The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners has released the final publication of its manual, Distributed Energy Resources Rate Design and Compensation. The manual was an undertaking of NARUC’s Staff Subcommittee on Rate Design.

Work on the manual began at the November 2015 NARUC Annual Meeting, with direction to the subcommittee to draft a distributed energy resources manual to help states manage the myriad challenges associated with current rate design. A town hall meeting to discuss the draft version of the manual was held in Nashville at NARUC’s summer meeting in July. After that meeting, more than 70 comments from stakeholder groups were submitted to the subcommittee to consider for the final manual.

“This publication was a major undertaking by the staff subcommittee and we appreciate their hard work and the many valuable comments we received from commissions and stakeholder groups,” said NARUC president, Kavulla. “Although the manual is not the final word on the subject, it will be a useful practical resource for regulators.”

As noted in the manual’s executive summary, “The reason for this manual is that the nature of electricity delivery, consumption, generation, and grid itself are changing, and changing rapidly.” Among other things, it discusses how DER affects existing regulatory and utility models, and offers rate design and compensation options.

The manual is available on the NARUC website at http://bit.ly/2fFHH34.

A web page for the manual, which includes comments received on the draft manual, became available on November 11 at http://www.naruc.org/ratedesign.