Two bills of massive import for Arkansas’s future remain up for discussion in interminable legislative committee meetings today. While Gov. Sanders’ Arkansas Learns proposal sucks up most of the oxygen at the state Capitol today, an equally sinister plan, which would kill the state’s booming solar industry, is under consideration before a House committee. The testimony for each bill stretched so long the committees were forced to break for meetings of the House and Senate and will convene afterward.
One key difference in the bills: With endless Republican co-sponsors, the full force of Sanders’ propaganda machine behind it and billionaires chomping at the bit, Arkansas Learns appears poised for easy passage. But House Bill 1370, only has two co-sponsors, Rep. Lanny Fite (R-Benton) and Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy), and the might of the energy monopolies vs. all sorts of big money and municipalities, school districts and nonprofits who’ve benefited from existing solar policy. So it’ll be interesting to watch as it weaves through the Capitol.
Carrying water for Entergy and electric co-ops, Fite and Dismang want to rollback Arkansas’s one-to-one net-metering structure, where utility customers with solar panels who generate excess power receive a credit on their electric bills for the excess power they send to the grid. That framework has allowed homeowners, businesses, farmers, nonprofits, schools, local governments and more to pay for the installation of solar panels with loans or through power-purchase agreements based on what they’ll save through excess generation.
HB1370 echoes the line of attack Entergy and the co-ops have directed at net-metering for years: that the policy shifts costs onto utility customers without solar panels. Entergy and Co. have long argued that they’re getting shorted on the expense of maintaining infrastructure and the grid. But they’ve repeatedly failed to sell this argument to the legislature, the Public Service Commission and the courts. The PSC has invited the utilities to demonstrate evidence of cost-shifting to receive what’s called a grid charge, but the utilities haven’t done so, which solar proponents suggest is evidence that the utilities have no case (other than perhaps to gullible or persuadable lawmakers).
Fite disingenuously tried to argue that Arkansas’s net metering policy was more liberal that California’s and Hawaii’s. John Bethel, the former head of the Arkansas Public Service Commission who now heads up public affairs for Entergy, noted that there are a massive number of solar projects scheduled to feed into the grid in the coming years. Entergy isn’t against solar, he said. Of course not. It’s against lost revenue.
Someone get Ted Thomas a YouTube channel or Substack stat! The fiery former head of the Public Service Commission, who worked an extended reference to “Better Call Saul” into a PSC recusal last year, started off his testimony with a “Rambo” reference.
“Why did Rambo get made?” a law enforcement officer asks Col. Trautman, Thomas recalled. “God didn’t make Rambo. I did.”
“I created this policy,” Thomas said.
It’s about “risk management,” he said.
“There’s all this talk of energy transition that appears to be happening. It’s filled with risk. Prices move. Technology moves. Federal policy moves. … I wanted to spread the risk. It’s worked.”
He conceded that cost-shifting was happening, but said the utilities must provide data to determine what compensation they’re owed. We shouldn’t kill hundreds of millions of dollars worth of future projects without data, he said.
Before witness testimony, Rep. Jack Ladyman (R-Jonesboro) successfully made a motion to limit testimony to five minutes per person. Thomas fumed throughout his testimony about how unfair that was. But he got extra time through questions from lawmakers.
“The bill is complex. It’s intended to deceive,” Thomas said amid questioning from Rep. Les Eaves (R-Searcy), who took great umbrage, saying it was “unbelievable” that Thomas would say that.
“The utilities have the data [on cost-shifting], and have not filed it with the Public Service Commission,” Thomas said. “They’re hiding the data is, so they can exaggerate it, so they can gut the solar program.”
Ed Tinsley, CEO of Bernhard, also offered impassioned testimony.
“The utilities primary concern about customer owned solar energy and net metering is not cost shifting, but rather an erosion of their earnings,” he said. “Regulated, investor-owned utilities only earn a return on their assets. When customers install solar generation systems, it defers the need for utility investments in large-scale power plants. In other words, customer-owned solar power is the utilities’ competitor”
He also noted that the bill went beyond addressing cost-shifting. It would also limit the size of solar arrays to 5 megawatts, which would cut out large customers, and prohibit hospitals, universities and others from taking service. There’s endless federal incentives those groups would miss out on, Tinsley said.
Loads of other folks testified against the bill, including Michael Hester, superintendent of the Batesville School District, which used the savings from solar panels and energy efficiency upgrades, to give all of its teachers $10,000 raises; and representatives of municipalities and water utilities.
Judging from the questioning from lawmakers, many of which suggested they don’t understand that regulated monopolies aren’t normal businesses, I’m guessing this is going to pass through committee, but it’s a fairly large group and a lot of folks have been silent so far.
More to come.