HB1509  – Fair access to community solar. (Dead.)
Prime Sponsor – Representative Hackney (D; 11th District; Renton & Tukwila) (Co-Sponsor Doglio – D)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy  January 26th. Still in committee by cutoff.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Summary –
The bill would allow community solar projects to have an AC capacity of up to 5,000 kilowatts in investor owned utilities’ territories; those in public utilities’ territories would be limited to 200 kilowatts, unless the utility approved more. It would have the Utility and Transportation Commission adopt rules for a new community solar program by April 30th, 2024. Half of those projects would have to have low-income subscribers and low-income service provider subscribers. The program would combine community solar project managers, the people or company that managed the operation of a project and contact with the interconnected utility, along with community solar subscription managers that marketed projects, provided other community solar-related services, and enrolled customers or allocated subscriptions. They would have to register and file various information with the UTC, which could approve, deny or revoke registrations; they’d have to provide a performance bond to cover advances and deposits from subscribers. Investor owned utilities  would be allowed to recover their costs in developing and implementing the program through their rates. Program managers would receive the renewable energy certificates generated by a project and could retire them, sell them, or retire them on behalf of subscribers.

The UTC would create consumer protection guidelines, require investor-owned utilities to file the legal documents for implementing programs, and maintain a publicly available queue of precertified projects in a way that protected commercially sensitive or competitive information. Project and subscription managers would have to file various information about projects with the Commission; collect information on financial benefits realized by low-income and low-income service provider subscribers; administer the project in a transparent way that allowed fair and nondiscriminatory opportunities for participation; and provide each subscriber with a disclosure form containing all the material terms and conditions of participation in the project. Disclosures would include the term of participation; provisions about the disposition or transfer of the subscriber’s interest, including any potential costs associated with a transfer; all charges including any penalties for cancellation; the billing and payment procedures; the projected percentage of the customer’s usage that will be allocated to the project and a description of the methodology used to develop that; an explanation of the subscriber’s relationship to renewable energy credits and of the responsibilities of the community solar project manager or community solar subscription manager, the utility, and the Commission; contact information for questions and complaints; and any other terms and conditions of the services provided by the subscription manager. They wouldn’t be allowed to use credit checks or sign-up fees to screen potential subscribers, or charge exit fees to customers who wanted to stop their subscription.

Managers could enter eligible customers in a utility’s net crediting program. Subscribers would get credits on their bills for their share of the project’s production minus a fee for the subscription manager, which would have to be a fixed percentage of the bill’s credits, valued at the total rate per kilowatt hour they paid the utility for power, including all charges for generation,transmission, distribution, taxes, and fees. A fee for the subscription manager, which would have to be a fixed percentage of the bill’s credits, would be deducted from that, but the low-income and low-income service providers would be exempt from program fees. If a project were undersubscribed the managers could roll the unsubscribed credits forward and allocate them to subscribers for up to two years; at that point, they’d have to get paid for that unsubscribed power at the utility’s wholesale cost. The utility could charge up to 2% of the subscription fee to the project manager or subscription manager as a a net crediting fee. The credits could offset any costs on the customer’s next bill except for the utility’s standard basic charge. Any unused bill credits could be rolled forward and used during the life of the project.

The bill retains the current provisions under which the WSU Energy Office pre-certifies projects; projects have two years after pre-certification to start producing power; and utilities choosing to participate in the program provide a one-time initial incentive payment of up to $20,000 to the project developer to cover the start-up costs attributable to its low income subscribers, plus some amount less than the installed cost of the project to provide direct benefits to those subscribers. (Utilities recover these payments through other customers’ rates.) The bill would have utilities provide virtual net metering for all new community solar projects, crediting customers’ bills for their shares of the power a project produced at the same rate they were paying for the power they used, rather than only for projects under 100 kWs of AC capacity.