After months of regulatory uncertainty that town officials said cost Northport much of a summer’s worth of solar power, the Maine Public Utilities Commission has sided with the town in its dispute with Central Maine Power over a proposed municipal solar array on Beech Hill Road.
In an advisory ruling issued Sept. 15, the three-member commission unanimously determined that a provision of Maine’s recently revised net energy billing law does not prohibit Northport’s proposed 38-kilowatt solar project from participating in the state’s net energy billing program.
For Northport Town Administrator James Kossuth, who spent months pressing the town’s case before CMP and state regulators, the ruling was welcome news.
“I spoke with Sundog Solar this afternoon, and we are both just so very glad that the PUC reached the right result,” Kossuth said. “Because of the generosity of our donors, we are ready to start work as soon as CMP approves our interconnection agreement.”
The decision is the latest chapter in a dispute that began early this year over how a new Maine law should be applied to smaller solar projects such as Northport’s.
The town plans to install a 72-panel solar array at its municipal sand shed at 216 Beech Hill Road. The estimated $117,000 project has already been funded through grants, town reserve accounts and private donations. Town officials have estimated it could initially save Northport approximately $15,000 a year in electricity costs.
The project also plays a role in Northport’s longer-term energy plans. The town is preparing to build a new Town Office and Community Center that is expected to use electric heat pumps rather than oil. Officials expect the solar installation to offset nearly all of Northport’s current municipal electricity use and roughly half of its electrical demand after the new municipal complex is completed.
The problem emerged because of LD 1777, a law enacted in 2025 that changed Maine’s net energy billing program. Among its provisions, the law prevents new net energy billing agreements after Dec. 31, 2025, for generating facilities interconnected on the utility side of a customer’s electric meter — generally understood as an effort to limit new “front-of-the-meter” projects.
Northport, working through project developer Sundog Solar, submitted its application to CMP on Feb. 2.
At the time, the sand shed had previously had electrical service but no longer had an active meter or electrical load. The initial diagram submitted with the application also did not depict the sand shed or a meter monitoring electricity use at the property. CMP concluded from that diagram that the solar project would be installed on the utility side of the meter and therefore run afoul of the new law.
Northport responded by asking CMP to restore electrical service and reinstall a meter at the sand shed. The town said the service would provide lighting for residents using the facility after dark. Once the meter was installed, Northport submitted a revised application showing the solar array feeding through the meter.
CMP remained hesitant.
On Feb. 19, the utility rejected Northport’s second application, saying it was not comfortable entering into a net energy billing agreement until the PUC determined whether the project qualified. CMP subsequently asked for an advisory ruling addressing whether adding a meter after an application had initially been submitted satisfied the requirements of the new law.
Northport maintained that the law was straightforward: Its solar array would be connected on the customer side of the meter, not the utility side, and therefore the statutory prohibition did not apply.
After an informal dispute-resolution effort failed to settle the disagreement, Northport took the matter to the PUC, formally submitting its petition for an advisory ruling in May.
The case subsequently attracted attention from organizations involved in municipal government, consumer advocacy and Maine’s solar industry.
The Maine Office of the Public Advocate supported Northport, arguing that the plain language of the statute favored the town because its array would be behind the meter. ReVision Energy, the Maine Municipal Association, Unity Energy Partners, PowerOptions and Sundog Solar also submitted comments supporting Northport’s position.
CMP raised a broader concern. The utility argued that Northport’s interpretation could potentially allow a project that was not originally intended to serve a meaningful electrical load at its site to become eligible for net energy billing simply by adding a meter and a relatively small amount of electricity consumption.
CMP noted that Northport’s 38-kilowatt array is considerably larger than the electrical demand created by a few lights at the sand shed. The utility asked the PUC to establish a test requiring an “appreciable” existing on-site load before a project could qualify as behind-the-meter generation.
The commission declined to adopt CMP’s proposed approach.
Instead, the PUC concluded that the Legislature intended to close net energy billing to new front-of-the-meter projects while continuing to permit more traditional behind-the-meter projects. The commission determined that Northport’s array falls on the permissible side of that distinction.
The commission established two important guideposts. A single-customer solar facility can qualify when it is designed and sized to offset that customer’s expected annual electricity use, even if all of that consumption does not occur at the meter where the solar array is located. In addition, all net energy billing credits generated by the project must go to accounts belonging to that same customer.
That distinction is particularly important to Northport because electricity generated at the sand shed will be used to offset electrical costs at several town-owned buildings rather than solely the relatively small amount of power consumed at the sand shed itself.
The commission also directly rejected one of the central concerns raised by CMP, determining that the law does not impose requirements concerning when a meter was installed. Nor does it require an existing electrical load at the site, provided there is a reasonable expectation that electricity generated by the facility will offset the customer’s load.
Based on Northport’s description of its project, the PUC concluded that the town appears to satisfy those requirements.
The ruling comes with an important legal qualification. Because Northport requested an advisory ruling, the commission stopped short of formally ordering CMP to enter into a net energy billing agreement with the town. Advisory rulings are also not binding legal precedent, and the PUC said it expects to conduct a rulemaking proceeding concerning its net energy billing rules that could provide more definitive guidance.
Still, the commission’s guidance leaves little doubt about its assessment of the Northport project. It found that the array’s 38-kilowatt size does not violate statutory limits, that it is located behind a customer’s meter, that it will offset the electrical load of a single customer, the Town of Northport, and that the town does not intend to distribute the resulting credits to anyone else’s accounts.
The commission offered those findings specifically for CMP to consider as it takes another look at Northport’s application.
For town officials, the decision brings them much closer to finally putting panels on the ground after a regulatory fight that stretched across spring and summer.
Northport Select Board Chair Molly Schauffler said the commission needed little time at its Sept. 15 meeting to conclude that Northport’s situation was not what lawmakers had intended to prevent when they passed LD 1777.
“We are ecstatic and ready to go!” Schauffler said. “We’re glad we stood firm and stayed the course, even though it cost us the best solar days of this summer. We have many summers ahead of us.”
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.