PHOENIX — A veteran state lawmaker is working with utilities to undermine a voter initiative that would block electric companies from imposing new charges on customers who also generate their own power through solar.
Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria, said she is working to put an alternative to that initiative on the November ballot, and is crafting the language with utility officials and others.
Lesko said her goal is to cement in the Arizona Constitution the right of state utility regulators — who for now all happen to be Republicans like her — to determine how much electric companies can charge their solar customers.
The move comes less than a week after former state utility regulator Kris Mayes unveiled an initiative drive to curb the power of the Corporation Commission to let utilities increase charges on solar customers.
Lesko is powerless to stop Mayes and the solar interests financing that effort from trying to gather the more than 225,000 signatures necessary to put the issue on the November ballot. But Lesko said she can provide voters an alternative. There is one big difference, though.
Lesko wants the Republican-controlled Legislature to refer the measure to the ballot itself. That saves the utilities the cost of gathering the signatures. She makes no apologies for that.
“You have out-of-state billionaire rooftop solar leasing companies that are trying to circumvent our elected five-member Corporation Commission to set the rates so that they get a good deal locked into our Arizona Constitution,” Lesko said. “It’s just unconscionable how greedy these people are.”
Mayes, however, said the utilities are the ones who are being greedy in not wanting to lose profits for their shareholders from selling power.
She said if the utilities want to put their own plan up for a public vote they should do it “the honest and difficult way, which is to go out and get 225,000 signatures from Arizonans to get the measure on the ballot.” Mayes said the companies are getting lawmakers to do the work for them because they know “the measure is so unpopular.”
Mayes thinks voters will reject the alternative, but said there is a harm of having the Legislature put a second measure on the ballot. She said it’s designed to confuse voters. “It’s an old ploy,” she said.
Central to the fight are efforts by several utilities to change the rate structure of their customers who own or lease rooftop solar.
One is “net metering,” where the customer gets a credit for excess power being put into the electric grid at the same retail rate the utility charges when the customer needs it back. Utilities want to credit customers at what they would otherwise pay either in generation costs or to wholesalers.
The other big change seeks to impose a “peak demand charge.” That would mean a solar customer who happened to be using air conditioning, an electric dryer and other devices at the same time would incur a surcharge above and beyond paying for the actual amount of electricity used.
The initiative funded by solar interests would constitutionally lock in the current policies on net metering, ban demand pricing for residential customers and ensure that utilities could not take away the credits for power generated by customers with rooftop solar.
