2023 New Mexico Statutes › Chapter 62 - Electric, Gas and Water Utilities › Article 16B - Community Solar › Section 62-16B-7 - Public regulation commission; enforcement and rulemaking.

A. The commission shall administer and enforce the rules and provisions of the Community Solar Act, including regulation of subscriber organizations in accordance with the Community Solar Act and oversight and review of the consumer protections established for the community solar program.
B. The commission shall adopt rules to establish a community solar program by no later than April 1, 2022. The rules shall:
(1) provide an initial statewide capacity program cap of two hundred megawatts alternating current proportionally allocated to investor-owned utilities until November 1, 2024. The statewide capacity program cap shall exclude native community solar projects and rural electric distribution cooperatives;
(2) establish an annual statewide capacity program cap to be in effect after November 1, 2024;
(3) require thirty percent of electricity produced from each community solar facility to be reserved for low-income customers and low-income service organizations. The commission shall issue guidelines to ensure the carve-out is achieved each year and develop a list of low-income service organizations and programs that may pre-qualify low-income customers;
(4) establish a process for the selection of community solar facility projects and allocation of the statewide capacity program cap, consistent with Section 13-1-21 NMSA 1978 regarding resident business, Native American resident business, resident veteran business and Native American resident veteran business preferences;
(5) require a qualifying utility to file the tariffs, agreement or forms necessary for implementation of the community solar program;
(6) establish reasonable, uniform, efficient and non-discriminatory standards, fees and processes for the interconnection of community solar facilities that are consistent with the commission's existing interconnection rules and interconnection manual that allows a qualifying utility to recover reasonable costs for administering the community solar program and interconnection costs for each community solar facility, such that a qualifying utility and its non-subscribing customers do not subsidize the costs attributable to the subscriber organization pursuant to this paragraph;
(7) provide consumer protections for subscribers, including a uniform disclosure form that identifies the information that shall be provided by a subscriber organization to a potential subscriber, in both English and Spanish, and when appropriate, native or indigenous languages, to ensure fair disclosure of future costs and benefits of subscriptions, key contract terms, security interests and other relevant but reasonable information pertaining to the subscription, as well as grievance and enforcement procedures;
(8) provide a community solar bill credit rate mechanism for subscribers derived from the qualifying utility's total aggregate retail rate on a per-customer-class basis, less the commission-approved distribution cost components, and identify all proposed rules, fees and charges; provided that non-subscribers shall not subsidize costs attributable to subscribers; and provided further that if the commission determines that it is in the public interest for non-subscribers to subsidize subscribers, non-subscribers shall not be charged more than three percent of the non-subscribers' aggregate retail rate on an annual basis to subsidize subscribers;
(9) reasonably allow for the creation, financing and accessibility of community solar facilities; and
(10) provide requirements for the siting and co-location of community solar facilities with other energy resources; provided that community solar facilities shall not be co-located with other community solar facilities.
C. The commission may through rule establish a reasonable application fee for subscriber organizations that is designed to cover a portion of the administrative costs of the commission in carrying out the community solar program. Application fees collected by the commission shall be remitted to the state treasurer no later than the day after their receipt.
D. The commission shall solicit input from relevant state agencies, public utilities, low-income stakeholders, disproportionately impacted communities, potential owners or operators of community solar facilities, Indian nations, tribes and pueblos and other interested parties in its rulemaking process.
E. By no later than November 1, 2024, the commission shall provide to the appropriate interim legislative committee a report on the status of the community solar program, including the development of community solar facilities, the participation of investor-owned utilities and rural electric distribution cooperatives, low-income participation, the adequacy of facility size, proposals for alternative rate structures and bill credit mechanisms, cross-subsidization issues, local developer project selection and expansion of the local solar industry, community solar facilities' effect on utility compliance with the renewable portfolio standard and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the commission's rules to implement the Community Solar Act and any recommended changes.
History:
Laws 2021, ch. 34, § 7; 2022, ch. 6, § 4.
ANNOTATIONS
The 2022 amendment,
effective July 1, 2022, amended an existing provision that required the public regulation commission to establish a process for the selection of community solar facility projects and allocation of the statewide capacity program cap regarding resident businesses and resident veteran businesses to include Native American resident businesses and Native American resident veteran businesses; and in Subsection B, Paragraph B(4), after "regarding resident business", added "Native American resident business", and after "resident veteran business", added "and Native American resident veteran business".