A Colorado cap on net metering of renewable energy has Rifle city officials wondering if solar energy can move forward.
The city already has a solar array, located at
Rifle’s Energy Innovation Center, where the town’s 2.3-megawatt solar setup helps power the new wastewater treatment plant and a pumping station. But what is needed to fully power the plant is 4 megawatts.
The system was built by SunEdison, a global leader in developing, financing, operating and monitoring solar plants around the world. SunEdison built the solar array for free in exchange for a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the city of Rifle to buy the power generated for 20 years. After that, Rifle can take over the system and run it on its own at no charge.
City fathers like the system so much they want to expand it, but an existing net metering cap of 2 megawatts per customer has expansion stymied. The opposition comes not from Holy Cross Energy, in whose service territory Rifle lies, but from regional utility Xcel Energy, which argues that such larger systems would exacerbate the problem of ramping electricity production at conventional power plants to make up for the fluctuations inherent in solar and wind production.
Net metering allows customers to obtain credit for the excess energy they produce and deliver to the utility via renewable energy grid-tied systems. The credit is like a utility company bank account, and offsets charges for electricity received. Credits are usually given at retail electricity prices, or prices per kilowatt hour.
Rifle’s solar array is the largest municipal solar setup in the state, and expansion would not only cover all the wastewater treatment plant’s electricity needs but possibly draw interest from solar developers in Rifle’s wide-open spaces and cheap land. Denver and Boulder, each with its own solar array (the first at Denver International Airport, the second on Boulder City Hall), also want the cap lifted.
In April, Administrative Law Judge Ken Kirkpatrick noted that the 2-megawatt cap was “somewhat arbitrary”, and – while denying Rifle’s request for a municipal exemption – recommended a limit of 120 percent of average energy use, regardless of the size of an installation. He also noted that, while he considered Xcel’s concerns valid, he said the issue of peak usage was more operational than procedural, and the issue of the cap was essentially an economic one.
Judge Kirkpatrick’s recommendation now goes to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for final determination. Hopefully, PUC directors will read the entire 124-page recommendation before making their ruling, unlike Congressional representatives, few of whom have read the entire Waxman-Markey bill. In fact, according to some sources, a complete compilation of the bill and the amendments doesn’t exist.