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You could install solar panels for environmental reasons — you want your home or business to be less reliant on electricity generated from fossil fuels. Or you could install them for pocketbook reasons, as the energy your solar panels capture could reduce your monthly utility bill.

Either way, it’s you putting your money down to defray your energy costs.

We Energies seems to think you shouldn’t be able to do that.

Solar power system owners see the panels as protection against future rate increases. But such owners’ potential savings could be reduced by 20% or more under a plan that We Energies has before the Public Service Commission, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported June 3.

The utility wants customers with solar panels to pay $3.53 a month for each kilowatt of solar generating capacity. The fee would average $15.88 a month, or $190.56 a year, for the 434 residential and small business customers with solar power at the end of 2018.

But new customers tend to install larger systems, and a customer with a 7-kilowatt system would be charged $24.71 a month, or $296.52 a year.