Ohio Lawmakers Introduce New Bill To Address Issues With Net Metering Policy

A new bill introduced into the Ohio Senate addresses some critical issues festering in Ohio regarding its net metering policies. Senator Dolan is the sponsor of SB 275 and he has been working for almost a year on this distributed generation initiative.

Ohio initially passed net metering in 1999, allowing electric customers to build renewable and other distributed generation on their property to power their home or business while also receiving value for any excess generation that was put back on the local wires (i.e. distribution grid) of the utility. The program has been modified a number of times, most recently in 2017 when regulations were adapted that allowed projects to be either on the customer's property or on adjacent property, and also allowed projects to be sized up to 120% of the customer's annual electric load. Ohio's law also allows third party ownership of the energy project. This structure, also known as a PPA (power purchase agreement), allows