Colleges in APCo territory want to use PPAs to install solar facilities like the one recently installed at the University of Richmond, in Dominion territory.

Facing a withering report from a Virginia hearing examiner recommending denial of its request for a renewable energy “Rider RGP,” Appalachian Power Company (APCo) has responded with a simple message to the State Corporation Commission: um, never mind.

APCo proposed Rider RGP as an alternative to third-party power purchase agreements (PPAs) for customers wanting to install rooftop solar. The proposal would have put APCo in the middle of the deal and created a buy-all, sell-all scheme. But the proposal was roundly criticized at last year’s hearing and in witness statements as convoluted and expensive.

On September 19 APCo asked to withdraw its application, citing changed circumstances. In reality, of course, nothing has changed since the Hearing Examiner’s August 31 report, other than APCo learning it was about to lose.

The company probably doesn’t mind being rejected for a program that witnesses said no one would sign up for. The much bigger issue for the company is that if the SCC adopts the hearing examiner’s view, APCo could lose its battle to block PPAs in its service territory.

For those of you just coming to the story, here’s the Cliff Notes version (this earlier post has the unabridged telling): APCo’s customers want the ability to install solar on their property through PPAs, a financing arrangement in which a solar developer installs and owns the panels, selling the electricity that’s generated to the customer. Often this means the customer can reduce its electricity bills without incurring an up-front cost. For tax-exempt institutions like colleges that can’t take advantage of the federal 30% tax credit for solar, the PPA model means the developer can take the tax credit and pass along the savings.

Virginia utilities say this arrangement violates their monopoly on the sale of electricity. Customers point to two statutory provisions that make PPAs legal. One provision allows customers to buy renewable energy from third parties if their utility doesn’t offer it. (No utility in Virginia does.) The other provision defines a net metering customer to include one who contracts with someone else to install and operate a solar facility on the customer’s property—an apt description of a PPA arrangement. Customers would seem to have the better of the argument, surely, but no bank will finance a PPA when a deep-pocketed utility is threatening to sue.

Dominion temporarily settled the issue in its territory with a pilot program that allows some PPAs, but APCo declined to participate. Under pressure from educational institutions that want solar, APCo proposed Rider RGP as an alternative for its territory. Customers and solar advocates seized the opportunity to seek a clear ruling from the SCC on the legality of PPAs. They argued, and the Hearing Examiner agreed, that Rider RGP wasn’t just badly designed, but unnecessary, given the provisions of the statute that already allow PPAs.

APCo doesn’t want the SCC commissioners to confirm this conclusion. It hopes that by withdrawing Rider RGP, the SCC will dismiss the case and not reach the merits of the argument on PPA legality. It is urging the SCC not to consider the point at all, or if it does so, not to take it up until it considers APCo’s plan, announced in April, to offer a green tariff to customers.

That green tariff is the “changed circumstances” APCo says makes Rider RGP unnecessary. If the SCC approves the green tariff, APCo will offer to sell real renewable energy to customers who want it. APCo clearly believes that having that tariff available to customers closes off the statutory provision that allows customers to go to third-party sellers if their own utility doesn’t offer renewable energy.

The green tariff would not, however, affect the legality of PPAs under the other statutory provision, the one that defines net metering customers to include those who have renewable energy facilities located on their property but owned and operated by someone else. Nor does the offer of a green tariff seem likely to satisfy customer demand for PPAs; buying electricity from a utility through a green tariff is a very different animal from having solar panels on your own roof.

The SCC is considering APCo’s request to withdraw its proposal for Rider RGP. It issued an order asking the parties to the case to comment by September 26. Advocates are expected to oppose APCo’s request and to ask the SCC to rule definitively on the legality of PPAs. By doing so, the Commission would finally bring legal clarity to an issue that has been holding back solar development in Virginia.

Update: September 26, Dominion Virginia Power filed a motion to intervene out of time, with a brief begging the SCC not to even look at the legality of PPAs, or if it did, to reject the hearing examiner’s reading of the statute on the grounds that her opinion disagrees with Dominion’s.  Dominion’s brief notes that it wrote its own opinion into a tariff, which the SCC approved, and therefore that ought to be more important than whatever the General Assembly actually said.

On October 7, the SCC allowed APCo to withdraw its proposal, ducking the issue of PPA legality and ensuring that more time and money will be wasted on future proceedings.