NEB is costing more than predicted.

A very short post.

Note: I’m moving to a new post format aiming to explain one very simple and timely item per post, per day. Don’t be afraid to open the emails. They will be short. Promise. It’s legislative season, and for those who aren’t following these issues closely, it is extremely complicated and overwhelming.

NEB = Net Energy Billing
OPA = Office of the Public Advocate. The OPA’s job is to protect the interests of the ratepayer.
Ratepayer = people who have utility bills. In this context, persons (corporate and human) who pay electric bills.

In April of 2023 (2 years ago now) the OPA threw up a red flag about the cost of the NEB initiative. Their notice estimated that NEB would cost Maine $220 million per year by 2025.

Yesterday, in the combined hearing for four bills which aim to end NEB, the OPA revealed that their new estimate is NEB is costing ratepayers $240 million per year.

This new estimate is because of a number of projects that came online at the end of December 2024.

Testimonies are here. Neither the Utilities nor OPA have been uploaded at the time of this post. I listened yesterday.

The legislative policy director (i.e. lobbyist) for CMP provided these specific numbers:

• As of Jan 31 2025, there are 14,311 operational NEB projects are producing capacity of 876 MW total.

• In the pipeline: 222 MW could come online

• Combined pending and operating is 1098 MW (statute goal was 750MW)

• The NEB currently baked into CMP rates (July 2024 -June 2025) are:

  $19.5m kWh program (typically what a rooftop residential is)

  $90m for tariff program (larger scale programs, which are responsible for 75% of the NEB costs to ratepayers)

Image below - yellow is solar. Source