Entergy Mississippi has identified a broad range of “Smart Energy Services” that it plans to develop, and is proposing an overall framework for how customers would pay for them. These services include programs for efficiency, demand response, DERs, storage, community solar, home energy services, back-up generation, and customer-centric billing and payment options.
Specific programs contemplated include:
- A community solar project, for which Entergy plans to seek approval later this year, including a plan to offer to qualifying low-income customers a specified portion of the solar facilities.
- Home-sited back-up generation that extends to new technologies in underserved, high-cost areas to deliver both individual and system benefits, including peak demand response.
- Tariffed on-bill financing for certain Smart Energy Services.
- Partnering with third parties to extend low-cost credit to low- and middle-income households for certain Services.
Entergy is seeking feedback from the PSC and Staff that its planned approach is reasonable and is likely to satisfy the public interest. Entergy will make a subsequent filing later this year with a proposed portfolio of customer offerings and accompanying tariffs that certain Smart Energy Services offerings will require.
Entergy is proposing to recover expenditures related Smart Energy Services in a manner that is comparable to how it recovers other utility infrastructure investments including supply-side resources and other forms of infrastructure, by establishing an amortization-based cost recovery within its annual Formula Rate Plan process. Expenditures for Smart Energy Services to be recovered and incorporated into the cost recovery approach would include direct incentives paid to customers and direct installation costs, labor and indirect costs associated with developing/administering program offerings, and amounts paid to vendors for development/administration of programs.