Strange situation with Huntsville Utilities - they have a large customer with rooftop solar who also participates in their community solar program. Customer is getting billed twice for the same solar production during peak hours. The rooftop solar gets net metered normally, but then they're also getting charged for their community solar subscription during the same time periods when their rooftop is producing. Utility says the systems are independent but that makes no sense from a grid perspective. Anyone dealt with overlapping solar programs like this?
Customer-owned solar + utility-scale solar double billing issue
SMUD has strict rules preventing customers from participating in multiple solar programs simultaneously for exactly this reason. If you have rooftop solar, you can't join community solar, and vice versa. The billing systems aren't designed to handle multiple solar sources for one customer account. Sounds like Huntsville didn't think this through when they designed their community solar program. Customer should demand they fix the billing logic or exit one of the programs.
Entergy Arkansas had a similar issue with a commercial customer who had both on-site solar and a power purchase agreement for off-site solar from the same time period. Customer was essentially paying for solar twice during peak production hours. The problem is billing systems treat each solar source independently without checking for overlaps. We had to get the Arkansas Public Service Commission involved to force Entergy to modify their billing logic. Took eight months to resolve.
Georgia Power specifically prohibits customers with distributed generation from participating in their community solar program to avoid this exact problem. The issue is net metering credits and community solar credits can't both apply to the same billing period - it creates negative billing scenarios the system can't handle. Huntsville needs to either modify their community solar terms to exclude net metering customers or prorate credits to prevent double compensation. This is basic program design stuff they should have caught before launch.