HB1129 – Requires utilities to provide net metering for more small systems, and allows them to offer it to as many large systems as they choose to.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Morris (D, 40th District, Mount Vernon)
Current status – Referred to the Committee on Environment & Energy. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
Net metering credits customers with fuel cells, combined heat and power systems, or renewable energy systems at the retail rate for power that goes onto the grid from their systems when they aren’t using it, so they pay for the power they used from the grid net, or minus, the surplus power they provided to it.

Summary –

The bill requires utilities to offer net metering to customers with small systems, no larger than 199kW, until their cumulative generative capacity equals 4% of the utility’s peak demand during 1996, reserving at least half of this allotment for residential customers producing renewable energy. (The current cap is 0.5% of 1996 peak demand.) They may offer an alternative to customers with small systems who are not enrolled in the current program when the cumulative generating capacity in that program reaches 2% of 1996 peak demand or after January 1, 2022, whichever comes first. (An alternative is not available to customers who are interconnected with net metering when the law takes effect, but is available if the property is sold or a new customer takes over the meter.)

The bill allows a utility to offer net metering to as many customers with larger systems as it chooses to, and to offer an alternative to those customers as soon as it has completed the distributed resources planning specified in the bill.

Details –
To offer an alternative, a utility must have gone through distributed energy resources planning of the sort specified by HB1126, or, if a process for that is not enacted by June 30th 2019, must accomplish the goals for such planning recommended in the report published on December 31, 2017, by the “commission on current practices in distributed
energy resources planning.”  (This means the Utility and Transportation Commission’s recent Report on Current Practices in Distributed Energy Resource Planning.)

Beginning in 2020, each utility must send the Department of Commerce a semi-annual report on their current net metering, including their peak demand in 1996 and how much more net metering they will be able to add before they reach the cap for small systems. If a utility has “exceeded the requirement” of subsection 2 (1) (a) of the bill, which says they shall offer net metering to customers with small systems until they reach the cap, then it must also report on whether it’s continuing to offer the net metering which isn’t capped to other customers and whether it has established a new cumulative capacity allocation for them.

Large utilities would have to include the total number of kilowatt hours consumed during the most recent twelve months on all customers’ bills.