New solar panel owners would get 10-year rate reprieve under Kentucky House bill
A state lawmaker is proposing a 10-year delay in controversial new rules for residential solar panel owners in Kentucky who want to sell their excess energy onto the utility grid.
Rep. Jim DuPlessis, R-Elizabethtown, said Tuesday that he’s trying to build support for his House Bill 323. Under the bill, anyone who gets solar panels installed by Dec. 31, 2024, could operate under existing “net metering” rules, which allow solar customers to sell excess energy to electric utilities for the same price they pay when they buy energy.
The bill would extend the current net metering rates for these solar panel customers through the end of 2029.
Last year, at the request of the electric utilities, the General Assembly passed a law requiring the Kentucky Public Service Commission to determine the net metering rates at which residential solar customers are compensated. The solar industry has protested, arguing that newer rates are likely to be unpredictable and less generous.
No new net metering rates have been set so far. But after a public hearing, the PSC agreed to hire an “expert consultant” to help it review the rate applications expected to be filed by electric utilities in coming months.
DuPlessis said his bill will give Kentucky’s nascent solar industry “a little breathing room” by stabilizing the rates — essentially, locking in the known costs and benefits — for people considering whether to invest $10,000 or more in home solar panels.
“We don’t want to be pulling the rug out from under the local installers,” DuPlessis said. “Right now, it’s hard for them to put in a system when they can’t tell their customers what the overall costs are going to be, when they don’t know what rates are going to look like in a year, in two years.”
Matt Partymiller, head of the Kentucky Solar Industries Association, said his group would prefer to have net metering rates remain on an even exchange permanently. Failing that, Partymiller said, he appreciates the House bill offering a 10-year delay for customers who add solar panels in the next few years.
“It’s a step that allows us to have a little bit more certainty for our business,” Partymiller said.
