NARUC chief: States best positioned to regulate solar market

As more residential customers install rooftop solar panels to generate their own electric power, U.S. states are best positioned to regulate that growing part of the electric market, according to an official with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC).

“It has long been acknowledged that customers who put solar on their rooftops are engaging in a retail transaction that is jurisdictional to the states,” Travis Kavulla, president of NARUC, told Daily Energy Insider in a recent interview.

Despite the regulation of solar being a state regulatory issue, the federal government has set its sights on the topic.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will host a workshop in Washington, D.C., on June 21 on competition and consumer protection issues in solar energy. NARUC will participate in the FTC solar event, but Kavulla added that a problem in the electric industry is the high level of “balkanization among its regulators.”

“It’s hard enough to track the dividing line between state utility commissions and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,” Kavulla said. Combine that oversight with other federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and others, “and you risk having a situation where people are swimming in different directions,” he added.

The FTC solar workshop will discuss issues that state regulators are grappling with, including how utility customers should be compensated for the power they generate with solar panels and how the rapidly growing use of solar power affects utilities.

State public utility commissions have made decisions on those types of issues in the solar market and continue to debate them.

Having the federal government become more involved with the regulation of the solar market “probably would just aggravate the debate that we’re having about this in the country,” Kavulla said.