Dane County Circuit Court Judge Peter Anderson ruled last Friday that We Energies and the state Public Service Commission could not begin imposing a fee next year on customers who added solar panels. Anderson said We Energies and the PSC did not have enough evidence to back up their decision to impose the fees.
Utilities in the state were seeking to impose the fees as part of what they term rate fairness. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as part of that effort We Energies wanted to assess an additional fee on customers who generate their own power.
We Energies was proposing a $3.79 per kilowatt monthly fee for solar customers. According to the Journal Sentinel, for a typical 5-kilowatt solar installation on a home that would have amounted to about $19 a month and would have reduced by about one-fourth the savings solar panels were providing for such a customer, according to Renew Wisconsin estimates.
