Jan. 17—State regulators’ rules for New Mexico’s community solar program will stay in place, at least for now, following a decision on Tuesday from the state Supreme Court.
It’s a decision clean energy and environmental advocates say will help deter utilities from further slowing down the set-up of community solar.
Community solar is a way for New Mexicans to get solar energy without having to set up rooftop panels. Lawmakers authorized the program’s creation in 2021 when they passed the Community Solar Act.
Developers will set up small-scale solar farms for 45 community solar projects. The investor-owned utilities in the state — Public Service Company of New Mexico, El Paso Electric and Southwestern Public Service Company, which is a subsidiary of Xcel Energy — will transmit that solar energy through their power grids.
And New Mexicans participating in the program will get credits on their electric bills. Nearly a third of the solar energy is reserved for low-income communities.
New Mexico Public Regulation Commissioners put together a list of rules on how exactly the program will work, like bill credits and program subscriber agreements, in March 2022. The rules went into effect in July 2022.
But the investor-owned utilities required by law to participate in community solar don’t agree with all the rules and regulations. The utilities specifically objected to a rule not allowing the utilities to deduct transmission costs from solar bill credits New Mexicans will get.
SPS appealed the PRC rule with the New Mexico Supreme Court in June 2022, and PNM and EPE shortly thereafter joined the appeal as intervenor-appellants. The Xcel utility also asked the court to pause the rules until judges came down with a final decision on the appeal.
On Tuesday, the New Mexico Supreme Court denied the request for a stay. That means the rules stay in effect.
PNM, which serves more 525,000 customers in New Mexico, including the Albuquerque area, didn’t respond to inquiries from the Journal on Wednesday.
It was a win for renewable energy advocates who are involved in the litigation opposing the utilities. New Energy Economy Executive Director Mariel Nanasi said the three investor-owned utilities have been and continue to put up barriers to an economic and energy transition.
“We’re sitting on the precipice of a robust renewable energy market and the utilities are refusing to open New Mexico’s door and allow independent energy producers to access our state’s vast solar potential,” she said.
None of the 45 community solar projects have come online or broken ground, so they aren’t being affected by the community solar rules.
Jim DesJardins, executive director for the Renewable Energy Industries Association of New Mexico, said nobody’s broken ground yet on any of the 45 projects authorized to set up the community solar farms.
“The uncertainty and potential delay caused by this appeal has added cost and time to get projects up and going,” DesJardins said. “This is very unfortunate as this will delay the economic and clean energy benefits that these projects will bring to New Mexico.”
Former commissioners at the PRC repeatedly said utilities were trying to delay community solar, like with bill credit proposals that directly went against the regulators’ adopted rules.
Nanasi said community solar will actually make the power system more resilient, and she alleged that utilities were creating obstacles.
“They’re just erecting hurdle after hurdle to prevent it from happening,” she said.
Setting up community solar is also a naturally lengthy process, a solar expert told lawmakers a few months ago, even with some of the setbacks the program has had in its set-up. He anticipated community solar farms won’t come online until 2024 or 2025.
The New Mexico Supreme Court still needs to reach a final decision on the appeal of the PRC rules. Oral arguments are set to start March 11 on the case.
It could still take several months after that for the court to come to a decision on the community solar rules.
Separately, the PRC started a hearing on Wednesday focused on issues concerning community solar tariffs, agreements and forms. PNM’s proposed community solar bill credit calculation is one of the disputed issues on the table.
This is the second phase of the hearing. The PRC held the first phase in July 2023, discussing issues on subscriber organization agreements and customer data forms.
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