Today, July 18, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission decided to dismiss an appeal by the national Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and the Colorado chapter, COSEIA, to revisit its ruling on Xcel Energy subsidiary Public Service Company of Colorado’s plans to reduce funding for solar through its Solar*Rewards program. The dismissal essentially finalized the commission’s ruling on Xcel’s rates.

As of July 2, under the reduced incentive program Xcel no longer offered homeowners an up front rebate for purchasing solar, previously it offered a rebate of $2.01 per watt in addition to a net-metering rate. It now offers homeowners installing net-metered solar systems a rebate of 15 cents per kilowatt hour produced by the system. For systems under power-purchase agreements or leases, so-called third-party owned systems, it offers 10 cents per kilowatt hour produced. The prices will fall both this year and next to 11 cents per kilowatt hour produced for customer-owned systems and 7 cents per kilowatt hour produced for third-party owned systems toward the end of 2013.

SEIA and COSIEA responded that the commission’s ruling could put thousands of jobs at stake. The organizations had appealed Xcel’s plan with a solution they said “would have improved the business climate for Colorado solar businesses, which employ more than 6,000 people in the state.”

COSEIA Executive Director Neal Lurie did not expect the decision to come out the way it did. “I was surprised by the PUC's comments. At a time of rising coal costs, the PUC missed a good opportunity to diversify our energy sources and spur local economic development in a fiscally responsible way,” he said.

Xcel has previously tried to reduce the incentive program, which caused an uproar among solar installers in March 2011. But the company has continuously said that the Colorado solar market has grown quicker than it expected and that it had originally anticipated much higher energy demand in state, but the recession changed it.

Still COSEIA will work to expand solar in state. “We're committed to expanding solar markets and are constantly evaluating a range of policy alternatives available,” Lurie said. Such action could include the push for new legislation to help expand the market in Colorado.