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Alex Ross is a Nova Scotian currently working in clean tech in the U.K. and Europe.

A proposed tax on solar customers pitted Nova Scotians against Nova Scotia Power earlier this year.

There was a public outcry after the utility proposed adding a monthly $8 per kilowatt-hour charge to the bills of customers who have solar PV systems connected to the grid.

The tax would work directly against the incentives the province put in place to install solar. The environmental and economic progress of the solar industry would start to unravel while simultaneously hurting Nova Scotia’s clean energy future.

The Nova Scotia government agreed this was a bad idea, quickly taking any chance of additional charges off the table and giving Nova Scotians the right to self-generate energy without going through the NSP permitting process.

But the economics of rooftop solar and how solar customers are compensated for the electricity they are selling back to the grid isn’t a new debate.

Take California, for example — the largest solar industry in the United States. Over 1.3 million solar customers are compensated for surplus energy under a “net-metering” program. This means they get a price for energy they sell to the grid equal to the retail rate at which they purchased it.

The grid is paid for by everyone who uses it. So, critics say, this is essentially subsidizing wealthier customers, who have installed solar at a cost, by lower-income electricity customers who can’t afford the systems.

Proposals to cut the rate at which surplus power is sold to the grid or add a “grid participation charge” — similar to what happened in Nova Scotia — have also been tabled in California.

While Nova Scotia Power’s proposal was blocked, public debate on the role of net-metering in Nova Scotia will continue. As costs of the program build and impact energy bills for consumers in the province, changes will inevitably have to be made.

We need to ensure the fairness of the grid. We need to keep electricity affordable for all while decarbonizing our supply and ensuring stability. And we need to continue to incentivize clean energy in our province.

How do we do this?

To address the “energy trilemma” — keeping the grid affordable, reliable and sustainable — energy use must be as efficient as possible. We need to work on the energy demand side by ensuring energy waste is kept to a minimum. And to meet demand, we need a reliable supply of clean energy.

We have to continue to invest in energy efficiency. The federal and provincial governments are already focused on this problem and have made great progress — cutting emissions by 30 per cent compared to 2005 in Nova Scotia.

Non-profit organizations, like EfficiencyOne, have made big contributions towards emissions reductions and improving efficiency.

We also have to make it as easy as possible for customers to consume the clean energy they produce. This means less energy is sold back to the grid at a marked-up price. To do this, the province has to incentivize “behind-the-meter” technologies.

These technologies include smart meters, energy storage, smart thermostats, heat pumps and electric vehicles. All of which increase the value of rooftop solar by allowing customers to consume and store the energy they produce instead of exporting it to the grid.

Customers can automate a lot of their consumption to occur at the right times by using smart devices. This means more closely matching consumption and production, rather than maintaining old consumption patterns.

Strategies here could encourage more consumer participation and engagement with energy consumption — by making smart meters easier to understand and data easily available.

Rolling out more smart and time-of-use tariffs for consumers will also help create the right financial motivation for consuming energy based on the grid’s capacity. All the while improving the payback period for efficiency upgrades and smart devices.

While helping consumers manage their consumption and allowing them to produce energy within their own homes, Nova Scotia Power should increase investment in clean energy installations at grid scale. This is much more cost-effective per kWh than rooftop solar or other small-scale renewable resources.

For example, they should continue to work with the government to make it easier for independent power producers, municipalities and developers to build more zero-carbon energy infrastructure in the province, reducing the grid connection and regulatory blockers.

Part of this strategy should involve creating incentives for operating large batteries and other flexible resources, opening up new revenue opportunities to operators of flexible energy resources. This would allow companies, municipalities and consumers to operate batteries at a profit, while also helping to balance supply and demand on the grid.

These market structures are used in other countries, including the U.K., to help incentivize the building of flexible resources which can help integrate more intermittent renewables and avoid costly grid upgrades.

Finally, a fundamental re-think of the grid could benefit ratepayers in the province. Some have suggested that grid infrastructure could be transformed into a public asset to be run by the provincial government, as it was in the past. Energy suppliers, including NSP, would then compete to offer the cleanest and lowest-cost power to consumers. By reversing NSP’s monopoly power, and increasing competition, consumers would stand to benefit.

The grid needs to modernize. Nova Scotia won’t reach net-zero goals without change.

Nova Scotia Power needs to implement long-term solutions that bring Nova Scotia into the future, instead of short-term fixes that risk reversing the hard-earned progress of the solar community.

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