Community Solar Power Program

In response to House Bill 1686, legislation passed by the General Assembly in 2011 that promotes solar distributed generation (“DG”), the company filed a petition on October 31, 2011 with the State Corporation Commission to seek approval for a Community Solar Power Program in which solar PV DG would be strategically located in areas of the company's service territory to study the impact and assess benefits to the company’s electric distribution system.

The Program would be structured to include company-owned solar PV DG systems; both on leased roof space or ground-mounted installations, as well as the purchase of output from customer-owned solar PV DG systems.

The proposed Community Solar Power Program incorporates the development of 30 MW of company-owned solar PV DG which will be tied to specific study objectives and located within the company's service territory.

The company-owned installations would be constructed in two phases:

• Phase I would consist of up to 10 MW of solar DG and would cover the period from Commission approval of the company’s petition through December 31, 2013.
• Phase II would consist of up to 20 MW of Solar DG and would cover the period from January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2015.

During the first half of 2012 as part of the Community Solar Power Program, the company also plans to seek approval to offer a tariff, as an alternative to net metering, that would allow interested residential and commercial customers with solar DG installations to sell their solar energy output and renewable energy certificates to the company.

The Program would allow participation of customer-owned systems up to a maximum amount of 3 MW.  The size of the company's proposed Community Solar Power Program (company-owned installations and purchases under the new Community Solar Power Program Tariff) would not exceed 33 MW.