Pennsylvania was awarded $156 million last spring through the federal Solar For All program to build solar projects for around 12,000 lower-income households statewide. The Trump administration froze that funding, and then unfroze it in February.
But there’s another hurdle for the program to get started. The legislature included a line in last year’s state budget saying that to access the money, lawmakers needed to approve a bill specifically allowing it.
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During consideration of that bill on the House Floor last month, Representative Craig Williams, a Republican from southeastern Pennsylvania, added an amendment focused on a state policy that he says creates unfair charges for non-solar customers.
“My amendment quite simply would require our state regulator, the Public Utility Commission, to engage in public rulemaking to fix this disparity whereby a solar customer gets an entirely free ride paid for by everyone else,” he said.
Williams’ complaint revolves around an issue with solar that’s been debated around the country, called “net- metering,” which allows residential and commercial property owners to send their unused solar energy to the electric grid, and requires utility companies to reimburse them for it.
Solar advocates, like Sharon Pillar at the Pennsylvania Solar Center, worry Williams’ amendment to the Solar for All bill could upend net-metering, and roof-top solar in Pennsylvania.
“This is not about the Solar for All program,” she said. “This was a rider attached to attack net-metering in general. And it has no place being on that bill.”
What is net-metering?
When a homeowner or commercial property has solar panels, they use the energy they create. Sometimes they make more than they need. “They send that energy back through the utility distribution lines to the grid,” Williams said.
Those distribution lines move electricity back and forth between the grid and our houses.
Electric bills include a charge for the amount of energy a customer uses and additional charges to maintain the distribution lines and other grid-related costs.
Residential and commercial property owners with solar get a credit on their bills when they send more power back to the grid than they use.
“Oftentimes the solar customer is able to offset their entire bill,” Williams said. “Not just the energy portion of their bill, but the charges from the distribution for your utility company that everyone has to pay.”
Electric distribution companies like Duquesne Light, PPL, and PECO, use the money from distribution charges for things like wires, transformers, and other equipment needed to deliver electricity.
In Pennsylvania, there are two different distribution charges on an electric bill. Roof-top solar owners still pay fixed distribution costs on their bills.
“Those never go away, even if you’re a solar owner, you’re still paying those fixed charges every single month,” said Pillar of the PA Solar Center.
But there are other distribution costs on an electric bill that are based on energy use. If solar customers use less energy from the grid, these distribution costs may be reduced.
A look to the west
But Williams points to California, where a state analysis found that as more solar customers avoided utility costs, non-solar customers picked up the tab, adding more than $3 billion to non-solar customer bills in 2021. That’s grown in the years since, as more rooftop solar has been installed.
In response, California significantly reduced the credits for rooftop solar sent to the grid.
But Pennsylvania is in a whole different ball game, Pillar says. “We have a long way to go before we’re looking like California,” said Pillar of the PA Solar Center.
California has more than 2 million residential and commercial installations, generating over 18 gigawatts of energy, compared with just 70,000 in Pennsylvania, making just 1 gigawatt. That’s around 1 percent of the state’s electricity output, according to Pillar.
She said the Williams amendment repeats a well-documented campaign by utility companies against rooftop solar, who she says see it as a threat to their business. But she sees no evidence from utility companies or the PUC showing roof-top solar is impacting the bills of non-solar customers in Pennsylvania.
“There is this myth of cost-shifting that we hear, and this has been all across the country,” she said. “But the majority of studies that we’ve seen show that there is an enormous benefit and that there isn’t this cost shifting.”
Pillar said research that shows rooftop solar leads to economic growth, job creation, public health benefits, energy security, and grid resilience. She and other solar advocates support a comprehensive study looking at the costs and benefits of rooftop solar.
But Pillar said the wording of the Williams’ amendment makes it unclear what the PUC is supposed to consider in making new rooftop solar rules.
“If they only look at a certain sliver of cost or benefit and (don’t) look at a whole picture, then that could kill net-metering in Pennsylvania,” she said.
Pillar and other experts agree that Pennsylvania will need to increase energy on the grid, and she said net-metering is currently the only incentive the state offers to build more solar projects.
Sponsors of the Solar for All bill are considering what to do with the amendment when the House reconvenes on Monday.
