Want rooftop solar? What Idaho Power seeks to pay for your electricity
Editor’s note: This story was updated Tuesday, April 8, 2025, to include comment from Idaho Power spokesperson Jordan Rodriguez.
Lisa Young had said for years that if Idaho Power received approval to overhaul its method of compensating homeowners for power produced by their rooftop solar panels, the company would try still to pay them less.
In early 2024, the utility got the green light from the Idaho Public Utilities Commission to change its compensation structure. Young, the director of the Idaho chapter of the Sierra Club, had fought the proposal. She argued that it undervalued customer-generated solar and added complexity to the system that could discourage Idahoans from investing in clean energy.
While the changes mostly affected rooftop solar, they also applied to other methods of on-site energy generation like windmills, geothermal and small hydro projects.
Idaho Power’s net metering policy previously allowed customers to receive credits on their utility bills equivalent to retail electricity rates when they produced more energy than their households needed. For every kilowatt hour of solar energy sent to the grid, the customer received a kilowatt-hour credit.
But the overhaul lowered that rate, known as the export credit rate, and replaced what’s known as net monthly billing with real-time net billing. It shifted energy valuation to on-peak and off-peak times. Rates would be higher in the hot summer months — particularly in the evenings, when Idaho Power says it experiences its largest demand — and lower in the winter.
Rates for homeowners were previously between 8 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt hour, depending on the amount of energy used. Now, the average annual rate is about 6 cents.
The order from the commission gave Idaho Power a path to adjust the rates annually. Young had noted that, in prior cases, the company had valued customer-generated solar power as low as nearly 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.
“They have their sights set on a much lower rate,” Young previously told the Idaho Statesman.
She was right. Idaho Power filed an application with state regulators on Tuesday asking to cut the amount of money paid to rooftop solar owners by more than half. The company proposed lowering the export credit rate for summer on-peak hours to 14 cents, down from 17 cents, and off-peak hours outside the summer season to 0.9 cents, down from 4.8 cents. It would compensate energy exported in off-peak summer hours at 1.7 cents, according to the application. The average annual rate would be 2.4 cents.
Idaho Power spokesperson Jordan Rodriguez said by email that the previous rate case that overhauled the solar compensation structure included a provision that requires the company to file an annual update to the export-credit rate every April.
He said the main driver of the rate decrease in the latest filing is lower 2024 energy market prices compared with the 2022 prices used to determine the current rate.
“The (export credit rate) reflects the market value of the energy at the time it is exported to Idaho Power, combined with additional compensation for the benefit on-site generators bring to the grid,” Rodriguez said. “It helps ensure we’re paying fair market prices for the energy we receive and can adjust those annually to reflect changing grid and market conditions.”
Jeremy Brunson, a high school teacher who installed solar panels on his Meridian home, said in a statement through the Sierra Club that before the changes to the compensation structure, he generated enough power over the winter to completely cover his power bills. But not anymore.
“I have generated more energy than I have used over the last month, and I will still have a bill,” Brunson said. “From what I understand with their recent proposal, this compensation rate is going to get only worse.”
The utility has said that the reduction in compensation rates is tied to the rising popularity of solar systems. Idaho Power argued that previous pricing overcompensated customers with solar at the expense of those without. About 12,000 customers, or 2% of the company’s roughly 600,000 customers, participate in on-site generation.
“We’re trying to achieve a fair and accurate valuation of customers’ exported energy,” Rodriguez previously told the Statesman.
This story was originally published April 6, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
