HB1862 – Raises the cap on net metering
Prime Sponsor – Representative Mead (D; 44th District; Snohomish)
Current status – Referred to House Committee on Environment and Energy. Still in committee by 2019 cutoff. Reintroduced and retained in present status for 2020 session.
Next step would be – Scheduling a hearing.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SSB5223 was originally an identical companion bill in the Senate, but it’s been amended in minor ways.

Comments –

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

The changes made to the original SB5223 by amendments in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology Committee are summarized on p. 3 of the Senate Bill Report.

Summary –

The bill requires utilities to offer net metering to more customers, increasing the current cap from 0.5% of a utility’s peak demand during 1996 to 4%. (At least, I think that’s what it does; the change it makes seems pretty ungainly. It amends “On January 1, 2014, the cumulative generating capacity available to net metering systems will equal 0.5% percent …” to read 4% instead.) Representative Morris’s HB1129 also does this, more smoothly, but it would change the current system in several other ways.

Details –

The bill requires utilities to use the surplus credits that they get each year from any net-metering systems that have generated more power than customers used to help low-income residential customers pay their bills. (HB1129 only allows them to do this.)

Requires the State Building Code Council to do a study and make changes in the code to encourage more use of renewable energy systems.

Requires the Department of Commerce to create a stakeholder work group and report by December 1, 2020 to the appropriate legislative committees on its recommendations about specific circumstances in which changes in compensation for net metering systems would be warranted, and what the policy should be for customer-generators in the same rate class. The work group has to consider reductions in utility income from different levels of net metering and whether there are any cost shifts to ratepayers associated with it, and must provide an inventory of other states’ net metering laws.

Like HB1129, the bill would make large utilities include the total number of kilowatt hours consumed during the most recent twelve months on all customers’ bills.