Nova Scotia solar fought and won but we aren’t there yet
Public debate on solar will continue unless Nova Scotia Power presents real solutions
A proposed tax on solar customers pitted Nova Scotians against Nova Scotia Power (NSP) earlier this year.
There was a public outcry after the Company tried to add a monthly $8 per kilowatt-hour charge to customer’s bills who have solar PV systems connected to the grid.
The tax would work directly against the incentives the province put in place to install solar. The environmental and economic progress of the solar industry would start to unravel while simultaneously hurting Nova Scotia’s clean energy future.
The Nova Scotia government agreed this was a bad idea, quickly taking any chance of additional charges off the table. This means Nova Scotians have the right to self-generate energy without going through the NSP permitting process.
But the economics of rooftop solar and how solar customers are compensated for the electricity they are selling back to the grid isn’t a new debate.
Take California for example – the largest solar industry in the United States. Over 1.3 million solar customers are compensated for surplus energy under a ‘net-metering’ programme. This means they get a price for energy they sell to the grid equal to the retail rate that they purchased it.
The grid is paid for by everyone who uses it. So, critics say this is essentially subsidizing wealthier customers who have installed solar at a cost to lower-income electricity customers who can’t afford the systems.
Proposals to cut the rate at which surplus power is sold to the grid or add a ‘grid participation charge’ – similar to what happened in Nova Scotia – have also been tabled in California.
While Nova Scotia Power’s proposal was blocked, public debate on the role of net-metering in Nova Scotia will continue. As costs of the program build and impact energy bills for consumers in the province, changes will inevitably have to be made.
We need to ensure fairness of the grid. Keep electricity affordable for all while decarbonizing our supply and ensuring stability. And continue to incentivize clean energy in our province.
How do we do this?
To address the ‘energy trilemma’ – keeping the grid affordable, reliable and sustainable – energy use must be as efficient as possible. We need to work on the energy demand side. And to meet this demand, we need a reliable supply of clean energy.
Demand
We have to continue to invest in and incentivize energy efficiency. The federal and provincial governments are already focused on this problem and have made great progress – cutting emissions by 30% vs 2005 in Nova Scotia.
Non-profit organizations, like EfficiencyOne in Nova Scotia, have made big contributions towards emissions reductions and improving efficiency.
We also have to make it as easy as possible for customers to consume the clean energy they produce. This means less energy is sold back to the grid at a marked-up price. To do this, the province has to incentivize ‘behind-the-meter’ technologies.
These technologies include smart meters, energy storage, smart thermostats, heat pumps, and electric vehicles. All of which increase the value of rooftop solar by allowing customers to consume and store the energy they produce instead of exporting it to the grid.
Customers can automate a lot of their consumption, by using smart devices, to occur at the right times, more closely matching consumption and production, rather than maintaining old consumption patterns.
Rolling out more smart and time-of-use tariffs for consumers will also help create the right financial incentives for when to consume energy based on the grid’s capacity, while improving the payback period for efficiency upgrades and smart devices.
Supply
Nova Scotia Power needs to increase investment in clean energy installations at grid scale. This is much more cost-effective per kWh than rooftop solar or other small-scale renewable resources.
For example, they should continue to work with government to make it easier for independent power producers, municipalities, and developers to build more zero-carbon energy infrastructure in the province, reducing the grid connection and regulatory blockers.
Part of this strategy should involve opening up additional ‘stackable’ revenue opportunities to operators of flexible energy resources such as grid-scale and commercial battery storage.
These market structures are used in other countries, including the UK, to help balance the grid and incentivize developers to build flexible resources which can help stabilize the grid and help integrate more intermittent renewables.
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The grid needs to modernize. Nova Scotia won’t reach net-zero goals without change.
Nova Scotia Power needs to work with the province to find solutions, bringing Nova Scotia into the future instead of reversing the hard-earned progress of the solar community.