz - have to do with net metering, where solar system owners get paid when they generate more energy than they receive from the grid.  

According to EnergyNews Until 2016, net metering customers could receive credits for all the energy they sent into the grid. Then, three years ago, a new law scaled back credits to 60% of excess power for most new projects, with exceptions for municipal and residential customers. The change was promoted as a way to control costs for ratepayers, though some in the solar industry argue it was more about utilities’ desire to limit the growth of solar.

“Net metering caps have posed a challenge for a number of solar projects the past couple of years (Note: Small-scale solar projects, e.g. most rooftop residential projects are exempt from net metering caps).  The legislature’s approach to net metering caps is to grant small cap increase every couple of years.  However, due to the high demand for solar, the cap increase never last long. As soon as caps are hit, solar is put on hold across Massachusetts,” SEIA notes. 

The result, say environmental justice advocates, is that low-income households now have an even higher barrier to adopting solar power. Because so many residents of low-income neighborhoods rent homes in multi-unit buildings, they don’t have the option of simply installing solar panels on their roof. Instead, they frequently turn to community solar, larger scale projects that allow a group of subscribers to buy power that is cleaner and often less expensive than standard utility service.

However, community solar projects are subject to the new, lower net metering rates.

Sen. Chang-Diaz and Rep. Russell Holmes have filed legislation in the Senate and House, respectively, that would restore the full net metering credit in “environmental justice neighborhoods,” defined communities with substantial populations of households that are low-income, minority, or lacking proficiency in English. The bill also includes a provision directing the state to include specific plans for reaching low-income and environmental justice communities when designing any future solar incentive program.