CONCORD ­— A bill initially designed to encourage private solar installations on rooftops has instead become a vehicle for utility companies to own solar generation in the state, according to critics of SB117 at a hearing on Tuesday before the House Science, Technology and Energy Committee.

Installing rooftop solar panels has become a growing industry in the state, and is on the verge of taking off among consumers. Rooftop solar has become so popular in the central part of the state served by the New Hampshire Electric Coop, that the utility has nearly exceeded the number of customers allowed to sell their excess electricity back into the grid, in a process known as net metering.

State Sen. Donna Soucy, D-Manchester, drafted a bill that she had hoped would allow for more net metering to encourage the development of a reliable renewable energy source and promote a burgeoning private industry. Her bill would have more than doubled the limit on the amount of electricity consumers can sell back into the grid, currently set at 50 megawatts per year, statewide.

“I introduced the bill to encourage greater development of New Hampshire’s home-grown energy resources,” she said. But somewhere along its path to the Senate floor, where it was approved on a voice vote, the measure was turned into something else altogether.

New Hampshire, USA — Today The Solar Foundation (TSF), a non-profit organization that seeks to further the understanding of solar energy through research and public education, released its 4th National Jobs Census report, which shows remarkable growth in the U.S. labor market as it pertains to solar energy employment.

In total there were 142,698 solar workers in the U.S. as of November 2013. A solar worker is defined as someone who devotes at least 50 percent of his or her work to solar-related activities.  This is a 20 percent increase over 2012 figures and ten times higher than the national average employment growth rate, which was 1.9 percent.  “This is our most comprehensive [report] yet,” said Andrea Luecke, Executive Director & President of The Solar Foundation, explaining that collecting the data involved making more than 74,000 phone calls and sending out more than 11,000 emails.

Solar project developers were the big winners in terms of job growth rate. In 2012 there were almost 8,000 solar workers who defined themselves as project developers whereas in 2013 that number jumped to more than 12,000, a 52 percent uptick.  According to Luecke, the large increase reflects the huge number of utility-scale projects that were under construction in 2013.

As has been long-predicted, because solar project costs have dropped so dramatically in recent years, the industry added the the largest number of jobs in installation. Just under 70,000 people are employed in the solar installation business, a 21 percent increase over 2012.  TSF predicts that 2014 will again add 21 percent more jobs, a number that would bring the industry solar installation total to more than 84,000 by this time next year.  CEO Lyndon Rive said that SolarCity added 2,000 “highly-distributed” jobs in 2013. Solar installation jobs are “not in any central hub,” he explained, as is the case with other industries such as  finance in NYC or high-tech in Silicon Valley. “We are in 14 states,” he said. “Growth for the next 10 years in solar is going to be very, very exciting,” Rive added. “You can’t outsource these jobs.”