HB2248 – Enhances opportunities to participate in community solar projects.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Doglio (D; 22nd District; Thurston County)
Current status – Vetoed by the Governor.
In the House –  (Passed the House)
Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment and Energy January 16th. Replaced by a substitute, amended, and passed out of committee February 4th; referred to Appropriations. Had a hearing there February 10th; passed out of Appropriations February 11th. Referred to Rules; returned to Rules on February 26th. Replaced with a striker by the prime sponsor on the floor and passed out of the House February 27th. House concurred in Senate changes March 12th.

In the Senate – (Passed the Senate)
Referred to the Senate Committee on Ways and Means; had a hearing there on March 2nd. Replaced by a striker and voted out of committee March 9th. Referred to Rules. Passed by the Senate March 11th and returned to the House for consideration of concurrence in the changes.
Next step would be – Signature by the Governor.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
(SB6223 is a companion bill in the Senate.)

Comments –
There’s a staff summary of the changes on page 7 of the House Bill Report on the substitute.

Interestingly, Republican Representative DeBolt, from Lewis County, is a cosponsor of this bill. (Transalta plans to put a 180MW solar project on their reclaimed coal mine site near Centralia, in his district, to complement its nearby Skookumchuck wind project, and there’s now considerable local interest in developing other renewable energy projects.)

The amended House substitute provides participating utilities an additional credit against their  taxes each year of the larger of 0.0025% of their sales or $50,000.

There’s a staff summary of the changes made by the House striker on its last page. They include extending the enrollment period for the program by five years, to 2031; expanding potential subscribers to include tribal and public agencies serving low-income communities; creating a biennial cap of $5 million to spread the available funding out over time, distributed among utilities in proportion to their retail sales; and establishing a target cost of $3/watt for projects, which the WSU extension service administering the program can review and adjust each biennium. It also drops the net metering provisions.

There’s a staff summary of the changes made by the Senate Ways and Means striker on its last page. (It’s in the folder for the bill on the page with the committee materials for the meeting.) As I read the striker’s new language about compensation, on p. 19:
It limits the portion of the one-time initial payment for administrative costs to the startup costs for the qualifying subscribers rather than paying for all the costs of administering those memberships.
It now says that the other portion of the initial payment is “not to exceed” the cost of the proportion of the project providing benefits to qualifying subscribers rather than saying it’s to equal that.
It reintroduces net metering for community solar projects of up to 100 kWs behind the meter, but only for the customer being billed for that meter, rather than providing virtual net metering for all subscribers.
It says that “For all other community solar projects, compensation must be determined at a value set by the participating utility and paid to the administrator or subscribers according to the agreement between the project and the utility.”
It also requires the Energy Office to allocate the incentive funds among participating utilities in an equitable way, and clarifies a few other details.

Summary –
The bill extends the expiring community solar incentive program, retaining many of its provisions, but it would allow subscribers who invest in a project to get net metering payments from their share of it in the same way they would if the panels were on their own roofs. (With net metering, you get a credit at the retail rate on your bill each month for the electricity your share of the project produced, so it’s as if the utility was not charging you for that power, and you can carry that credit forward if you have a surplus and use it to reduce later bills. (The credits are only good until the end of each year, though, so you don’t want to subscribe for more power than you’ll use in that time.)

The bill would also extend the $0.10/kWh production incentive credit that the current program ended with to all the subscribers of projects that had at least 40% of their subscriptions from any combination of low-to-moderate-income households and low-to-moderate-income service providers like housing authorities and food banks. The incentives would last for eight years; subscribers could receive up to 50% of the cost of their share of the project from them. However, the bill would provide an additional $0.10/kWh incentive credit to the low-to-moderate-income households; they would also be eligible to get production incentives for up to 100% of their costs. (These are defined as customers with up to 115% of the household median in their area. Average household median income for the state is about $64,000, though it varies a lot.)  (In addition, the bill would also allow utilities that created community solar projects to meet requirements for energy assistance to low-income households under the Clean Energy Transformation Act by not charging for or discounting  part or all of the costs of those subscriptions; they could also retain the RECs associated with the production of power from these shares of a project.)

As I read the bill, service providers can subscribe to projects, but aren’t eligible for the additional incentive. One of these organizations has to certify the income status of each of the low-to-moderate income households subscribing, which sounds as if it may not be attractive to people in that category who aren’t currently depending on those services. Projects can’t be bigger than one thousand kilowatts; at least 40% of all the subscriptions have to be for less than twenty kilowatts; and no customer can subscribe to more than 40% of a project. (However, customers can subscribe to more than one project, but not for more than their total estimated annual usage, or for more capacity than 100 kW AC.)

Details –

The bill would stop certifying projects under the current incentive program at the end of June 2020. Projects could apply for precertification under the new program for six years, between the first of July 2020, and the end of June 2026. (They’d get another two years to complete them; but as I read the bill they wouldn’t be eligible for the incentives. The previous two sentences may not be right; I don’t think the bill’s current language is consistent about how the timetables for projects and incentives relate toward the end of the period.)

Utilities can currently receive annual tax credits (up to the greater of 1.5% of their 2014 sales or $250,000) for community solar production incentives if they choose to provide them; for projects under the new program that are certified by the end of June 2026, the bill increases that to the greater of 1.75% of sales or $300,000. Total incentives under the new program are capped at $20 million.