This piece was originally published in Bangor Daily News.

Starting in April, Versant customers, including me, experienced a 23 percent increase in their electricity distribution rate. Maine residential electricity rates were already the sixth highest in the U.S. in January.

With all due respect to the hardworking people of Versant, this increase is pushing the envelope. I’m someone who grew up in Maine and remembers the old days when Bangor Hydro provided plenty of cheap power. When I pay my Versant invoice these days, I wonder how we got here.

Here’s what happened. Twenty years of deregulation with not a power plant built, and significantly more dependence on imported power and fossil fuels. Fortunately, legislators with great foresight enabled Maine to hedge its bets in 2019 with the expansion of net energy billing (NEB), a mechanism to expand the development of electricity generation in the state.

I am an active participant in Maine community solar, and I founded a company that believes strongly that community solar is a vital cost-saving option in today’s expensive electricity landscape. Community solar is available to just about anyone who owes Versant or Central Maine Power (CMP) a monthly payment, and it’s already a vital source of power for Maine’s grid. These solar farms are providing power to local communities all over the state.

It’s about more than that, though. Private capital has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into these energy generators. Those dollars have been meaningful to Maine’s economy, paying the salaries of a broad array of Mainers across the entire state, from engineers and construction workers to lawyers, marketing firms, call centers, and Mainers on our staff.

Unfortunately, there have been numerous attempts to repeal the net energy billing program in Maine. Now, it appears likely that significant, if not fatal, limitations would be imposed unless supporters pick up the phone. The NEB program has been accused of costing too much, not providing sufficient benefit, and forcing non-participants to shoulder the costs of the program. In reality, it has helped result in over a gigawatt of clean, locally distributed generation that has provided millions of dollars in bill savings for those who do participate.

Maine has nationally high electricity rates, mostly due to out-ofstate generation — not because of Maine’s renewable energy initiatives. Maine’s position only reinforces the need for alternative energy sources like solar, small hydro, batteries, fuel cells, and wind, all of which can be installed in-state and don’t rely on fuels with volatile prices.

Handicapping the net energy billing program now would drastically reduce these options at a time when they are needed the most. One must mention that reneging on promises made to incentivize development risks positioning Maine as anti-business and not a reliable investment partner.

Our company, with a growing Maine staff, was founded in Bar Harbor. We now operate in a dozen states across the country. We see a consistent battle between older sources of electricity and renewables, with the same old tired arguments. But one thing is clear: Community distributed renewable energy is the future, wherever you look. It’s ubiquitous, inexpensive, reliable, clean and in demand. It’s also easier to build than large and risky utility-scale projects. If you want electricity generation built in your state, it’s imperative that you have a community energy program.

For all of these reasons, we not only strongly oppose legislation that hampers the development of these critical in-state power generators, but we also encourage the expansion of the net energy billing program, albeit with some improvements. For example, we believe the Maine Public Utilities Commission should dispel the notion that our reliable utilities have the time or intent to run a program like community solar in a way that is sufficient for Maine’s needs.

We believe the PUC should take a more active role in regulating the companies that assign subscribers a larger share of the solar farm than needed. This harmful practice, often referred to as over-allocation, results in the subscriber paying for more solar credits than they use in electricity. Other states put regulations on the solar subscription size, and it’s time that Maine did, too.

Utilities like Versant and CMP could help improve the subscriber experience by making small but meaningful changes, like streamlining the billing process, improving access to usage data, and ensuring accurate crediting on monthly bills. These kinds of incremental improvements carry far less risk and provide more immediate benefit to consumers than sweeping changes to the program’s structure.

Maine cannot afford to limit its options, nor is it a good idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The entire world is installing solar, batteries, and other forms of distributed energy generation, and we cannot afford to fall behind. Maine needs the net energy billing program now more than ever.