Our View: State should continue to encourage expansion of solar energy options

That seems an awfully odd way to describe people who are forward-thinking enough to purchase solar panels for their homes or businesses and then, when possible, sell back any extra electrical power they don’t use.

But that’s the term some leaders and members of the American Legislative Exchange Council were throwing about last month during the group’s three-day summit in Washington, D.C. And it seems that — as part of the organization’s concerted efforts to lobby state legislatures to reduce requirements for alternative energy sources — ALEC will be spending much of this year looking into how such customers are compensated for that additional power generation.

The agenda for last month’s summit likewise included discussions on resolutions that would have called for completely killing net metering or, at the very least, imposing heavy fees on such solar users.

“As it stands now, those direct generation customers are essentially freeriders on the system,” John Eick — legislative analyst for ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture program — told the British newspaper The Guardian last month. “They are not paying for the infrastructure they are using. In effect, all the other non direct generation customers are being penalized. … How are they going to get that electricity from their solar panel to somebody else’s house? They should be paying to distribute the surplus electricity.”

It’s not surprising, then, that groups like the Iowa Solar and Energy Trade Association are working to get out in front of such a bizarre attempt to taint what otherwise would be viewed as a positive step toward encouraging the growth of the solar sector.

“ALEC fails to mention that customers pay for grid infrastructure and that the … solar investment made by the customer increases grid stability, grid efficiency and energy security,” association president Tim Dwight wrote in a guest opinion Thursday.

So we’ll be interested to see if any Iowa lawmakers — especially those with strong ties to ALEC — start using the term “freeriders” or start offering up legislation meant to diminish the state’s standards for solar or other renewable fuels.

After all, there is a recent history of bipartisan support in Iowa for growing the state’s solar energy market. It’s been less than two years since Iowa passed a law providing state tax credits for solar electric, solar hot water and geothermal energy systems. (The measure passed the Iowa Senate 45-1 and passed the Iowa House 82-14.)

We think state lawmakers should continue to look for ways to reward, rather than penalize, Iowans who want to take advantage of such new technology.

“No one can take away the sun,” Dwight wrote. “The ‘freeriders’ have been utilities with public-guaranteed rates of return on power investments and a monopolized energy market the past 100 years.”