An ordinance adopting interconnection standards primarily related to solar energy was recently considered by the Argos Town Council.
Town Attorney Derek Jones provided members with a brief synopsis of what the ordinance would be replacing.
He explained, “If you remember, I think it was back in 2016 or 2017 we had an ordinance that dealt with this called ‘Net Metering’ and we repealed that back in January at the direction of IMPA and we now have new standards.”
Jones also addressed the fact that in addition to the ordinance, members were being asked to consider approving a number of other related documents. He also mentioned how the ordinance would impact the existing code.
The attorney noted, “Anybody; any customer, any citizen, any business that wants to do this needs to be familiar with these standards, as well as the applications, the agreements, the certificates that they will need to be signing and providing.”
He continued, “The ordinance addresses those matters but it also changes two sections of the code to, again, recognize that we are operational with regards to anybody who wants to put these solar facilities in place.”
Town Council President George Null provided some feedback about what was presented.
He told members, “I got the drift of it, I understand what it’s all about. It’s to protect us and to protect the town, or the electric utilities I should say,” He added, “and the workers because if one of these is back-feeding, it’s going to hurt somebody.”
Members cast a unanimous vote to suspend the rules and passed the ordinance on all three readings during their final meeting of the month.
