Alaska regulators to discuss net metering cap increase Aug. 26, 21 months after comment closed

Alaska households and community solar subscribers could gain far more room to connect their own generation to the grid under a proposal state regulators are set to discuss next Wednesday, nearly two years after public comment on it closed.

The Regulatory Commission of Alaska has proposed raising the net metering capacity limit in 3 AAC 50.910 from 1.5 percent to 20 percent of an electric utility's average retail demand, a change of more than thirteenfold in the eligibility threshold. Under the current rule, a utility may refuse to interconnect a net metering customer once total eligible consumer generation reaches 1.5 percent of average retail demand.

Written comment on that notice closed at 5 p.m. on November 12, 2024. The regulation has not been adopted. The open docket, R-24-003, carries a statutory deadline of September 25, 2026, giving the commission a concrete reason to take the item up now.

The commission adopted Alaska's net metering rules in 2010, covering systems of 25 kilowatts or less, and last reopened them substantially in 2013. Utilities have pushed past the floor since. Homer Electric Association became the first Alaska utility to approach its cap and raised its own limit to 3 percent in 2019. Chugach Electric Association asked the commission in January 2022 to raise its cap to 5 percent.

Homer Electric supports raising the cap "under conditions that it not impact reliability and stability of the electric delivery system or result in increased cross-subsidization across the membership," according to a Cook Inletkeeper post from March 2025. What the utility filed in the docket itself could not be retrieved.

The agenda for the 9 a.m. meeting at 701 West Eighth Avenue, Suite 300, in Anchorage lists the net metering docket as a discussion item, not an action item. So is every other substantive item on the agenda; the commission has scheduled no votes.

Public participation opens the meeting, limited to five minutes per presenter with commissioner questions. Teleconference is available only if arranged in advance, through the commission's law office assistants at 907-276-6222 or [email protected], which is also the number for requesting an interpreter or other accommodation at least three business days out. The agenda gives no indication of whether the commission intends to adopt, amend or drop the cap increase, and does not say whether it will take further written comment.