I appreciated your editorial about the future of Maine’s solar industry (“Our View: Solar power’s growth calls for new system,” Jan. 24). Because facts matter in these discussions, it’s important to correct or clarify several points in that piece.

While the 1 percent threshold apparently was reached in 2015, we should be clear that it was not 1 percent of the energy required throughout the state for the entire year. The threshold was exceeded at one particularly sunny point on one day in August. So, even under the most ideal solar-energy-producing conditions, solar was producing a hundredth of the power required by the grid at that moment.

The idea that this represents a significant contribution to our energy production profile is ridiculous. Setting aside that 1 percent is an arbitrary number, the time period over which it is calculated should be more meaningful than an instantaneous maximum.

One important fact is consistently omitted from the description of net metering: Residents who take advantage of net metering do not pay nothing when they produce more power than they use in a month. If they’re hooked up to the grid, all Central Maine Power customers pay a monthly fee to CMP for electricity delivery. Residents participating in net metering pay this fee as well, even if they produce more energy in a month than they used.

That fee is currently $11.51 a month for a residential property. Therefore, CMP already has a mechanism in place for recouping costs to maintain the grid, and arguing that residents who take advantage of net metering aren’t paying their fair share to maintain the grid is disingenuous.

The scalability of net metering may be up for debate. However, let’s be honest about how unreasonably low our threshold is for revisiting this question, as well as about who pays to maintain the power grid.

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