Community Solar Update

On October 29th the Oregon Public Utility Commission adopted the final policy elements to the Community Solar Program.  After a long and painful deliberation, they made several large changes to the program.  The biggest and most concerning is that the credit rate will be the residential retail rate, but will no longer have a 2% escalator.  An additional concerning change was made to restrict the initial tranche of projects to 80 MW, which means the administrative costs will be spread among fewer projects.  While the commission did decide to reduce the administrative costs slightly, OSEIA is very concerned that these changes create a difficult landscape for community solar to operate in.  OSEIA is disappointed that the commissioners did not give more weight to all the comments submitted by a wide variety of stakeholders that supported staff’s strong proposal, but instead moved forward with a weaker version.  You can read the PUC order here - https://apps.puc.state.or.us/orders/2019ords/19-392.pdf

On November 20th OSEIA members Charlie Coggeshall (EQ Research) and Evan Ramsey (Bonneville Environmental Foundation) presented on the Commission’s decision in front of the Oregon House Committee on Energy and the Environment, again expressing disappointment in the Commission’s decision. You can view Charlie’s presentation here - https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019I1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/207857

Portland Business Journal wrote a good article regarding the decision here - https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2019/11/19/pucs-community-solar-decision-riles-industry.html