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This is addressed by the article:

Those "eligible resources" are defined solely as coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and individual net metering.

The latter includes home solar or wind installations in which the owner feeds excess electricity back into the grid, and is paid a predetermined, fixed fee for the power.

But these small-scale sources of renewable energy are meant for private use. They just happen to produce extra power that can be utilized by the grid.

Utility-scale wind and solar farms are not included in the bill's list of "eligible resources," making it illegal for Wyoming utilities to use them in any way if the legislation passes.

And if you go back to the primary source[1], that is, W.S. 37-16-101(a)(viii), you can corroborate this, as "Net metering system" has restrictions such as:

    7 (B) Has a generating capacity of not more
    8 than:
    9
    10 (I) Twenty-five (25) kilowatts for a
    11 residential facility;
    12
    13 (II) One (1) megawatt for a
    14 nonresidential facility, if allowed by the electric
    15 utility, but an electric utility may not disallow
    16 nonresidential use equal to or less than twenty-five (25)
    17 kilowatts.

And:

    2 (E) Is intended primarily to offset part or
    3 all of the customer-generator's requirements for
    4 electricity

So the activists are right: this is effectively making it illegal to set up any large-scale wind or solar farm.

If any of you reading this live in Wyoming, please bring this up with your representatives. It's deliberately interfering with the free market in order to artificially inflate the value of coal by making it illegal to sell large-scale alternative energy sources, sponsored by representatives of coal-producing counties.

[1]: http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2016/bills/SF0093.pdf

I suppose you're right.

And thank you for accepting that gracefully. It means a lot in the current political climate.

  making it illegal to set up any large-scale wind or solar farm...

when that electricity is then sold to Wyoming consumers. Export to out-of-state consumers (the vast majority of consumption) is unaffected.

Fair enough. Though it makes it pretty unappealing to set up a renewable energy source in Wyoming, or even in the general vicinity of the state, if you can't actually sell to people or utilities nearby. At that point, the only good reason to set up a renewable energy plant within Wyoming is if you have some extremely good geographical/climate/geological reason to do so.

Note also that this bill also blocks geothermal energy, which I would expect should be pretty attractive as a source of energy for the home state of Yellowstone and Old Faithful.

Natural gas, hydro, and coal may fall under "net metering system" too.

The law plainly says that beginning in 2020, electric utilities in WY may not procure any power from solar and wind (unless they're located behind their customer's retail meter).

Why name technologies at all unless you're trying to pick winners (or select losers)?

It prevents utilities from selling power generated by solar and wind farms in Wyoming.

I found dumb that a $10 fine is made look as if it's on top of the $0.12 per kWh, but it's actually per MWh. It's $10 on top of $120 - while still silly, is not as bad.

It must be hard to be a politician on either side of the aisle. There's a group of people who are looking for ways to attack you, regardless of whether it's for a good reason.

If you don't think that this bill imposes taxes on wind or solar generation (or coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear or oil) what do you think it is intended to tax? Geothermal power?

The net metering system is only for small distributed generating sources, like rooftop solar, kilowatt-scale generation. This bill is aimed at preventing large scale renewable projects, megawatt-scale generation.