Electric utilities; municipal net energy metering. (SB1779)

Introduced By

Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria)

Description

Electric utilities; municipal net energy metering. Directs the State Corporation Commission to establish a pilot program that affords the opportunity for any locality to participate in net energy metering if it is a retail customer of a certain type of investor-owned electric utility. In order to qualify for the program, the locality is required to own and operate a renewable generating facility with a generating capacity of not more than two megawatts that is located on the municipality's premises and is intended primarily to offset all or part of the locality's own electricity requirements. Under the pilot program, a municipal customer-generator that generates electricity in amounts that exceed the amount of electricity consumed by the municipal customer-generator, determined annually, to credit one or more of the municipality's target metered accounts in order that the generation energy charges on the electric bills of the target's metered accounts are reduced by the amount of excess generation kilowatt hours apportioned to the metered account multiplied by the applicable generation energy rate of the target's accounts. In Appalachian Power's service territory, metered accounts of the public school division of a locality may be target accounts. The amount of generating capacity of all generating facilities that are the subject of a pilot program are limited to (i) five megawatts if Appalachian Power is the pilot program utility, though the utility may increase the amount to up to 10 megawatts or (ii) 25 megawatts if Dominion Power is the pilot program utility. Such aggregated capacities of the generation facilities that are the subject of a pilot program constitute a portion of the existing limit of the utility's adjusted Virginia peak-load forecast of the previous year that is available to municipal customer-generators, eligible customer-generators, eligible agricultural customer-generators, and small agricultural generators in the utility's service area. The duration of the pilot program is six years. This bill is identical to HB 2792.

Outcome

History