Maine advances legislation restoring net metering

The Maine state legislature has voted to advance a bill that would amend the state's statute governing the net metering of small distributed renewable energy projects. If enacted into law, the amendment would reverse regulatory changes imposed in 2017 that reduced the value of net energy billing to participating customers.

Maine has allowed customers with distributed renewable energy generation to use the power they produce to offset their electricity bill since the 1980s. In 2017, the Maine Public Utilities Commission amended its rules governing net energy billing to reduce the amount of power that a customer could net against its electric utility bill. The Commission did this by inventing a concept called "gross metering," which allowed electric utilities to collect charges even for power generated and consumed on-site in real time, while requiring participating customers to install a second meter.

The "gross metering" concept was controversial for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it deterred customer adoption of solar power and other distributed renewables (by adding costs while cutting compensation), and the fact that for the first time ever it allowed utilities to collect charges from customers for power produced and consumed entirely on the customer's premises even where that power never went on utility grid facilities.  The Commission later exempted most medium and large customers from this policy after finding that the cost of installing an extra meter wasn't justified, but left the gross metering requirements in its Rule Chapter 313 governing net energy billing. In response, in 2019 various state legislators proposed bills that would alter or restore the net energy billing paradigm.

One of these bills has now received favorable votes in both the state House and Senate. LD 91, An Act to Eliminate Gross Metering, was originally sponsored by Representative Seth Berry. It clarifies the statutory definition of net energy billing, which currently defines the concept as "a billing and metering practice under which a customer is billed on the basis of net energy over the billing period taking into account accumulated unused kilowatt-hour credits from the previous billing period." As amended by LD 91, the definition would specifically define "net energy" as the "difference between the kilowatt-hours delivered by a transmission and distribution utility to the customer over a billing period and the kilowatt-hours delivered by the customer to the transmission and distribution utility over the billing period." This clarification removes the Public Utilities Commission's ability to define "net energy" in any other way. LD 91 also directs the Commission to amend its rules "to be substantively equivalent to the rules in effect on January 1, 2017" (that is, before the Commission's 2017 regulatory amendment.)

LD 91 faces additional votes in the state legislature, before it would move to the desk of Governor Janet Mills for her signature. The legislature is also expected to consider other bills affecting net energy billing or expanding incentives for solar development, later this session.