Huntingburg to expand renewable energy ordinance to include commercial customers

Huntingburg is making changes to a recently passed net metering ordinance to allow commercial customers to take advantage of renewable energy like solar.

Net metering describes how an energy provider like the city regulates a customer’s renewable energy production in offsetting their regular energy usage.

According to Energy Superintendent John Reutepohler, the changes are necessary since he has a commercial customer wanting to add solar panels to generate about 22 kilowatts of energy for their business. The current net metering ordinance only regulates residential customers.

To accommodate the customer, Reutopohler asked the council to change the ordinance to allow the commercial customers and increase the amount of energy they can produce compared to residential customers.

The council was concerned that since the ordinance regulated the total amount of renewable energy production to one percent—about 182 kilowatts—of the city’s supplied electricity, a couple commercial customers could easily hit that maximum.

In discussing the ordinance, Councilman Jeff Bounds pointed out that since passing the original ordinance more than a year ago, the city had not had a single application to install solar panels or other renewable energy production source by a customer.

The city has limited the amount of renewable energy it will offset so that it can still support the infrastructure needed to provide electricity to customers. “We still have our fixed costs for maintenance,” Reutepohler said.

The council also agreed to change wording in the ordinance from single-phase and three-phase customers to residential and commercial.

The council agreed to the suggested changes and will review the amendments at a future meeting.