Establishes provisions for community solar gardens
HB 3019 would create a new section in Missouri law governing community solar facilities and would establish a three-year community solar pilot program for retail electric suppliers from 2027 through 2029. The bill defines key terms such as community solar facility, subscriber, subscriber administrator, bill credit, and low-income customer, and it sets size, location, and subscriber requirements for qualifying projects. Community solar facilities would be allowed to be remotely located, serve multiple subscribers, and allocate bill credits to subscribers’ retail electric bills based on their share of generation.
The bill directs the Missouri Public Service Commission to set the bill-credit value, including a separate value designed to ensure savings for low-income customers, and to adopt rules for interconnection, billing, and unsubscribed energy. It also requires retail electric suppliers to allow subscription portability and transferability, provide monthly billing and generation data, publish system maps showing distribution capacity for new solar generation, and purchase unsubscribed energy at avoided cost. The measure further limits each parcel or contiguous parcel group to one community solar facility under common control and requires at least 10% low-income subscribers and 20% residential subscribers in each facility.
HB 3019 would add section 386.1050 to Missouri’s utility laws in chapter 386 and expand the regulatory authority and responsibilities of the Public Service Commission over community solar. It would create new obligations for electric utilities, municipal utilities, and rural electric cooperatives to process bill credits, handle subscription billing, compensate for interconnection and compliance costs, and support a pilot program tied to a statewide participation target equal to 2% of each supplier’s prior-year electricity sales. It would also create a legal framework for third-party community solar developers and subscriber administrators while expressly stating that those entities are not to be treated as public utilities or electrical corporations solely because of their role in the program.
The available context suggests generally favorable treatment of the bill, or at least no recorded opposition in the provided materials. The bill was introduced and referred to the House Emerging Issues Committee, and there are no committee transcripts or recorded votes included here to indicate debate, amendments, or partisan division. Its structure and detailed consumer-protection provisions, especially the low-income savings requirement, suggest an effort to make community solar broadly accessible and administratively workable.
The main points of potential contention are likely to be utility regulation, cost recovery, and the scope of mandated participation. Retail electric suppliers are required to implement the pilot, process bill credits, provide billing support, and recover reasonable direct costs through fees, which could draw concern from utilities and ratepayer advocates. Developers and subscriber administrators may favor the bill’s explicit exemption from public-utility status and the commission’s obligation to set credit values that support financing, while utilities may object to the mandated purchase of unsubscribed energy, the 2% annual participation target, and the requirement to publish distribution-system capacity maps. Another possible area of debate is the low-income subscription mandate and the commission’s role in setting a special credit value for those customers.