Net Metering Snags, Customer Complaints Dominate PSC Meeting

The idea that Virgin Islander homeowners could produce electricity with solar panels on their roofs and sell the power to the Water and Power Authority has been around for over two decades.

The Legislature approved the territory’s first net metering program in 2009. It set a cap on how much power WAPA would buy – 15 megawatts territory-wide, 10 on St. Thomas, and five on St. Croix. The caps were met in 2015, and work on a new program began. Karl Knight, presently executive director of WAPA, was director of the Energy Office, where many of the details for the new program were worked out. The program was in place in 2020.

Thursday, at a Public Services Commission meeting, it was noted that over 800 applications had been made for the program. Still, no applicant was getting credit for the power it was supplying to WAPA. It appeared that at least 150 had reached the final stage, and WAPA only had to provide them with a meter. Commissioner David Hughes said the program was languishing because WAPA did not want it to succeed. Hughes commented during a period of the meeting when he and several others in the Zoom meeting were cut off from the commission meeting room where Knight was making a presentation.