Net metering solar subsidies in Michigan are being ended because they’re unaffordable and unfair, something that should have been apparent to all long ago.

Michigan has joined other states in realizing that net metering rules as originally designed are biased against consumers without rooftop solar, raising their electricity rates. Michigan will now charge rooftop solar customers at the retail price of electricity for electricity that they consume and pay them a lower price for the electricity that the utility purchases from them thereby charging them for the use of the electrical wires (i.e., transmission and distribution) that non-solar consumers hitherto have had to subsidize. Customers already in the net metering program will be grandfathered for 10 years. By changing the rules on net metering, Michigan will join several other states that have recognized the bias.

Beginning June 1, Michigan customers who provide solar power to utility companies will be paid an avoided-cost tariff based on how much their utility pays to produce electricity, ensuring solar rooftop customers are “assessed for their fair and equitable use of the electrical grid.”

Read more:

http://naturalgasnow.org/told-another-net-metering-solar-subsidy-bites-dust/