Net metering will soon disappear for Tucson Electric Power customers, but the deadline continues to be extended incrementally. Hearings before the Arizona Corporation Commission’s administrative law judge were completed last fall, but we are still waiting for Judge Rodda to write her recommendations, which will appear on the docket, and then go to our elected Commissioners for action at an open meeting. Originally, we expected that recommendation to come early in 2018, and the Commission to make their decision in February or March, but that didn’t happen.

The ACC’s Rules of Practice and Procedure tell us there must be ten days notice before a hearing (see R14-3-109A). There must also be a ten-day opportunity for parties—such as TEP, ACC staff, and solar advocates—to file exceptions to the Judge Rodda’s recommended order (see R14-3-110B). These deadlines mean that TEP’s net metering proposals can’t be considered at the ACC’s March Open Meeting, which is scheduled for March 13th-14th.

The ACC’s open meeting calendar shows their next open meeting is scheduled for April 10th-11th. This means that net metering will be available for TEP customers at least until that date. Any TEP customer who submits a complete interconnection application to TEP before April 10th will have net metering grandfathered for twenty years from the date of interconnection, but they must install their system within 180 days of that application. For customers who choose to upgrade an existing system, that twenty-year period starts from the original interconnection date.

If you are interested in solar, or know someone who is, we’d encourage you to get in touch with Net Zero Solar or other reputable local installers very soon. Read More

It’s been a long road. Utilities like Tucson Electric Power have been trying to reduce competition from rooftop solar for many years, but we can trace this rate case back to March of 2015, when TEP put forth a proposal to gut net metering, an important policy that allows a one-to-one credit for any “extra” energy from a solar electric system that’s sent to TEP. (For more info on how energy flows in a grid-connected solar electric system, see our infographic).

In that case, TEP proposed that customers should be credited about 55% of the retail electric rate for energy sent back to their grid, which would have upended the economics of rooftop solar. More perniciously, they also proposed an arbitrary date for this change of June 1st, 2015 in their application, without any approval by the Arizona Corporation Commission. This was in contrast to the ACC’s established precedent against retroactive rates, and no reasonable outside observer thought it likely that the ACC would approve that date. However, it cast a long shadow on the solar market. We objected strenuously. Many customers were concerned that they would not receive net metering if they installed rooftop solar. At Net Zero Solar, we had to both lay off co-workers and take pay cuts.

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