PDP in Senate seeks to halt $300 LUMA fee imposed on solar customers

Sen. Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz, center, said the Popular Democratic Party minority in the upper chamber has since mid-August spoken out against the $300 fee charged by LUMA Energy to customers with solar panel systems.

By THE STAR STAFF

The Popular Democratic Party (PDP) delegation in the Senate held a press conference Wednesday to address the $300 fee charged by LUMA Energy to customers with solar panel systems.

The delegation has filed a resolution demanding that the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau carry out all the corresponding procedures to order LUMA Energy to cancel and/or stop all charges imposed on the so-called “microgrids.”

Sen. Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz stated that “as everyone knows, in recent weeks, we have been paying close attention to this issue, which has sparked outrage across the country, and rightly so.”

Hernández Ortiz noted that since Aug. 14, the delegation has expressed its rejection of the charge, considering that the net metering program, the mechanism that makes this type of connection possible, was created with the vision of facilitating interconnection to the electrical grid and allowing Puerto Rico residents to have electricity in their homes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“This program allows Puerto Rican families and businesses to save on their electricity bills by crediting them for the clean energy they generate with their solar systems and export to the grid through renewable sources, such as solar panels,” said the PDP minority leader in the upper chamber.

Alternate Minority Leader Marially González Huertas noted that the net metering program “is the only mechanism that has significantly stimulated the installation of solar systems in our communities.”

“According to data from the LUMA consortium itself, between the most recent period of April to June 2025, more than 3,500 monthly activations of distributed generation (installation of panels) were recorded,” she said. “This is the best evidence that the system is highly attractive to consumers.”

The legislators added that, thanks to net metering, “today in Puerto Rico there are nearly 170,000 customers connected to solar panels: of which approximately 165,000 are residential, 4,500 are commercial, and 60 are industrial.”

“Our delegation requested, through Information Request 2025-0088, that LUMA Energy justify before this Senate this $300 charge to customers and that they share information related to the supplementary studies they claim they must carry out (which is the reason they use to charge people $300),” the lawmakers continued. “And what did LUMA say? That they charge this fee to customers when they don’t meet the criteria for the expedited interconnection process established in Regulation 8915, which has been in effect since 2017. The company claims that it is necessary to charge this fee because they have to conduct a supplementary study to evaluate the technical impact of the solar panel system on the electrical grid.”

“Who will conduct this supplementary study?” Sen. Josian Santiago Rivera asked. “LUMA itself, through its Department of Planning and Renewable Energy Integration. This so-called study must be conducted for customers whose system is located on a feeder with solar energy penetration above 15%. The problem is that this 15% threshold is no longer commonly used by utilities or industry, but is still maintained in Regulation 8915, despite the fact that in proceedings and motions before the Energy Bureau, the LUMA Energy consortium itself has argued that studying any feeder that is not above 30% is a waste of time and resources. Even when they propose this, they want to conduct studies for customers who are above 15%.”

The PDP senators went on to note that the regulations LUMA uses as the basis for the $300 fee, which has been in effect since 2017, were issued prior to the Legislative Assembly’s approval of Act 17-2019, as amended and known as the “Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act.” That law stipulated that “photovoltaic generation systems that do not exceed a generation capacity of 25 kilowatts shall be automatically interconnected to the transmission and distribution grid.”

Given this reality, the lawmakers said, there is no justification for LUMA Energy to use as a basis a regulation that, for all intents and purposes, was repealed by a subsequent law. During the press conference, questions were raised about why a new regulation has not been adopted.

“The reason is that the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority failed to comply with Law 17-2019. Article 1.13 of that law ordered it to adopt a Microgrid Interconnection Regulation, which to date has not been implemented,” Hernández Ortiz noted. “Given PREPA’s noncompliance, the Energy Bureau initiated a process, but the process is still slow; to date, there is no new regulation.”