Duke Energy’s proposed revision to net energy metering (NEM), the rules for how solar customers are compensated for excess solar power they send to the grid, would make rooftop solar:
🌞 more complicated
🌞 a worse investment
🌞 even less affordable for low- to moderate-income households and
🌞 harder for solar companies to sell
Scientists say we need to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure and convert to clean energy at top speed. Solutions like rooftop solar and battery storage are ready now and prices are dropping. But Duke is putting the brakes on solar so it can earn billions on new fracked gas-burning power plants instead.
Read more below and see how you can help save rooftop solar.
Duke Still Hates Solar
(sadly, our 2014 TV ad is still relevant)
Resources
In December 2020, Duke Energy and some other organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in South Carolina in which they mutually agreed to support a complicated proposal for revising net metering rules in both South and North Carolina. The plan was adopted by the SC Public Service Commission.
The proposal replaces the current straightforward rules with an arrangement that would make rooftop solar vastly more confusing and even less affordable than it is now for low- to moderate-income people.
Net metering was then discussed as part of NC’s rate review process. NC WARN took part in these meetings, which essentially rubber-stamped the NEM proposal from South Carolina. Together with Appalachian Voices, we filed a response, outlining the shortcomings of that process.
In November 2021, Duke filed its formal petition for net metering reform with the NC Utilities Commission (see pp. 45-57 for the North Carolina MOU, which is largely identical to its SC counterpart).
The changes are based on the disproven claim that existing net metering shifts costs onto non-solar customers.
Duke is telling the media there is broad consensus on its proposal, but 38 nonprofits and counting have registered their opposition. Join them!
Those groups and other NC residents will get a chance to register their opposition as the NCUC begins considering Duke’s petition.
Recent News
Distortions Signal Duke Energy Can’t Honestly Win its Case to Overhaul Solar Rooftop Net Metering in NC — News Release from NC WARN
The decade-long Duke Energy campaign to slow-walk renewable power took a predictable turn last week as the monopoly corporation misled regulators and news media in a master-stroke of corporate weasel-wording.
SEE ALL Net Metering POSTSGroups File Complaint that Duke Energy Rigged Net Metering Process to Push Plan to Undermine Rooftop Solar Power in NC — News Release from NC WARN and Appalachian Voices
NC WARN and Appalachian Voices today filed a complaint with state regulators about a stakeholder process they say was rigged to favor a Duke Energy scheme that would harm small-scale solar power companies and Duke Energy customers across North Carolina.
SEE ALL Net Metering POSTS
