Solar Industry News

ReVision Co-Founder Fortunat Mueller with Maine Governor Janet Mills, just after the signing of LD91, a law which restores retail net metering. The event was held at Rocky's Stove Shoppe in Augusta, site of Maine's first solar-powered stove shop!

On Tuesday, April 2nd, Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed into law LD91 , a law which directs the PUC to end gross metering and return to full retail net metering. The Maine PUC, this Tuesday, April 9th, met and issued an emergency order ending gross metering immediately (rather than wait 90 days for the law to take affect). Gross metering is dead!

Last updated: 4/11/2019

Information is still coming out as CMP and Emera figure out how to transition back to retail net metering, but here's what we know so far:

• Effective immediately, we will no longer be required to install gross meters for new systems.
• Those customers who have already executed a net metering agreement which included gross metering, can expect to receive a contract amendment from the utility reflecting the return to full retail net metering. We don't know the exact timing of this, but we expect it to be fairly quick.
• For those customers who already have gross meters installed: on the return to full net metering, those extra meters are no longer of any use - Neither the PUC nor the utilities have indicated what they intend to do with those meters yet. They will either just ignore them and write them off, or they may remove the meters and replace them with meter blanks. We expect to hear more from the utilities about this in the coming months.
• For those enrolled under gross metering, it is unclear at this time whether any existing carry forward bill credits you have on your account will turn into full retail net metering credits. Our guess is no - most likely, moving forward you will get full retail net metering credits, but not for the period in which gross metering was in place. As we're just coming out of the winter months, this is not likely to affect a lot of customers, as few customers carry credits from winter into spring.
• As an emergency rule, the return to net metering is in effect immediately. It may take the utilities a few weeks to return to their historical billing system, but we encourage you to review your next few utility bills carefully to ensure that you are being credited appropriately.

This is not the end of progress on solar policy in Maine! Now that we have fixed LePage's solar rollbacks, we can look at policy that moves us forward, such as policy that encourages municipalities and nonprofits to go solar, and solar farms.

Best, Your Friends at ReVision Energy