Alabama Power Company has asked the state Public Service Commission to dismiss a challenge to its fees for residential solar customers and at the same time proposed to increase the amount of those fees.

The complaint, filed in April by the Southern Environmental Law Center, argued that the fixed charges assessed by Alabama Power to customers who generate their own electricity -- through solar panels or other means -- were "unreasonable, unjust, discriminatory, contrary to the public interest and otherwise unlawful."

Alabama Power countered that the fees were enacted in 2013 and hadn't yet been challenged, and that the PSC has exclusive authority over electricity rates in Alabama.

"Both federal and Alabama law recognize the appropriateness of charges for back-up power service, and no one objected to them when they were filed more than five years ago," Alabama Power spokesman Michael Sznajderman said in an email.

The company's motion to dismiss the complaint also announced the "contemporaneous filing" of a request for the PSC to increase the amount of those monthly fees from $5 per kilowatt to $5.42 per kilowatt.

An average rooftop residential solar array is about 5 kilowatts in size, and an Alabama Power customer with an array that size would pay a fixed fee of $27.10 every month to the power company, or $325.20 per year.

Alabama Power says the fees are needed to cover costs associated with having backup power available for those customers when the panels are not generating electricity.

Alabama Power says just 44 customers are paying the fixed fee, called the Capacity Reservation Charge, out of 1.2 million residential customers. Forty-five customers had residential solar arrays installed before the fees were enacted and do not have to pay the charge.

Katie Ottenweller, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center and leader of the group's solar initiative, said the public was largely unaware of the fee when it was proposed in 2013, but that the added fees have helped smother the residential solar industry in Alabama.

"Alabama Power not only wants to brush aside its customers' complaints about its punitive solar fee, it wants to increase the fee to make it even more difficult for solar customers to recover their investments," Ottenweller said in an email. "This is yet another attempt by an entrenched monopoly to protect its profits at the expense of its customers.

"This is precisely why Alabama continues to lag so far behind other states in allowing its citizens to experience solar's benefits."

The Rev. Mark Johnston, one of the individuals paying the Alabama Power fee represented in the complaint, said he believes his right to raise a formal protest of the policy has not expired.

"Solar customers should have the right to raise concerns about the discriminatory fees in an open, transparent process, but Alabama Power's filing seeks to prevent that," Johnston, the former executive director of Camp McDowell, said in a news release. "And to add insult to injury, the utility now proposes to increase the punitive fee.

"While other states reap the benefits of cheap solar power, Alabama remains closed for business."