NY PSC’s 50% Fee Increase Demands Industry Action

On July 17, 2025, the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) issued an order authorizing Net Revenue Adjustments (NRAs) on the utilities as means of creating accountability for their billing and crediting performance on our community solar projects. While it rightly established performance metrics and financial penalties for utilities that fail to credit customers in a timely manner, the Order also took a surprising and indefensible step:

It approved a 50% increase in the Net Crediting Admin fee—raising it from 1.0% to 1.5%—as a means for the utilities to recover the costs of implementing the systems and management of these performance metrics.

In short: the utilities messed up so badly in the implementation of net crediting that the Commission deemed it advisable that metrics be tracked to ensure the Joint Utilities' compliance with the law and program rules. But then in the same breath, required CDG developers (the very party that suffered real financial harm from the JUs' failures), to bear the cost of the JUs' compliance tools.

This is not just inequitable. It is unprecedented.

Petition for Rehearing
PowerMarket, alongside NYSEIA and CCSA, is preparing a Petition for Rehearing to challenge this specific aspect of the Order. Here’s why we believe the Commission’s decision must be revisited:

• The premise that NRA implementation cost should be the cost of CDG developers is fundamentally flawed. The admin fee increase rewards noncompliance and that's a perverse outcome.
• It was based on inflated and irrelevant cost estimates. The 0.5% fee increase was justified using utility estimates that assumed six metrics would be adopted. Only two were. There was no underlying analysis or calculations to substantiate the fee increase, and certainly not by 50%.
• It is arbitrary and premature. Utilities haven’t even filed updated cost estimates yet—those are due September 15, 2025. This fee hike was authorized without verified data, analysis, or public process.
• There’s documented admin fee over-recovery. Over the past 4 years since the implementation of net crediting, the JU has published reports showing that they have collected more in admin fees than their actual costs in administering net crediting. This history of surplus was acknowledged, but yet ignored by the PSC when it applied a blanket fee increase across all Joint Utilities with no reconciliation or validation.

This sets a dangerous precedent for clean energy regulation in New York. It violates basic principles of fairness, transparency, and cost-based ratemaking.

What You Can Do
Contribute to the Legal Fund.
CCSA is organizing a co-funded effort to retain outside regulatory counsel to represent industry interests in this Petition for Rehearing. Your financial support is needed. Contributions will directly fund the legal work necessary to reverse this unjust and unsupported fee increase. Email kate@communitysolaraccess.org for details.

Raise Your Voice.
Connect with me and share your feelings and perspective. You are the affected party and want to make sure your position is known. If you’ve been harmed by delayed billing or unjust utility practices, your story matters.

Stay Informed.
We will provide regular updates on the rehearing process, the JU’s upcoming cost filings, and opportunities for further engagement.

Bottom Line
The PSC’s July Order should have created accountability. Instead, it creates a utility windfall. It is fundamentally backward to have those injured by utility misconduct pay for the systems designed to protect them.

Let’s fix this—together.