Freeing the Grid: 2007 Edition identifies ‘net metering’ policies that bring power generation closer to home
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Examining 39 states, Freeing the Grid discovered a growing consensus on how to make net metering work today:

• By ranking state level policies on their effectiveness at encouraging net metering, successes and lessons learned can be pinpointed and experience shared across state lines. Top-rated states tended to, among other things, focus on goals rather than interests, allow monthly carryovers of excess electricity, reduce unnecessary and burdensome red tape and special fees and provide monetary incentives to encourage customers to install renewable energy systems.
• The study also evaluated states’ “interconnection standards.” Top-ranked states enabled customer-generators to connect to the grid with minimal difficulty, set fair fees proportional to a project’s size, simplified forms and made policies as transparent, uniform and public as possible.

The report also identifies these and other obstacles to effective reform:

• The lowest ranked states essentially derailed net metering through bad policies, like restricting eligibility to a small selected subset of customers, preventing customers from receiving credit for electricity and charging discriminatory, unclear or exorbitant interconnection fees and “standby charges.”
• States with poorly-crafted net metering and interconnection policies are essentially telling the clean energy industry—with its great potential for job creation—that they are “Closed for Business”.