Bryan administration proposed new net energy billing program for solar customers

Gov. Albert Bryan Jr.'s administration announced on Sept. 9, 2019, that it had proposed a successor to the Virgin Islands' former net-metering program, allowing residents with distributed energy systems to offset electricity costs by selling power back to the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority grid.

The proposed Net Energy Billing program was developed by the Virgin Islands Energy Office with WAPA and the Public Services Commission, with technical assistance from the U.S. Department of Energy, Bloomberg Associates and the Secunda Family Foundation. It would replace the former Net Metering Program, which ended in 2017 after reaching a territorywide 15-megawatt cap.

The proposal was scheduled to go before the Public Services Commission on Oct. 3, 2019. Under the plan, residents would be paid for distributed energy sent to the grid at 75% of the Levelized Energy Adjustment Cost. Based on the then-current LEAC of 19.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, the excess generation credit would have been 14.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Participants also would have been required to pay a monthly grid access charge based on system size: $20 for systems from 2 to 5.9 kilowatts, $35 for 6 to 8.9 kilowatts, and $50 for 9 to 11.9 kilowatts. Systems of 12 kilowatts or more would have required supplemental case-by-case review.

Under the proposal, customers would have been allowed to offset the full amount of billed usage during each monthly billing period, but excess generation credits above the billed amount would not have carried forward and would have been reset at the end of each billing period. Unused excess energy credits also could not have been used to offset the grid access charge.

The administration said existing participants in the previous net energy metering program would not have been moved into the proposed program. The proposal would have applied to future adopters and grid-connected customers who installed solar outside the original net energy metering program.

Official source: https://www.vi.gov/governor-bryan-initiates-new-net-metering-program/