SANTA CLARA — At their regular meeting last Wednesday, the Santa Clara City Council made a refund and fixed the agreement for electricity customers with solar power and voted to search for a new water well.
The council voted unanimously, 5-0, for both the moves on electricity and water detailed in a previous St. George News article.
“I’ve gotten several emails about this,” council member Jarett Waite said.
The solar power vote moves the city to refund electricity customers with a solar power system for charges the city says they should have not been charged since 2016 and reworks the city’s agreement with solar power customers with the stated aim to prevent that oversight from happening again.
The fixed agreement will ensure that every power customer with a solar system will be charged what is called a solar reliability charge (SRC) designed to maintain the city’s power generation and grid.
Santa Clara Power Director Gary Hall and members of the council made reference to the St. George News article saying there were inaccuracies.
The article said Hall told the council on Jan. 4 that customers with solar power systems were not credited for providing more electricity to the city than they took in. Hall said he did not say that.
“We did credit customers for the excess solar they produced,” Hall told St. George News last week.
What Hall told the council on Jan. 4 was: “All the customers who have produced more energy than purchased from us, we will have to be issuing them credits for what they have been billed. They were charged a solar reliability charge for the months they have produced energy and they should not have been charged for that.”
Hall indicated the inaccuracy wasn’t that the customers who provided excess power weren’t credited for doing so, but they shouldn’t have been charged a solar reliability charge since it was omitted from the city’s agreement and that is what is being refunded.
In actuality, Hall said the city intended to bill all customers a solar reliability charge whether they produced more energy than they took in or not but then provide a credit back on that charge to reduce it when a solar customer produced more power than they took in.
In other words, as Hall described, the mistake in the writing of the ordinance in 2016 wasn’t that customers who generated more electricity than they got from the city weren’t credited on the solar reliability charge, but that they shouldn’t have been charged the SRC in the first place because it was missing from the written agreement. It is that SRC that is being refunded.
The vote on Wednesday corrects that, meaning that moving forward, the status quo will be that solar customers who produce more energy than they receive from the city will still be charged monthly for being on the city’s power grid but will have that charge reduced based on how much more energy they produce than receive.
“We did not realize this was contrary to the agreement as it was written and signed by the solar customer,” Hall said. “A customer brought it to our attention and this is why we were discussing it in that meeting.”
In another action last Wednesday, the council unanimously approved $7,000 to authorize Spanish Fork-based Willowstick Technologies to search for a new water well within Santa Clara.
The well would fulfill the city’s remaining water rights outside the Washington County Water Conservancy and provide an additional water supply to the city, especially outside of the peak times of summer when the city has to partially utilize regional water.
The search for the potential well will be conducted in The Heights area near the lava beds.
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