“This is clearly an attack by utilities on customers’ energy choices in an attempt to restrict the freedom of individuals to lower their power bills,” Amy Heart, Midwest spokesperson for the Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), told ThinkProgress. Heart said that there are only about 500 solar customers in Indiana and that this is a “concerted effort to quash the industry” before it gets on its feet.

The Indiana Energy Association, a group made up of the state’s investor-owned natural gas and electric utilities, supports the bill, arguing that it “corrects the inequities for customers” who don’t use solar and protects the reliability of the grid. They state that the new law would help “level the playing field” and make it so that consumers and generators are paying for grid upkeep.

Angeline Protogere, communications manager at Duke Energy in Indiana, said that the legislation developed by Rep. Koch has the goal of “beginning the Indiana discussion as to what is right policy for customer-owned generation — one that balances the interests of customers who have their own generation such as solar with those who don’t.”

Koch, for his part, said that the bill, and especially the proposition of a fixed charge, is designed “to make sure the costs of the grid are fairly apportioned to those who use it.”

Net metering laws allow solar producers to get paid for the excess energy they put back into the grid. Customers using solar panels can be credited at the retail rate, the cost they would have paid for electricity at the time, or the avoided cost rate, which is the amount the utility estimates it saves by not having to produce the power that a solar customer feeds into the grid. There can also be some combination of this as determined by a formula.

Read more