Article found in the January 2010 issue of Kansas Country Living.  
    The Board of Trustees considered the adoption of a service rider for the cooperative to implement "net Metering" on December 21, 2009.
  The net metering rider will be available to members operating their own renewable generation resource, such as a small wind turbine.  Members must enter into an interconnection agreement with the cooperative to qualify for the rider. 
   Net metering, as the name implies, is a metering process designed to determine the net amount of energy provided to the member by the cooperative and the energy provided to the cooperative by the member.  Net metering service is designed primarily to allow a member to offset some or all of their electrical requirements with their own generation.  When the member generates some, but not all, of their requirements, net metering simply allows the meter to slow down.  But in some instances, the energy generated exceeds the member's usage.  In those instances, net metering allows the meter to run backward, either offsetting prior usage or "depositing" kilowatt hours into the "bank" (the meter) that the member can "withdraw" up until the end of the billing period.
   At the end of the billing period, a member that has used more energy than he supplied pays the cooperative for the usage; however, a member that supplies more energy than he uses during the billing period is not compensated for the excess energy supplied under net metering. 
   Members desiring to be compensated for generation in excess of what they supply might gain more advantage by interconnecting under the cooperative's parallel generation riders.  Under parallel generation, the purchase rate for excess energy from a renewable resource is 150 % of the cooperative's monthly system average cost of energy, as required by Kansas State law.  In either case, the member must pay the standard monthly customer charge required of other members.
   For more details on member owned generation, net metering, or to determine which option might be best for you, contact Phillip Shelley at 620-872-5885.