Welcome to the solar coaster
Members of Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative (SSVEC) have a pretty good feeling of what the “solar coaster” is. Since April of 2015, when SSVEC abruptly proposed elimination of net metering, they’ve felt the tug of war between utility interests, the solar industry, and other stakeholders. We’re now in the home stretch of this long, involved process. Over the next 2-3 months, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) will decide if they want there to be a minimally viable solar market within SSVEC’s service area, or if the current solar slowdown will come to a complete halt.
So how’d we get here? Since this post isn’t intended as a sleep aid, I won’t dig too deep. As noted above, SSVEC proposed gutting net metering over two years ago, and tried to make those changes effective about 30 days after submitting their proposal, before any review by the ACC occurred. This effectively stopped the solar market in their territory—in the next four months, we had only one customer choose to install solar with the possibility of the new rate structures hanging over their head.
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