By Brittany Anderson
Solar-power users within the Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) service area will soon face changes to their bill.
The PEC board of directors unanimously voted during the regular meeting on Dec. 17 to approve a new solar interconnection rate called Sustainable Power Credit after an ‘over year-long public process of cost review, member input and independent studies.’
According to PEC Board President Emily Pataki, the credit will continue to provide financial incentives for members who choose to invest in rooftop solar without requiring subsidization from non-solar members.
But the change to the rate did not come without pushback from PEC members, including from State Rep. Erin Zwiener, who asked during the Dec. 17 meeting that the board delay the vote or table it all together.
Zwiener told the Hays Free Press/News-Dispatch that PEC uses net metering, meaning customers pay for the total net energy they use, and are credited for energy they didn’t use but was produced by their solar panel system. Under this new decision, she said, PEC will charge customers around 9 cents/kWh and pay them back (credit) 5 cents/kWh.
PEC, though, said that advancements with metering and billing software systems since 2016 have enabled the coop to more accurately measure the ‘true cost’ of serving its solar members.
With this new data, the PEC board of directors commissioned an independent “Value of Solar Study” and a separate independent economic analysis to determine the benefits and costs gained by the co-op from members with solar installations.
But a nonprofit group, Public Citizen, that says it is fighting for a more diverse energy system, said that PEC’s “Value of Solar Study” was conducted hastily over the last couple of months.
District 4 PEC member Kathi Thomas said that by not allowing input from members, the study went wrong from the start, and that its findings are out of line with most other value-of-solar studies conducted around the U.S.
However, according to the study’s calculations as presented by PEC, the co-op had not been recovering the full cost incurred for serving solar members, thus resulting in PEC’s non-solar members subsidizing solar members — that number is currently at $1.3 million, but PEC said the subsidy would have likely reached $13 to $20 million in additional costs to non-solar members over the next decade.
Currently, about 6,100 PEC members have solar installations, making up 1.7% of the co-op’s total members.
The new credit is 5.377 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). PEC said that this rate is designed to pay solar members for their excess power at the ‘market value of power.’ Under the new rate, solar members will be “compensated by more than 30% of what PEC pays for average wholesale electricity.”
PEC said that the new interconnection rate will not affect a …….
Source: https://haysfreepress.com/2021/12/21/pec-changes-solar-power-rates/