Nevada ‘misses an opportunity’ in performance-based DER tariffs: advocate

Nevada regulators have approved new payment programs that let NV Energy customers earn money from home batteries, smart thermostats, and other devices that can reduce or shift power use during times of high grid demand. Approved on Aug. 11, the two programs pay based on either hourly market pricing for energy sent back to the grid or an avoided-cost calculation for reducing demand. This replaces a narrower demand-response setup that had been in place for 15 years, and puts Nevada in line with other states experimenting with these "virtual power plant" style programs, where many small home devices act together like a power plant.

If you own solar panels, a battery, or a smart thermostat in NV Energy territory, this could eventually mean new ways to get paid for how your equipment interacts with the grid. But there's a catch: the new rules limit the ability of customers to let third-party companies (rather than NV Energy itself) manage and pool their devices for these payments. Clean energy advocates argued this narrows customer choice and could slow battery adoption, especially now that a federal tax credit for home batteries has expired, since third-party companies had been helping keep battery costs down.

Regulators sided with NV Energy on keeping the utility in control, saying options like open data-sharing platforms or outside aggregators weren't necessary yet. The case isn't fully closed, though — parties have a deadline this week to ask regulators to reconsider parts of the decision.