In early March 2004, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed into law a measure (SB 43) that requires investor-owned electric utilities to produce or buy increasing amounts of renewable energy. Renewables must make up 5 percent of the utilities’ sales by 2006, and 10 percent by the year 2011. The law leaves a tiny hole that would allow utilities to ignore the new law through a provision for a PRC-established"reasonable cost threshold" beyond which a utility would not be required to add renewable energy to its energy supply portfolio. Continue reading

On June 8, 2001, Nevada enacted the country’s most aggressive renewable portfolio standard at the time. The law required that 15 percent of all electricity generated be derived from new renewables by the year 2013. Five percent of the RPS must be from solar energy projects. In June 2005, Nevada raised the requirements of the RPS to 20 percent of sales by 2015. The bill also allows certain energy efficiency measures to qualify for up to one-quarter of the total standard in any particular year. Continue reading

In July 2005, the Texas Legislature doubled their previous goal for the amount of wind power, solar power and other forms of renewable energy in the state’s energy mix. The new portfolio standard calls for the state to obtain 5,880 MW, or about five percent of the state’s electricity, from renewable energy by 2015. Of the total, 500 MW must come from renewable energy sources other than wind energy. Continue reading

InApril 2006, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) issued new regulations that as a whole requires 22.5 percent renewable energy by 2021. Most interesting is a requirement for photovoltaics to meet 2.12 percent of the state’s cosumption – representing about 1,500 MW by 2020. Continue reading

On September 12, 2002, a bill was enacted (SB 1078) requiring California to generate 20 percent of its electricity from renewable energy no later than 2017. The law requires sellers of electricity at retail to increase their use of renewable energy by 1 percent per year. In 2005, state regulators expressed a desire to accelerate the timeline and meet the RPS by 2010. The Governor has endorsed this accelerated schedule and has set a goal of achieving a 33 percent RPS by 2020 for the state as a whole. Continue reading

Iowa’s 1983 Alternate Energy Production law required the state’s investor-owned utilities to purchase of electricity from renewable energy projects. After years of stalling by the utilities, Iowa is now becoming a leading state for wind energy development. Continue reading

The 2007 Minnesota legislature has adopted the strongest renewable energy standard (as of January 2009) that applies to all the state’s utilities – 25% renewables by 2025 (30% by 2020 for Xcel Energy) giving a total renewable requirement of about 27.5% of electricity sales by 2025. Continue reading

Here you find some selected rules and information on net metering in a variety of states including:  Massachusetts , Nevada, New York, Oregon and Vermont Continue reading

California’s net metering law was established in 1995. There have been many modifications over the years including 3 separate bills enacted in 2005. The are many exceptions but, in general, the current rules allow on-site energy projects of up to 1 MW access to net metering. The combined capacity of net-metered systems may not exceed 0.5% of any utility’s peak demand [except for SDG&E, which has a limit of 50 MW]. Continue reading

Only electric generators less than 40 kilowatts (kW) are eligible and include fossil fuel cogeneration facilities.There is no statewide limit on the amount of electricity that can qualify for net metering payments, all customer classes are eligible for the program, and all utilities are required to offer net metering.

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