The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine is topped with a green roof planted with sedum and covered with solar panels. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

A Wisconsin Senate Committee held a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would allow private companies to construct small solar projects on underutilized farmland and commercial rooftops across the state. 

The bill, which would encroach on the monopoly the state’s existing utility companies are allowed to maintain under state law, is being considered while people across the country worry about rising energy costs amid a boom in the construction of data centers and the increased use of electric vehicles and appliances. 

Environmental groups in the state have also regularly complained that the utility companies aren’t constructing enough renewable energy projects or sunsetting existing coal and natural gas power plants quickly enough. 

The bill, authored by Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) and Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), would allow people in Wisconsin to subscribe to get some of their power from a local “community solar” installation. The subscribers would receive credits they can put toward their utility bill. Because the power developed at the local solar installation will still need to travel through the utility company’s infrastructure, the bill includes a provision that all subscribers to the program would have to pay at least $20 per month on their electric bill. 

In the hearing of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Local Government, the bill’s authors said allowing community solar projects would increase people’s energy choices while allowing the expansion of solar power in the state that avoids the objections from local residents that often come with large, utility-scale solar projects. 

“This change will open a new market sector in a high energy industry, attract economic investments in Wisconsin, create local jobs, drive innovation and competition, and ultimately save consumers and small businesses money on their energy bills,” Testin said. 

But the authors also acknowledged there is still a lot of disagreement over the details and the bill is not yet in its final form. 

“We’re not exactly there yet. We’re not all agreeing on this being the best way forward just yet, but this public hearing is a really important step to vet that out a little bit more to get us closer to that answer,” Krug said. “So yes, there are still some kinks to work out between the utilities and individuals who want a more market-based approach to solar. I hope we can work through those issues here.”

Over the hearing’s three and a half hours, the testimony split among two groups — the utility companies who are opposed to the bill and a coalition of solar companies, economists, farmers and employers who are in favor. 

The utility companies accused the bill of creating a “shell game” that would lower the costs for the subscribers of a given project while raising electric bills for everyone else. Zack Hill, testifying on behalf of Alliant Energy, said the utility estimated that community solar would result in an additional $8.75 billion in costs for ratepayers over the next 25 years. 

“How does [the bill] pay for subscribers 10 to 20% energy savings? The short answer: It will shift costs to your other constituents,” Hill said. “Some have said this sounds like community solar voodoo economics, but all you have to remember is this, when a company promises you a discount, someone else has to pay for it.”

People in favor of the bill argued that the generation of more energy could only help lower energy costs while disputing the utility companies’ claims. Will Flanders, the research director at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, also said the utilities’ estimates undervalue the benefits that community solar can add. 

“This is a model that expands energy choice without large subsidies, without mandates, without turning more power over to monopoly utilities,” Flanders said. “In fact, it introduces competition at a time when Wisconsin needs it the most.” 

“We argue that community solar can deliver net savings to the entire system,” he continued. “When we talk about a shell game, what we’re really saying is there’s no real additional resources being put into the system, but obviously there is additional resources being put in when we have these with these programs in place.” 

Karl Rabago, a Denver-based energy consultant who testified with Flanders, said that the Alliant $8.75 billion estimate amounted to a threat that if the utilities don’t get to sell the energy, they’ll charge consumers for that loss. 

“No one knows where this number comes from, but having seen how utilities make their case in other states, I am 99.9% confident they are basically saying, ‘If we don’t get to make the electricity and sell it, we could potentially lose $8.75 billion and and if we don’t make that money, we’re going to charge you for it anyway,’ and that’s how customer costs could go up,” Rabago said. “That’s the most likely explanation for a histrionic number. The utility position, to summarize, seems to sound a bit like ‘let us do it all and no one gets hurt.’ We’ve heard those kinds of exhortations. Monopolies do it particularly well.” 

Toward the end of the hearing, a number of Wisconsin property owners testified, touting the benefits they’ll receive if they’re able to allow solar projects to be constructed on their land. 

Duane Hinchley, a Cambridge dairy farmer, said community solar is an “innovative solution” that can give farmers a stable income to hedge against the risks in the agriculture business. Plus, he said, allowing farmers to participate will prevent land that has been farmed for generations from being developed into subdivisions. 

“With the right policies in place, our state’s proud agricultural heritage can be a cornerstone of Wisconsin’s clean energy future,” Hinchley said. 

But throughout the day, lawmakers from both parties appeared skeptical of the bill’s benefits. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said repeatedly he didn’t understand how the program would work for the utility companies. 

