A malicious plan to decimate our solar industry
In the heat of a legislative session, you hear a lot of conflicting information from folks looking out for their own interests. It’s sometimes hard to figure out who’s being honest.
If you’re looking for the truth on solar, I’m here to tell you two things: Solar policy is working in Arkansas, and it’s saving real money for Arkansans. Unfortunately, a utility-supported bill aims to cause the very thing it claims to solve—cost shift—while gutting the solar industry and preventing Arkansans from saving money as the current policy allows.
As former CEO of the Ouachita Electric Cooperative Corporation in south Arkansas, I am proud of helping our cooperative invest in solar energy. In 2015, OECC helped one of our large industrial customers install 12 megawatts of solar near Camden. That’s enough to power nearly 3,000 homes cleanly and—we quickly discovered—less expensively.
Other solar projects quickly followed. In 2018 we asked the Arkansas Public Service Commission for a 4.5 percent rate decrease. Our members’ electric bills went down primarily because we invested in solar.
Opponents of solar expansion are spreading the fiction that solar installation drives up costs for non-solar customers. That’s not true. I challenge anyone to show me an electric bill— even one—that has increased due to someone else installing solar. No electric utility in Arkansas has ever changed its rates based on solar; the only change due to solar that’s ever happened is when we at Ouachita lowered our rates.
Electric cooperatives are member-owned and run by a board of
directors elected by the membership. Their purpose is to serve their members, not their bottom line.
Arkansas’ solar policies are working as intended. Solar has been an absolute success here. By installing solar and operating under the current Arkansas solar policy, folks are seeing savings in their bottom lines and lowering costs for all members of their cooperative.
Monopoly utility companies and Arkansas electric cooperatives are leading a harmful effort to gut our state’s effective solar energy policies. These entities have built hundreds of megawatts of their own solar. They’re not against solar energy, but are against us being able to affordably install our own solar.
House Bill 1370 (and its identical companion, Senate Bill 295) is designed to dismantle solar policy in our state. It guts our excellent “net metering” system. It unfairly changes the rules, implementing baseless limitations and altering the solar compensation amount beginning Sept. 30, 2024, to an amount lower than utilities pay for their own solar systems.
Why? To make solar energy an unattractive option for Arkansans, eliminating competition.
If House Bill 1370 becomes law, we will lose thousands of jobs and essentially stop cities, counties, water districts, and school districts from affordably installing solar and saving taxpayer money for their citizens.
Competition helps us to identify quality companies and lower prices. However, the battle in front of us features monopoly utilities trying to pass legislation that will crush their competition and protect their profits. There’s nothing conservative, capitalist, or American about that.
Current Arkansas solar policy helps local governments install solar and save money. When local governments install solar and save money on electric bills, that’s taxpayer dollars being saved. Essentially, the monopoly utilities are taking action that will keep Arkansas cities and counties from being able to reduce their electric bills.
I’m not interested in taxpayer dollars being wasted on higher power bills when less expensive options are available.
Arkansans should have the freedom to affordably choose solar for their homes, farms, businesses, and places of worship. Passing House Bill 1370 at the behest of monopoly utilities negatively impacts our freedom to generate our own power and forces us to depend on the utility for all our needs. I want the freedom to meet my own needs. House Bill 1370 is aimed at serving the needs of monopoly utilities, not the rest of us.
This bill is so focused on serving monopoly interests that it creates the cost shift it claims to solve, solely to protect utility revenues. If this bill passes, Arkansas will become the only state that guarantees the utility can recoup any lost revenue from net metering by levying a new charge on all customers through their fuel rider.
Arkansas solar policies have worked exactly as intended. They’ve created hundreds of Arkansas jobs and saved us massive amounts of money on electric bills. Impeding this successful suite of policies will benefit nobody except the utilities that don’t want competition.
I urge all Arkansans to contact their legislators at (501) 682-6211 to urge a no vote on House Bill 1370. It’s a matter of standing up for our freedom.
Mark Cayce is a former CEO of Ouachita Electric Cooperative, a former chairman of the board of directors for AECC, and former chairman of the board for Today’s Power, a solar company owned by the electric cooperatives of Arkansas.