Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

SolarCity CEO: Company will halt sales if regulators approve proposed rule

SolarCity

Kyle Roerink

SolarCity workers practice installing solar panels at the company’s new facility in Las Vegas.

SolarCity’s chief executive officer scolded the Public Utilities Commission Monday for proposing a draft order that reduces the value of credits solar customers can earn by generating excess energy.

“Reckless” is how CEO Lyndon Rive describes the proposal, which PUC commissioners are considering at a meeting tomorrow morning. If the rule is adopted, he said SolarCity would cease Nevada sales and installation operations, and he estimated that thousands of jobs would be lost.

In a 113-page document, the commission’s proposed order would lower the value of credits customers can receive under net metering. The rule would base credits on wholesale rates rather than retail rates. The change would affect not only future customers, but it would also require existing customers to accept the lower rate over a four-year period.

Rive argued that without grandfathering, “the decision would retroactively sabotage the investments Nevadans have already made in solar, even though they were encouraged by their government to make those investments.”

Lawmakers have tasked the utilities commission with determining a new rate for net metering, a policy that gives solar customers the opportunity to receive monetary credits for the excess energy they provide to the grid. Advocates see the program as crucial to keeping solar economically advantageous for customers who lease or buy solar infrastructure.

NV Energy, the utility regulated by the PUC, argues that modifications to net metering are needed to prevent shifting solar customers’ costs to other ratepayers. Today’s draft order also suggests an increased service fee and the reduction of a fee based on energy consumption. The order does not include a new fee that NV Energy was originally seeking.

NV Energy does not comment on draft proposals.

Rive calls NV Energy “the only beneficiary” of the decision, adding that the utility’s “monopoly has been protected.”

The proposal, written by the commissioner presiding over the net metering issue, could still be modified at tomorrow morning’s meeting where it is scheduled for consideration by the full three-member commission.

SolarCity, based in California, has several investments here, including a headquarters and a regional training center that opened last month. A spokesperson for Sunrun, another solar firm in Nevada, did not comment on what impact the draft proposal would have on its business model as the firm continues to review the document, which was issued today.

But Bryan Miller, a senior vice president at Sunrun, said commissioners should delay a vote because the draft was “incredibly unclear.”

“What is clear is that no one can understand this, yet the Public Utilities Commission is about to vote on it,” he said.

New rates would take effect Jan. 1. Existing solar customers would gradually switch to the modified net metering rates over four years. If the draft order is approved, NV Energy would calculate the rates according to the PUC’s instructions.

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