“It sounds like a shell game to me,” he said. “I just, I’m really having a challenge with trying to figure out how that would work, because it would seem to me that the energy company, the regulated company, is the one that’s going to be footing the bill for this.” 

Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) questioned how the program wouldn’t eventually raise energy costs for non-participants, but said one selling point for the bill was that it would encourage the increased development of renewable energy. 

“I heard you say this is going to force more solar to be built, whether or not you need it,” Spreitzer said to a utility company representative. “And I guess that, to me, is the one selling point of the bill. Is that I look at where we’ve been in the landscape lately, where we have, unfortunately, federal incentives for solar that are going away. We have increasing demand for power from data centers. We’re seeing new natural gas plants get built. We’re seeing coal plants not being retired, when we hoped they would. To me, there’s plenty of need for solar.” 

If the utility companies won’t support a community solar proposal, Spreitzer wondered, what do they need from the Legislature to encourage more solar development? 

“And so if we’re not going to go down this route, what are the incentives that you all need to make sure that we can continue to drive solar development without increasing rates for customers and without saying, ‘let’s go build a natural gas plant instead?” he asked. 

Anti-rights of nature bill 

Also on Tuesday, the committee heard testimony on a bill from Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) that would prohibit local governments in Wisconsin from enacting “rights of nature” ordinances, which grant natural elements legal rights that can be protected in court. 

Nass said in his testimony that the idea is anti-American and is contrary to the values of the U.S. Constitution.

“This is a radical departure from our current law. Rights are something that human beings have,” Nass said. “This concept of granting nature rights is something that has been done primarily in foreign countries … and many of these countries lean dramatically towards socialism and communism, and their attitude is not compatible with private property rights in our country.”

But proponents of rights of nature resolutions frequently point to the fact that corporations are granted rights under U.S. law. Communities including Green Bay and Milwaukee have passed or begun drafting rights of nature ordinances and some Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would grant Devil’s Lake State Park some rights that can be protected in court. 

In a statement after the hearing, Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the co-authors of the Democratic proposal, wrote, “As we heard from advocates today, Rights of Nature is one of the strongest tools local governments have to protect clean air, clean water and healthy soil for future generations — so that our grandchildren, and their children after them, can drink our waters, eat food grown in our soils, and hunt in our forests.”

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On a dry, rocky patch of his family’s farm in Door County, Wisconsin, Dave Klevesahl grows wildflowers. But he has a vision for how to squeeze more value out of the plot: lease it to a company that wants to build a community solar array.

Unfortunately for Klevesahl, that is unlikely to happen under current state law. In Wisconsin, only utilities are allowed to develop such shared solar installations, which let households and businesses that can’t put panels on their own property access renewable energy via subscriptions.

Farmers, solar advocates and legislators from both parties are trying to remove these restrictions through Senate Bill 559, which would allow the limited development of community solar by entities other than utilities.

Wisconsin lawmakers considered similar proposals in the 2021-22 and 2023-24 legislative sessions, with support from trade groups representing real estate agents, farmers, grocers, and retailers. But those bipartisan efforts failed in the face of opposition from the state’s powerful utilities and labor unions.

Community solar supporters are hoping for a different outcome this legislative session, which ends in March. But while the new bill, introduced Oct. 24, includes changes meant to placate utilities, the companies still firmly oppose it.

“I don’t really understand why anybody wouldn’t want community solar,” said Klevesahl, whose wife’s family has been farming their land for generations. In addition to leasing his land for an installation, he would like to subscribe to community solar, which typically saves participants money on their energy bills. 

Some Wisconsin utilities do offer their own community solar programs. But they are too small to meet the demand for community solar, advocates say.

Utilities push back on shared solar 

Around 20 states and Washington, D.C., have community solar programs that allow non-utility ownership of arrays. The majority of those states, including Wisconsin’s neighbor Illinois, have deregulated energy markets, in which the utilities that distribute electricity do not generate it.

In states with ​“vertically integrated” energy markets, like Wisconsin, utilities serve as regulated monopolies, both generating and distributing power. That means legislation is necessary to specify that other companies are also allowed to generate and sell power from community solar. Some vertically integrated states, including Minnesota, have passed such laws.

But monopoly utilities in those jurisdictions have consistently opposed community solar developed by third parties. Minnesota utility Xcel Energy, for example, supported terminating the state’s community solar program during an unsuccessful effort by some lawmakers last summer to end it.

