Last month, a three-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court held that certain net metering regulations of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) are unenforceable. The regulations at issue are related to the implementation of Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS Act), which incentivizes the use of electricity generated by renewable sources such as wind, solar and biomass.

The Commonwealth Court’s ruling in Hommrich v. Pennsylvania Public  Utilities Commission (674 M.D. 2016), leaves some questions unanswered. In Hommrich, the plaintiff, seeking to install solar photovoltaics, challenged PUC regulations pertaining to net metering that he alleged were unauthorized under the AEPS Act. “Net metering” is a system by which renewable energy generators (most often customers using solar photovoltaics) connect to a public utility power grid, and surplus power is transferred back to the grid, allowing customers to offset the cost of the power they draw from the utility. Hommrich alleged that a project that could be approved for net metering under the AEPS Act could also not be approved under the PUC’s regulations, due to the PUC’s definitions of key terms.