Gov. Paul LePage’s PUC commissioners have just crippled the solar industry in Maine and stolen as much as half of all future electric power from Maine people who generate power from their home-based solar systems (”Maine regulators seek middle ground in residential solar incentives,” Jan. 31). Please raise the alarm with your state representatives and senators about this theft disguised as a tax penalty on alternative solar energy.

While everyone’s eyes were on the thievery and deceit in D.C., these commissioners struck like thieves in the night by changing PUC’s Chapter 313 regulation to create a new term called “nettable energy,” which effectively poses as much as a 50 percent tax on Maine solar systems energy production over the next 15 years. People will have to “give away” almost half of the energy they generate to electric companies.

That’s just not right. The commission deliberated for just two hours recently on the new rules they proposed back in the fall. In the end, they decided to cripple the solar industry in Maine with this unfair tax penalty. They ignored the thousands of public comments they received last fall against keeping the equitable (net-energy) trade for our solar power. They’ve also jeopardized the 300 existing solar jobs in Maine.

Deborah Avalone-King

Brooks

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