Action Alert! Proposed IA Bill will kill Iowa’s Solar Industry

Clayton County Oppose Mid American’s $300 Sunshine Tax – Tax will end our local clean energy prosperity! 
Iowa legislators have introduced a bill to kill net metering as we know it in Iowa. The bill was apparently drafted by the investor owned monopoly utility company, MidAmerican Energy and will likely be supported by Alliant Energy, as both have aggressively attempted to overturn net metering in the past.

Oversight of monopolies is absolutely critical to make sure customers are not getting ripped off.
It is never a good idea to take the utility’s word that they need a tighter grip on their customers
or the ability to collect even more money. This anti-competitive behavior is why we have utility
regulators like the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB).
MidAmerican already makes hefty profits from Iowa ratepayers, with net revenues of $605
million in 2018 alone. Now, MidAmerican wants to widen the moat and further trap Iowa
ratepayers.
MidAmerican has only about 750 customers with distributed generation (rooftop solar) or 0.1% of their total
customers. The 13 MW of distributed generation capacity in MidAmerican’s territory is about
equivalent to 6 commercial-scale wind turbines and produces about 22 GWh of electricity.
According to Berkshire Hathaway, MidAmerican’s recent annual sales were 32,400 GWh.
Customer-owned generation, then, is about 0.07% of MidAmerican’s total sales.

MidAmerican’s Math is Not Fair
 Customers with their own generation pay up front for the costs of interconnecting to the grid
along with any necessary upgrades to infrastructure that are needed.

 Customers pay a monthly fixed service charge regardless of generation.

 Customer-owned generators keep costs low when energy is most expensive.
1) Customers who invest their own money in a generator reduce the cost of building
expensive peak generation that is paid for by all ratepayers with a 9-11% profit
added on top for the utility.
2) Customers with solar are producing power at peak times when energy is valued at
around $0.21 per kWh and getting credit for that power at $10.5 cents per kWh
when demand and strain on the system is lower. The utilities sell that excess at retail
rates to other customers and earn a profit on it.
3) Distributed generation(roof top solar) also provides for values like improved power quality and
voltage regulation that benefit neighbors.

 Net metering has been considered a fair way to roughly account for the balance of costs and
benefits. It is not fair to insist that customers with distributed generation pay for “grid costs”
while ignoring the gap between the value of the energy provided by the customer and the value
they are getting back for it. Policy must account for both.

 Customers with their own generation are already paying for grid costs with the value they are
providing. MidAmerican wants them to pay twice, adding a sunshine tax of $328 per year on
these customers. This would increase the payback on a typical solar system by more than a
decade, well out of the range of what makes sense for Iowa homeowners and businesses, and
kill the solar industry as we know it in Iowa.

 This sunshine tax also puts at risk the 800+ solar jobs at small businesses throughout the state.

MidAmerican is Going Around Regulators Against Iowans
 Oversight of monopolies is absolutely critical to make sure customers are not getting ripped off.
It is never a good idea to take the utility’s word that they need a tighter grip on their customers
or the ability to collect even more money. This anti-competitive behavior is why we have utility
regulators like the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB).

 MidAmerican and Alliant are almost 2 years into a 3-year net metering pilot designed to provide
information about whether changes to net metering policies in Iowa make sense. These pilots
were launched because the IUB ruled it did not have enough information to determine whether
changes were necessary.

 The legislature does not have this information, either, and should allow the pilots to be
completed instead of making premature changes based upon claims of cost-shifting by the
utilities that were very recently rejected by the IUB.