All the slide shows and presentations are handed in; advocates and opponents have made and rested their cases; and the state’s Solar Working Group has had its last meeting on the future of sun power in Michigan. Now it’s the Michigan Public Service Commission’s turn. MPSC staff have until June 10 to sort through piles of data and then draft a report suggesting ways the state’s top two utilities could help more customers install rooftop solar systems.
As work group meetings continue, interviews with solar panel owners confirmed that they are glad they built their systems, but have suggestions for improving the utilities’ solar pilots and the state’s net metering rules.
Five years ago, when DTE Energy and Consumers Energy launched small pilot programs offering premium rates to customers for power from their solar panels, Oak Electric and Four Elements Energy became very busy installing solar systems on homes and small businesses. But, in 2012, the roof fell in for rooftop solar in Michigan, when the utilities significantly changed their pilots. That happened, installers said, because DTE’s Solar Currents and Consumers’ Experimental Advanced Renewables Program (EARP) drastically cut their rates for new participants, citing sharply falling solar panel prices.
Representatives of Michigan’s two largest utilities, DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, made their first presentation to the state’s solar work group, and expressed little enthusiasm for expanding the use of customer-generated, jobs-producing, clean solar energy.
About 40 energy experts gathered in Lansing last week for their second discussion about ways the state’s top utilities can spur more solar power development in Michigan, which is now well behind many other states in deploying the booming clean-energy technology.
A specially assembled “solar work group” of state regulators, officials from the state’s two largest utilities, and clean-energy business advocates is considering ways to deploy more solar energy in Michigan that help, not hurt the firms’ bottom lines; protect ratepayers’ wallets while offering them an entrepreneurial opportunity; and boost the state’s solar manufacturers and installers.