Solar summit rains on NV Energy

It looks like NV Energy picked the wrong week to make the case against the state's budding rooftop solar movement.

The eighth annual National Clean Energy Summit shined with the light of a thousand sun metaphors Monday at the Mandalay Bay, and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid spent a sizable portion of his opening address pummeling Nevada's power giant for attempting to shut off the state's diminutive but increasingly popular net-metered rooftop solar program. (Net metering allows rooftop solar customers to receive credits for any excess energy they produce and send into the system.)

Reid warned NV Energy its policies were counterproductive, anti-consumer and historically wrongheaded. The power utility announced last week it had reached the a 235-megawatt cap on net metering. The Nevada Public Utilities Commission is in the process of carving out new net metering rules and rates.

The old electrical grid, Reid said, is hitting the skids.

"But electrical utilities never imagined that families and businesses would be able to generate for the same price as utility power plants," Reid said to a room bursting with like-minded thinkers. "They didn't consider that consumers would rather pay to make their homes more efficient than pay for power they don't need. And they didn't expect Americans would grow up to believe that reducing climate-changing carbon pollution is a priority.

"Our electrical grid has barely changed in a century, but that is quickly coming to an end. American demand for clean, reliable power choices is forcing change that is accelerating."

It helps to have Reid pressing the issue and the Obama administration embracing it as a major policy initiative. When President Obama arrived Monday to celebrate the summit and steal the show, there wasn't much room for rebuttal on the bright future of renewables.

After listening to Reid's remarks, I toured the area set aside for businesses to promote their products and services. Amid the new solar companies and electrical contractors, who see rooftop solar as a genuine job creator, there was the NV Energy booth. It featured a pair of informative placards reminding attendees of its commitment to renewables — especially solar.

One announced, "NV Energy is supporting the installation of residential rooftop solar systems at a rate of one every two hours."

Why, that's 12 a day statewide. A dozen.

No wonder the energy utility has cried out in agony and hustled the Legislature over the onerous burden it's bearing under the current residential solar agreement. That's 12 customers per day who are trying to squirm their way out of paying full fare to NV Energy — technically, not a monopoly in some rural areas — for their electricity. Why, it's practically a sun-powered insurrection.

Keeping a sense of perspective is one of the challenges of appreciating the rooftop solar issue. This isn't a fight NV Energy can likely win with the public.

Not far from the power company's booth, former PUC commissioner and longtime renewable energy advocate Rose McKinney-James distilled the issue and made the case for consumer and business subsidy.

"In Nevada, solar makes so much sense because it's a vast resource," she said. "You want to incentivize a certain kind of activity that ultimately is going to be in the public good — for a variety of reasons."

She said it make sense for the PUC to analyze the costs and benefits to improve the system — but not to marginalize it.

"The utility commission, and I'm a former utility commissioner, has an obligation to look at the rate design and balance the impact on the ratepayers," she said. "If it needs to be adjusted, then the utility commission can do that. But you don't throw it out. We approved our net metering standard in 1997. Nevada has always been ahead of the curve."

If renewable energy is still more experimental than practical in some minds, then Nevada is the ideal laboratory for holding solar, wind and geothermal experiments. If the future is half as bright as the summit's speakers contend, then the state that's so backward in so many ways is entering a new era on the leading edge.

If juice ever holds back Nevada's renewable energy movement, it won't be electrical. It will be political.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. He can be reached at 702-383-0295 or jsmith@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith