How are seniors impacted by your proposal?

Our proposal takes a step toward protecting seniors from paying increased subsidies to customers who generate their own power.

We are proposing to reduce the amount seniors and low-income customers currently are paying for customers who add solar panels or generating systems on their homes and businesses.

Today, any senior or low-income customer without their own generating system, ends up paying a greater portion of the grid costs than those who can afford their own generating systems.

We also propose modifying the facilities charge to better reflect the true cost of delivering energy. In the past, some of the costs that remain fixed regardless of usage – the poles, wires, transformers and services needed to keep the energy flowing – were included in the energy charge. As solar and other customer-owned generating resources continue to grow, the recovery of these costs is being paid by fewer customers – including seniors – which results in a higher energy charge.

The proposal in front of the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin would ensure that everyone pays a fair share for energy delivery by reducing the energy charge and increasing the facilities charge to better reflect the true cost of service. Overall, this change would result in more than 60 percent of customers seeing a savings, no change or an increase of no more than $4 on their monthly bill. 

This plan takes a step toward protecting seniors from high-cost, long-term subsidies for distributed generation.