IURC Approves Muny Electric Net Metering Tariffs

Today (01/13/10) during the weekly meeting of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC), the Commission approved its Weekly Utility Articles that included approval for four (4) municipal electric utilities that requested to adopt net metering tariffs. The utilities are as follows:

Anderson Municpal Light and Power,
Lebanon Utilities,
Crawfordsville Electric Light and Power, and
Columbia City Municpal Electric Utility.

The 30-Day Utility Articles approved today can be found at http://www.in.gov/iurc/files/u011310s.pdf

These four municipal electric utilities needed IURC approval to create a net metering tariff since they have choosen to remain under IURC rate regulation rather than to opt out of IURC jurisdiction as many other municipal electric utilities have. See http://www.in.gov/iurc/2340.htm for a list of utilities that have opted out, etc.

Each of the four utilities proposed identical proposed net metering tariffs that reflect the current IURC rules for Investor Owned Utilities (IOU's) with one exception, they proposed that their net metering tariffs be available for all classes of customers not just residential and K-12 schools. Hence, the system size limit is 10 kW and is proposed to be .1% of their most recent summer peak load of the utility.

Eric Cotton, a partner in ECI Wind and Solar, VP of the Indiana Renewable Energy Association and Treasurer of the newly formed Indiana Distributed Energy Advocates (IDEA), commended the action taken today by the IURC.

"These four municipal electric utilities should be commended for their leadership in promoting renewable energy development in their service territories by proposing these net metering tariffs." said Cotton. "We look forward to working with these utilities and their customers to install renewable energy systems."

This article brought to you by the Indiana Renewable Energy Association and Indiana Distributed Energy Advocates.