INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The leader of a group representing Indiana’s power companies has publicly acknowledged that the growing popularity of solar energy in the state doesn’t currently pose a threat to utility profits.
However, Indiana Energy Association President Mark Maassel said Wednesday that lawmakers still should move forward with a bill to sharply curtail an incentive for solar adopters.
Republican Sen. Brandt Hershman’s bill overhauls a practice called net metering, which allows solar panel owners to feed surplus energy to the grid for credit. They’re currently compensated at a retail energy rate, but the measure would lower that rate.
Maassel says significant growth in solar would tax infrastructure and erode utility profit margins. Customers would then pay higher costs.
State law already limits net metering to 1 percent of a utility’s energy.
2 comments
This crap needs laws? Seriously??? More waste of time, money, resources…But that is how our legislature gets paid.
If they would stop giving tax credits (our tax money) to people who install what would otherwise be unprofitable green (the color of money) energy systems wouldn’t need these laws; because they would be relegated to the level of interesting science projects.
Wind and solar only work here when we work hard and pay more money in taxes to make them work.