Recently in Alternative Energy Standards Category

Follow the money. Never take "science" at its word until you look into who makes money from the process, and who is threatened by a specific business sector's success. Knowing your business history is important to our very civilization's direction.

Are you ready to do your own research? At this point, I don't believe anybody! And no, I'm not really paranoid, I just have run into crooks, aggressive business strategists too often to believe that anyone has the public good at heart. "Eternal vigilence..." it still applies.

Interest in alternative energy shifts with prices, visibility in the media and other perceived value metrics.  Google Insight provides a one-year chart that shows that interest in efficiency had a significant dip in mid-2009.

The IREC participates in state and municipal level workshops, proceedings, and rulemakings focused on net metering, interconnection, and financing of distributed renewable energy technologies.

Net Metering

Twenty-two states and DC changed or adopted net metering laws/regulations in 2009.

New in 2009?  Kansas and Nebraska established new net-metering policies, raising the national state total to 42.

Old news? Many states have seriously flawed rules that inhibit market growth.

According to the IREC, changes implemented in the other states address increasingly complex policy issues, including

• the treatment of net excess generation
• renewable energy credit (REC) ownership
• community-owned systems
• third-party ownership

Net metering rules by state, using the grades applied in Freeing the Grid 2009, are available at
www.newenergychoices.org.

"Super-sized" net metering (i.e., a 1-MW or greater individual systems capacity limit for at least one customer type) now exists in 20 states.

The most important issue for net metering continues to be the treatment of energy delivered to the electric grid.

The touchstone of the debate centers invariably on concerns over the potential for inter-class subsidies when implementing or expanding net metering programs. This issue was front and center in several states including California due to legislative efforts to expand the aggregate program cap for net-metered systems and the California commission's consideration and ultimate adoption of a cost-benefit methodology for assessing the costs and benefits of distributed generation including net metered systems.

Utilities typically view any framework which values net metered excess generation above avoided costs rates as an undue subsidy to customer-generators from non-participating ratepayers.

Many utilities continue to hold this view despite the ever mounting research finding that the benefits of renewable distributed generation justify valuing net metered excess generation from renewable resources well above a utility's typical avoided cost of generation.

Concerns over the potential for inter-class subsidies underpin many decisions legislatures or state utility commissions make in placing arbitrary caps on the aggregate capacity of net metered systems allowed to participate in state net metering programs.
 

Interconnection Standards

Interconnection standards continue to serve as an essential component of state renewable energy policy. Seven states and Puerto Rico improved interconnection standards over the last year.

For a comprehensive description of IREC's positions on net metering and interconnection issues, see IREC's newly revised model procedures and other documents on IREC's website. For a thorough analysis of the procedures developed in the states in which IREC was active in the past year, see www.dsireusa.org.