Virginia's State Corporation Commission (SCC) has approved a request by Dominion Virginia Power (DVP) to offer a rate option for customers who own solar generation installations. The rate option is one of the components of DVP's Community Solar Power program.
The new rate program will allow qualifying solar customer-generators to purchase all of their electricity from the company on their current rate schedule and sell all of their solar generation to DVP at a fixed price of $0.15/kWh for a period of five years. DVP will purchase up to 3 MW of energy output from customer-owned solar generation installations.
DVP utilizes a portion of the voluntary environmental contributions received through the company's Green Power program in addition to the avoided cost energy rate component to arrive at the $0.15/kWh purchase price.
The SCC found that the solar purchase program, taken as a whole, is reasonably designed to promote customer-owned distributed solar generation facilities and offer an alternative to net energy metering.