Iowa looks to be the next battleground for solar net metering policy

Iowa clean energy advocates are bracing for another legislative setback this year as the state’s largest utility takes aim at solar net metering. A bill (HSB 185) introduced by a House committee chairperson last week would slash the payments customers receive for unused solar power they generate.A spokeswoman for MidAmerican Energy said the current policy forces customers who don’t own solar panels to unfairly subsidize those who do.“We support customers having private generation, but not the cost shift that’s created when they don’t pay for their use of the grid,” a spokeswoman said.The question of cost-shifting, however, has never been studied in Iowa and has been disproven in states that have examined the value of distributed solar on the grid.