#ROCKY MOUNTAIN POWER NET METERING RATES FULL#

The significant subsidy has encouraged $186m in solar investment in 2019 alone, and driven an increase in annual residential capacity installed from next to nothing in 2010 to close to 100 MWh in 2017. Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), the largest utility in Utah and the provider of 80% of the state’s power, provides reimbursement for homeowners with their own solar panels equal to 92% of that power’s retail value. This growth has been both encouraged, and potentially stifled, by the state’s embrace of net metering. This total makes the state the tenth-largest solar producer in the US, which is itself the world’s second-largest source of solar capacity, behind only China, and an influential player in the global solar power industry. This poses the question: is the US set to move on from net metering? And what other policies are in place around the world that its states could employ? Is the US turning away from net metering?Īmong those to turn away from net metering is the state of Utah, which was responsible for 2.3% of the US’s total solar production as of February this year, having produced 1.88GW of electricity.

#ROCKY MOUNTAIN POWER NET METERING RATES FULL#

One of the more common policies is net metering, a programme traditionally favoured by many US states that sees electric utility companies reimburse domestic solar panel owners at full retail rates. However, a number of states are moving away from the process, which critics argue stifles economic development by needlessly burdening large solar utility companies. But considering the increasingly dire state of the world’s environment, and the importance of delivering a clean energy transition to protect the Earth’s climate, many governments have implemented policies to support nascent solar power infrastructure, targeting domestic and small-scale solar as a means to generate significant solar power across a country.įrom the relatively straightforward feed-in tariffs of China, to the more complex models of Spain and Germany where users are paid back in exchange for the power they actually produce, these policies are as varied as the countries that employ them.

While few doubt the environmental credentials of solar power, its economic viability is often a sticking point, with the cost of installing solar panels, especially on a small scale, often swallowing whatever long-term economic gains the technology could provide.

Rocky mountain power net metering rates