Black Hills Energy net metering in South Dakota
Western South Dakota, including Rapid City, Spearfish and Sturgis. Also serves Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa, under quite different rules in each.
- Type
- Investor owned
- Accounts
- 75K
What they credit you
No net metering, and 2.48 cents if you qualify at all
Published termsBlack Hills does not offer net metering in South Dakota, because South Dakota does not require it. What its rate book offers instead is a cogeneration schedule paying 2.48 cents a kilowatt hour for output delivered in excess of your simultaneous load — and that schedule says in terms that it does not apply to generation installed to offset your own usage.
- Month to month
- The generation credit is netted against the other charges on each monthly bill rather than banked.
Published terms · checked 2026-09-29 · source
Installers serving Black Hills customers
Pick one. Only the company you choose receives your details, and only that company calls you.
These are real companies operating in Black Hills territory, ordered by reviews, years trading and BBB grade. None of them pays us for placement. Pick the one you want and we will call you to arrange it.
Ordering combines three things we read from primary sources: Google review count and rating, years trading taken from the company’s Better Business Bureau profile rather than its own marketing, and its BBB letter grade. BBB accreditation is shown but never scored, because it is a paid membership rather than a mark of quality.
Check any contractor license yourself at the state register. Do that before you sign anything, with any company, including ours.
What this looks like on a Black Hills bill
An average South Dakota household, against a system sized to cover its year. The energy charge is the part that goes to zero. The fixed monthly charge underneath it is the part that never does, and it is the number that decides whether a system pays for itself.
Meter reading falling from 41926 to 41649 kilowatt hours. A 994 kilowatt hour month against 1,271 kilowatt hours produced leaves 0 kilowatt hours billed and 277 banked for next month, so the energy charge falls from $152.68 to $0.00 at 15.36 cents per kilowatt hour.
South Dakota average household use, 994 kWh a month, at the current published residential price of 15.36¢ per kWh. Your utility still bills a fixed monthly customer charge that no system offsets, so this is the energy part of the bill, which is the part that goes away.
Battery backup is mandatory
in Black Hills territory.
Black Hills does not credit the power you send back at the rate it charges you to take it.
That does not make solar a bad idea in Black Hills territory. It changes what you should build. When exports are worth a fraction of retail the credit stops being the return, and the job becomes using more of your own production inside the house, which usually means a larger array than a one for one utility would need.
Sizing is where that gets decided, so ask about it directly. South Dakota sets no rule on what an exported kilowatt hour is worth, so your utility’s filed tariff is the only answer. It does set rules on how you connect: a normal rooftop array is a Tier 1 interconnection, the application fee is $50, and the Commission forbids a utility from adding requirements to a Tier 1 request. Size the system around what your own house will use as it is produced, because that part is worth the full retail rate whatever the export rate does. Black Hills sets its own limits. Ask Black Hills what it allows before you accept that a bigger system is off the table.
A battery then does two separate jobs. It moves daytime production into the evening so you use it instead of selling it, and it keeps the house running when the grid goes down. That second job is not a bonus. Panels on their own shut off in an outage, by design, so a roof full of them powers nothing during a storm. That is the part we will not refer around.
So we treat it as a requirement, not an upgrade. We will not refer you for a panels-only system in Black Hills territory, and you should be skeptical of anyone who quotes you one without raising storage first.
Our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement
What your installer should be telling you
Before anything else, ask Black Hills in writing which schedule a household rooftop array is actually placed on, because Schedule 3 excludes systems installed to offset your own use and that is what a rooftop array does. If the answer is Schedule 3, the economics are sell-at-2.48-and-buy-at-8.827, which is a different proposition from the one most quotes assume. Budget for the $300,000 liability cover and the one year minimum contract, and note that the $12.00 customer charge is the floor whatever happens.
What Black Hills bills you anyway
In a month when your production covers everything you use, the energy charge can reach zero. This does not. It is the floor under every bill, and it is the number that decides whether a system pays for itself.
- The charge
- $12.00 a month
- How it is set
- The Residential Service schedule sets a Customer Charge of $12.00 a month with all usage at 8.827 cents a kilowatt hour, and states the floor in three words: "Minimum: The Customer Charge". Cost adjustment tariffs in Section 3C are applied on top. Read that ranking carefully if you are comparing across the state. $12.00 is the highest of the three South Dakota investor owned utilities on the plain residential charge, ahead of Xcel at $10.00 and NorthWestern at $7.00 — but it is not the highest floor a solar household pays. Both of the others add a charge that exists only because you generate: Xcel’s qualifying-facility metering charge takes its floor to $13.75, above this one, and NorthWestern’s Small Qualifying Facility Rider takes its floor to $9.00. Black Hills has no net metering product at all, so the comparison is academic for anyone here who wants to sell power back — but anyone weighing the three on what a solar bill cannot fall below should order them Xcel $13.75, Black Hills $12.00, NorthWestern $9.00.
