Net-Energy Metering: Too Successful for its Own Good?

Defending the decision to phase out new net-energy metering customers, the Public Utilities Commission noted that the NEM program “was simply not designed for … deployment at the scale experienced today.” When the current NEM program was authorized in 2001, “the Legislature mandated a cap on customer participation at 0.5 percent of system peak load (an increase from the original NEM program cap of 0.1 percent of system peak load).” With the Legislature’s blessing, the PUC allowed participation to increase to the point where “NEM program capacity now represents between 30 percent and 53 percent of each of the HECO companies’ system peak load. Participation in the NEM program is now approaching twenty percent of all customers on the HECO and MECO systems.”

HECO Companies’ Net Energy Metering Program Capacity and Enrollment

Volume 25, Number 7 November 2015