Last week, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) spent nearly 12 hours reviewing and deciding on issues within the WE Energies and WPS rate cases. The Commissioners’ deliberations resulted in slashing rate increases requested by the utilities, as well as big wins for RENEW Wisconsin and rooftop solar in our state! Thanks to everyone who joined us in this effort by writing public comments to the PSC.
In our discussions with business member Eland Electric earlier this year, RENEW learned about unreasonable practices from utilities related to connecting rooftop solar systems to the grid when they are paired with a battery system. In many cases, WE Energies and WPS put roadblocks in the way of Eland Electric as they attempted to install solar + battery systems. These utilities refused to accept certified controls that ensure batteries do not export energy to the grid.
Essentially, the utilities added the capacities of solar and battery systems together. This blocked such systems from being able to take advantage of net metering, even though the batteries have certified controls that prevent them from sending the customer’s stored solar power to the grid. This practice not only blocked homeowners from benefiting from net metering but also resulted in increased costs when it came time to connect the system to the electric grid. This economically undermined customers’ ability to add battery storage and use their own solar energy production for reliability purposes.
Separately, Eland Electric also found that utilities were aggregating rooftop solar systems from separate customers by using an arbitrary “premises” definition. Examples included duplexes and a “tiny homes” project for veterans. These projects all had separate solar systems under separate electric meters, but the utilities wanted to add them up together. Similar to the solar + battery issue described above, these utilities had been leveraging their “premises” definition to increase interconnection costs and bump solar systems out of net metering.
When these rate cases began in April, RENEW worked directly with Jesse Michalski at Eland Electric to address these utility hurdles. After digging into the details, we found that utilities were blatantly ignoring PSC interconnection rules and national lab certifications. RENEW then implemented a strategy requesting that the PSC review our technical arguments and regulate these utilities through rate case decisions. Our actions included serving discovery to the utilities and providing expert testimony from Eland’s Jesse Michalski as well as RENEW’s Andrew Kell and Ben Behlke. RENEW’s staff attorney, Sherif Halaweish, also represented us through legal filings and briefings to the PSC.
In the end, all three Commissioners agreed with RENEW! While we await written orders from the PSC, based on their verbal decisions, we expect the PSC will require utility changes in 2027.
Kudos to the Commissioners for not only going through utility accounting and rates with a scalpel, but also for digging into these important interconnection issues and ordering utility changes that will enable solar and battery systems! RENEW looks forward to working with our member solar installers to keep identifying and removing obstacles for Wisconsinites trying to go solar. With the knowledge that the PSC can and will correct unreasonable interconnection practices, RENEW will continue to work to increase our dialogue with utilities to directly address these issues.