1. A. The commission shall administer and enforce the rules and provisions of the Community Solar Act, including regulation of subscriber organizations in accordance with the Community Solar Act and oversight and review of the consumer protections established for the community solar program.

2. B. The commission shall adopt rules to establish a community solar program by no later than April 1, 2022. The rules shall:

   1. (1) provide an initial statewide capacity program cap of two hundred megawatts alternating current proportionally allocated to investor-owned utilities until November 1, 2024. The statewide capacity program cap shall exclude native community solar projects and rural electric distribution cooperatives;
   2. (2) establish an annual statewide capacity program cap to be in effect after November 1, 2024;
   3. (3) require thirty percent of electricity produced from each community solar facility to be reserved for low-income customers and low-income service organizations. The commission shall issue guidelines to ensure the carve-out is achieved each year and develop a list of low-income service organizations and programs that may pre-qualify low-income customers;
   4. (4) establish a process for the selection of community solar facility projects and allocation of the statewide capacity program cap, consistent with Section 13-1-21 NMSA 1978 regarding resident business, Native American resident business, resident veteran business and Native American resident veteran business preferences;
   5. (5) require a qualifying utility to file the tariffs, agreement or forms necessary for implementation of the community solar program;
   6. (6) establish reasonable, uniform, efficient and non-discriminatory standards, fees and processes for the interconnection of community solar facilities that are consistent with the commission's existing interconnection rules and interconnection manual that allows a qualifying utility to recover reasonable costs for administering the community solar program and interconnection costs for each community solar facility, such that a qualifying utility and its non-subscribing customers do not subsidize the costs attributable to the subscriber organization pursuant to this paragraph;
   7. (7) provide consumer protections for subscribers, including a uniform disclosure form that identifies the information that shall be provided by a subscriber organization to a potential subscriber, in both English and Spanish, and when appropriate, native or indigenous languages, to ensure fair disclosure of future costs and benefits of subscriptions, key contract terms, security interests and other relevant but reasonable information pertaining to the subscription, as well as grievance and enforcement procedures;
   8. (8) provide a community solar bill credit rate mechanism for subscribers derived from the qualifying utility's total aggregate retail rate on a per-customer-class basis, less the commission-approved distribution cost components, and identify all proposed rules, fees and charges; provided that non-subscribers shall not subsidize costs attributable to subscribers; and provided further that if the commission determines that it is in the public interest for non-subscribers to subsidize subscribers, non-subscribers shall not be charged more than three percent of the non-subscribers' aggregate retail rate on an annual basis to subsidize subscribers;
   9. (9) reasonably allow for the creation, financing and accessibility of community solar facilities; and
   10. (10) provide requirements for the siting and co-location of community solar facilities with other energy resources; provided that community solar facilities shall not be co-located with other community solar facilities.
3. C. The commission may through rule establish a reasonable application fee for subscriber organizations that is designed to cover a portion of the administrative costs of the commission in carrying out the community solar program. Application fees collected by the commission shall be remitted to the state treasurer no later than the day after their receipt.
4. D. The commission shall solicit input from relevant state agencies, public utilities, low-income stakeholders, disproportionately impacted communities, potential owners or operators of community solar facilities, Indian nations, tribes and pueblos and other interested parties in its rulemaking process.
5. E. By no later than November 1, 2024, the commission shall provide to the appropriate interim legislative committee a report on the status of the community solar program, including the development of community solar facilities, the participation of investor-owned utilities and rural electric distribution cooperatives, low-income participation, the adequacy of facility size, proposals for alternative rate structures and bill credit mechanisms, cross-subsidization issues, local developer project selection and expansion of the local solar industry, community solar facilities' effect on utility compliance with the renewable portfolio standard and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the commission's rules to implement the Community Solar Act and any recommended changes.

History: Laws 2021, ch. 34, § 7; 2022, ch. 6, § 4.

ANNOTATIONS

The 2022 amendment, effective July 1, 2022, amended an existing provision that required the public regulation commission to establish a process for the selection of community solar facility projects and allocation of the statewide capacity program cap regarding resident businesses and resident veteran businesses to include Native American resident businesses and Native American resident veteran businesses; and in Subsection B, Paragraph B(4), after "regarding resident business", added "Native American resident business", and after "resident veteran business", added "and Native American resident veteran business".

The public regulation commission's interpretation of rulemaking provision was reasonable, lawful, and within the scope of the policy-making authority delegated by the legislature under the Community Solar Act. — In a consolidated appeal, where appellants and intervenors challenged the community solar rule's prohibition against subtracting transmission costs from a utility's community solar bill-credit rate as an unlawful subsidy under the Community Solar Act, 62-16B-1 NMSA 1978 to 62-16B-8 NMSA 1978, the public regulation commission did not exceed its policy-making authority in adopting the rule , because prohibiting the subtraction of transmission costs from the bill-credit rate was a reasonable exercise of the policy-making authority delegated under the Act to the New Mexico public regulation commission. Sw. Pub. Serv. Co. v. N.M. Pub. Regul. Comm'n, 2025-NMSC-013.

The public regulation commission's interpretation of statute's provision allowing the sharing of interconnection costs was reasonable and within the commission's policy-making authority. — In a consolidated appeal, where appellants and intervenors challenged a community solar rule that authorizes the public regulation commission to determine on a case-by-case basis whether the cost of distribution system upgrades necessary to interconnect one or more community solar facilities may be eligible for some form of cost-sharing among ratepayers, including both subscribers and non-subscribers, arguing that any sharing of interconnections costs with non-subscribers necessarily results in subsidization, in violation of 62-16B-7(B)(6) NMSA 1978, the public regulation commission did not exceed its policy-making authority in adopting the rule, because the commission's interpretation of the provision to allow cost sharing in appropriate circumstances is a reasonable balancing of the interests of the community solar facilities, subscribers, non-subscribers, and utilities, in accordance with the authority delegated under the Community Solar Act. Sw. Pub. Serv. Co. v. N.M. Pub. Regul. Comm'n, 2025-NMSC-013.

The public regulation commission's interpretation of statute's prohibition against the co-location of community solar facilities was reasonable and within the commission's policy-making authority. — In a consolidated appeal, where appellants and intervenors challenged a community solar rule which authorizes the public regulation commission to consider on a case-by-case basis allowing more than one community solar facility to be located on the same parcel of land, in violation of 62-16B-3(A)(4) NMSA 1978, the public regulation commission did not exceed its policy-making authority in adopting the rule, because the commission's exercise of its policy-making was reasonable in opting for a flexible approach to determining whether community solar facilities are co-located and opting to consider on a case-by-case basis whether two or more facilities may be located on the same parcel without violating the prohibition against co-location. Sw. Pub. Serv. Co. v. N.M. Pub. Regul. Comm'n, 2025-NMSC-013.

The public regulation commission's delegation of responsibility to a third-party administrator to oversee the selection process for community solar projects was not unreasonable or unlawful. — In a consolidated appeal, where appellants and intervenors challenged a community solar rule's delegation of responsibility to a third-party administrator for selection of proposed projects for building and operating community solar facilities, arguing that the wholesale delegation of all aspects of the selection of projects violates the Community Solar Act's mandate, which requires the public regulation commission (commission) to establish a process for the selection of community solar facility projects, the commission did not exceed its policy-making authority in adopting the rule, because the commission has broad authority to enter into contracts to carry out its powers and duties, and here, the commission carried out these duties by first prescribing a detailed selection process by rule and then engaging a third-party administrator to manage that process. Sw. Pub. Serv. Co. v. N.M. Pub. Regul. Comm'n, 2025-NMSC-013.