Chapter: Kentucky River

The grassroots campaign to protect rooftop solar in Kentucky and prevent electric utilities from rigging the rules against locally-owned distributed solar generation won a major victory in May, ending (for now) a multi-year dispute between solar advocates and monopoly utility companies over the value of fed-back rooftop solar energy.

On May 14, 2021 the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) issued a ruling rejecting Kentucky Power Company’s proposal to slash by seventy-five percent the value of the credit that new solar customers would receive for electric power from their panels that is fed back to the grid. Importantly, the PSC order established a methodology to determine a fair value of that fed-back distributed solar energy. The Commissioners then applied that new framework to calculate that, for Kentucky Power customers, the value for that credit is just twelve percent below what it would have been under the old policy.  

Throughout this pandemic, Kentuckians have looked out for each other. Now we need our elected leaders to look out for Kentuckians who are still hurting.

Today House Bill 272 passed out of the House Local Government Committee (see how committee members voted). This bill aims to bypass the regulatory power of the Public Service Commission – proposing to make blanket allowances for water utilities to charge late fees up to 10% at their discretion, with no state oversight and no justification.