Residential Service, Rate Designation R, Sixteenth Revised Sheet No. 1, effective 1 January 2019, Docket EL18-029 · checked 2026-09-29 · source
Applying to Black Hills
What Black Hills itself requires, as distinct from what the state rule requires. Read from its own published guidelines on the date shown.
- The schedule that pays you excludes the reason you would install solar
- Schedule 3, Cogeneration and Small Power Production Service, "is not applicable to customers who install electrical generation facilities for the purpose of supplying electrical energy to offset in whole or in part energy requirements not otherwise supplied by Company." It is written for a facility that generates alongside its load and sells the surplus, not for a household trying to cut its own bill. Ask Black Hills in writing which schedule a rooftop array actually falls under.
- What it pays, where it applies, is 2.48 cents
- Schedule 3: "2.48¢ per kWh of cogeneration delivered", netted against the other charges on the monthly bill. Set that against the 8.827 cents the same tariff book charges you for a kilowatt hour.
- A qualifying facility, a contract, and a year minimum
- Availability is limited to facilities "with a design capacity of 100 kilowatts or less" that meet the federal qualifying facility definition in 18 CFR Part 292, and who "execute a contract for service hereunder with the Company for a term of not less than one year."
- Three hundred thousand dollars of liability cover, and an indemnity
- The customer "shall indemnify and hold harmless the Company from any and all liability arising from the installation, interconnection, and operation of the customer’s facilities. The amount of such insurance coverage shall be at least $300,000 per occurrence", with certification furnished and 90 days’ written notice of any change.
- A lockable disconnect the company may lock open
- The customer provides "a lockable disconnect switch to isolate the customer’s generation", and Black Hills "shall have the right to lock such disconnect switch open whenever necessary to maintain safe electrical operating conditions, or whenever the customer’s facilities may adversely affect Company’s system."
- There is no state net metering policy, and that was deliberate
- The Legislature has considered mandatory net metering a number of times and concluded it is not in the public interest. This is not a gap waiting to be filled.
- There is a state interconnection rule, even though there is no state payment rule
- Administrative Rule 20:10:36 governs how a small generator facility connects to a public utility’s distribution system. It says nothing at all about what you are paid. Keep the two questions apart: how you connect is regulated, what you earn is not.
- A normal rooftop array is Tier 1, and Tier 1 has a floor under it
- Tier 1 covers a facility that is inverter based, "10 kilowatts or less", using lab tested equipment and not connecting to a transmission line. The fee is $50, and the rule states that "a public utility may not impose additional requirements to a tier 1 interconnection application." Above 10 kilowatts you are in Tier 2, where the fee is $50 plus $1 a kilowatt up to $500.
- Ask for the export rate as a number and as a commitment
- Two separate questions: what will you be paid, and for how long is that guaranteed. In a state with no compensation rule, the second question is the one that matters.
- Self consumption is the reliable part
- A kilowatt hour your house uses as it is produced is worth the retail rate no matter what any tariff says about exports. In South Dakota that is the only part of the return nobody can change.
From Black Hills’s published guidelines · checked 2026-09-29 · source
Black Hills net metering questions
- Does Black Hills offer one for one net metering?
- No. Black Hills does not offer net metering in South Dakota, because South Dakota does not require it. What its rate book offers instead is a cogeneration schedule paying 2.48 cents a kilowatt hour for output delivered in excess of your simultaneous load — and that schedule says in terms that it does not apply to generation installed to offset your own usage.
- What does Black Hills pay for power sent back to the grid?
- No net metering, and 2.48 cents if you qualify at all. The generation credit is netted against the other charges on each monthly bill rather than banked.
- Do I need a battery with Black Hills?
- Yes, and we treat it as mandatory. Because Black Hills does not credit exports one for one, the return has to come from using your own production rather than selling it, which after dark means storage and usually a larger array than a one for one utility would need. The other half is backup: panels alone shut off in an outage, so a battery is what keeps the house running in a storm. We do not refer panels-only systems in Black Hills territory. This is our referral policy, not a legal or utility requirement.
- How do I find my Black Hills bill?
- Sign in at blackhillsenergy.com. Open My Account, then Billing. Open the latest bill and save the PDF. Or screenshot the summary page. If you cannot get to it, a rough guess at your average monthly amount is enough to start.
- What is the catch with Black Hills?
- Before anything else, ask Black Hills in writing which schedule a household rooftop array is actually placed on, because Schedule 3 excludes systems installed to offset your own use and that is what a rooftop array does. If the answer is Schedule 3, the economics are sell-at-2.48-and-buy-at-8.827, which is a different proposition from the one most quotes assume. Budget for the $300,000 liability cover and the one year minimum contract, and note that the $12.00 customer charge is the floor whatever happens.