KINGSTON – Citizens for Local Power, an Ulster County-based group, along with solar power developers, are calling on the governor to “save” community solar by intervening to “correct” the state’s policy on the valuation of solar energy.
The groups told a Kingston news conference on Tuesday that since the
March 2017 introduction by the Public Service Commission of a VDER (Value
of Distributed Energy Resources), the growth of community solar has been
stifled and resulted in the loss of some $800 million worth of solar investment
in New York.
Susan Gillespie of Rosendale, president of the Board of Citizens for
Local Power, called on the continuation of net metering for solar energy.
“We would like everyone, developers as well as customers; small customers can still choose net metering, but that will go away soon,” Gillespie said. “We would like developers and community solar projects also to be able to choose to stay with net metering if it is better for them.”
Solar developer Anthony Sicari, owner of SunPower by New York State Solar Farm, said local business owners and residential customers that have the potential to benefit greatly from community solar “are punished by VDER, basically taking away most of the benefits of solar with the rate structure that it has implemented.”
Sicari said with VDER, solar developers need to build more solar to offset the lower rates that customers are receiving for their solar credits, “which increases the entire cost of the job, and stops many in their tracks.”
