New Mexico § 62-13-13.2 - Interconnected customers; utility cost recovery

§ 62-13-13.2. Interconnected customers; utility cost recovery

A. Upon request of an investor-owned utility in any general rate case, the commission

shall approve interconnected customer rate riders to recover the costs of ancillary

and standby services pursuant to this section only for new interconnected customers,

except that a utility may seek approval of interconnected customer rate riders in

the utility's renewable energy procurement plan filing before January 1, 2011, to

be in effect until the conclusion of the utility's next general rate case. In establishing interconnected customer rate riders, the commission shall assure

that costs to be recovered through the rate riders are not duplicative of costs to

be recovered in underlying rates and shall give due consideration to the reasonably

determinable embedded and incremental costs of the utility to serve new interconnected

customers and the reasonably determinable benefits to the utility system provided

by new interconnected customers during each three-year period after which new interconnected

customer rate riders go into effect. The benefits to the utility system, as applicable, include avoided renewable energy

certificate procurement costs, reduced capital investment costs resulting from the

avoidance or deferral of capital expenditures, reduced energy and capacity costs and

line loss reductions. B. In a filing made pursuant to Subsection G of Section 62-8-7 NMSA 1978 , a rural electric cooperative may implement rates or rate riders by customer class,

giving due consideration to reasonably determinable costs and benefits of interconnected

systems, that are specifically designed to recover from interconnected customers the

fixed costs of providing electric services to those customers. C. Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as preventing the utility from charging

rates designed to recover all of its reasonable costs of providing service to customers. D. As used in this section: (1) “ ancillary and standby services ” means services that are essential to maintain electric system reliability and are

required by or are a consequence of interconnecting distributed generation facilities

to a utility's system and may include, among other services, regulation and frequency

response, regulation and voltage support, spinning reserves and supplemental reserves; (2) “ interconnected customer ” means a utility customer that is also interconnected to non-utility distributed

generation facilities; and (3) “ new interconnected customer ” means a customer that became an interconnected customer after December 31, 2010

or a customer whose renewable energy certificate purchase agreement entered into prior

to January 1, 2011 is no longer in effect.