The Wisconsin utilities We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric, according to their spokespeople, are concerned that customers who don’t subscribe to community solar will end up subsidizing costs for those who do. The utilities argue that because community solar subscribers have lower energy bills, they contribute less money for grid maintenance and construction, meaning that other customers must pay more to make up the difference. Clean-energy advocates, for their part, say this ​“cost shift” argument ignores research showing that the systemwide benefits of distributed energy like community solar can outweigh the expense.

The Wisconsin bill would also require utilities to buy power from community solar arrays that don’t have enough subscribers.

“This bill is being marketed as a ​‘fair’ solution to advance renewables. It’s the opposite,” said We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway. ​“It would force our customers to pay higher electricity costs by having them subsidize developers who want profit from a no-risk solar project. Under this bill, the developers avoid any risk. The costs of their projects will shift to and be paid for by all of our ​‘non-subscribing’ customers.”

The power generated by community solar ultimately goes onto the utility’s grid, reducing the amount of electricity the utility needs to provide. But Conway said it’s not the most efficient way to meet overall demand.

“These projects would not be something we would plan for or need, so our customers would be paying for unneeded energy that benefits a very few,” he said. ​“Also, these credits are guaranteed by our other customers even if solar costs drop or grid needs change.”

Advocates in Wisconsin hope they can address such concerns and convince utilities to support community solar owned by third parties.

Beata Wierzba, government affairs director of the clean-power advocacy organization Renew Wisconsin, said her group and others ​“had an opportunity to talk with the utilities over the course of several months, trying to negotiate some language they could live with.”

“There were some exchanges where utilities gave us a dozen things that were problematic for them, and the coalition addressed them by making changes to the draft” of the bill, Wierzba said.

The spokespeople for We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric did not respond to questions about such conversations.

A small-scale start 

To assuage utilities’ concerns, the bill allows third-party companies to build community solar only for the next decade. The legislation also sets a statewide cap for community solar of 1.75 gigawatts, with limits for each of the five major investor-owned utilities’ territories proportionate to each utility’s total number of customers.

Community solar arrays would be limited to 5 megawatts, with exceptions for rooftops, brownfields and other industrial sites, where 20 megawatts can be built.

No subscriber would be allowed to buy more than 40% of the output from a single community solar array, and 60% of the subscriptions must be for 40 kilowatts of capacity or less, the bill says. This is meant to prevent one large customer — like a big-box store or factory — from buying the majority of the power and excluding others from taking advantage of the limited community solar capacity.

Customers who subscribe to community solar would still have to pay at least $20 a month to their utility for service. The bill also contains what Wierzba called an ​“off-ramp”: After four years, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin would study how the program is working and submit a report to the Legislature, which could pass a new law to address any problems.

“The bill is almost like a small pilot project — it’s not like you’re opening the door and letting everyone come in,” said Wierzba. ​“You have a limit on how it can function, how many people can sign up.”

Broad support for community solar

In Wisconsin, as in other states, developers hoping to build utility-scale solar farms on agricultural land face serious pushback. The Trump administration canceled federal incentives for solar arrays on farms this summer, with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announcing, ​“USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland.”

But Wisconsin farmers have argued that community solar can actually help keep agricultural land in production by providing an extra source of revenue. The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has yet to weigh in on this year’s bill, but it supported previously proposed community solar legislation.

The bill calls for state regulators to come up with rules for community solar developers that would likely require dual use — meaning that crops or pollinator habitats are planted under and around the panels or that animals graze on the land. These increasingly common practices are known as agrivoltaics.

The bill would let local zoning bodies — rather than the state’s Public Service Commission — decide whether to permit a community solar installation.

Utility-scale solar farms, by contrast, are permitted at the state level, which can leave ​“locals feeling like they are not in control of their future,” said Matt Hargarten, vice president of government and public affairs for the Coalition for Community Solar Access. ​“This offers an alternative that is really welcome. If a town doesn’t want this to be there, it won’t be there.”

A 5-megawatt array typically covers 20 to 30 acres of land, whereas utility-scale solar farms are often hundreds of megawatts and span thousands of acres.

“You don’t need to upgrade the transmission systems with these small solar farms because a 30-acre solar farm can backfeed into a substation that’s already there,” noted Klevesahl, a retired electrical engineer. ​“And then you’re using the power locally, and it’s clean power. Bottom line is, I just think it’s the right thing to do.” 

A version of this article was first published by Canary Media.

Wisconsin lawmakers look to break utility grip on community solar is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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