Open Neighborhoods Community Solar

Community solar may be next big thing in Australia renewables : Renew Economy

Joy — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:19:36 PDT

The momentum for a big push into community solar projects appears to be gathering pace, with several different organisations planning public launches in the next month, and suggestions that several dozen projects could be built on NSW rooftops in coming years.

Among plans revealed this week are the launch of a community solar network Farming the Sun in the northern Rivers region, to be followed soon by similar groups in New England and the Riverina. This is the work of community energy advocate Embark and Starfish Enterprises, which has identified 7 different projects of at least 80kW that could be commissioned in the next 18 months.

Read more:

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/community-groups-look-to-crowd-funding-rooftop-solar-86008

Joy Hughes
in community service
Solar Gardens Institute http://www.solargardens.org
(719)207-3097 direct

Home solar leasing business shines for SunPower

GoSolar.LA — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00:01 PDT

Solar leases have become a popular way for consumers to use solar electricity without paying for the expensive upfront price. Case in point: demand for SunPower’s residential solar leases is far greater than the money available to finance them, company executives said Thursday.

“Our residential lease business remains strong, with demand outstripping our financial capacity in the first quarter,” said Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO, during a call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings.

The Silicon Valley company signed over 2,100 leases during the first quarter, bringing the cumulative total to over 16,200. SunPower launched the lease program in 2011. The lease sign up rate is roughly the same as in 2012, during which it signed up 11,415 of them through its network of dealers, or roughly 2,800 of them per quarter.

Homeowners who sign leases, which run 20 years, pay a monthly fee for using the solar electricity from the solar panels installed on their rooftops. They don’t own the equipment and aren’t responsible for its maintenance or repairs. SunPower raises money from investors to finance the leases. The investors, which include banks and companies such as Google, put up the money partly to take advantage of a federal tax credit that amounts to 30 percent of the price of all the solar energy system installed using their funds.

Since the lease business is fairly new, it hasn’t been making a big impact on SunPower’s financial performance though. The company’s shares shot up 17 percent after its earnings announcement mainly because it delivered better financial results than expected.

The company generated $635.4 million in revenue for the first quarter, up 29 percent from the $494.1 million for the first quarter in 2012. It narrowed its losses to $54.7 million , or $0.46 per share, from $74.5 million, or $0.67 per share, year over year.

SunPower makes solar panels and develops power plants. It’s building two huge projects in California. It has installed over 90 percent of the solar panels for the 250MW power plant called California Valley Solar Ranch, which is owned by NRG Solar. It recently started building two projects totaling 579MW that their owner, MidAmerican Solar, called Antelope Valley Solar Projects.

Internationally, SunPower continues to do well in Japan, a hot market that began offering fat incentives for solar energy generation after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March 2011. Through mostly Toshiba and a little through Sharp, SunPower’s seeing more demand for its solar panels in Japan than it had anticipated, Werner said. Sales volumes doubled from 2011 to 2012 and could double again in 2013, said Howard Wenger, the company’s head of global sales and development.

Most of the company’s solar panels are going to residential rooftops in Japan. Living space tends to be small (and more efficiently used) in Japan than it’s the case in the United States, so SunPower’s highly efficient solar panels are a good fit, its executives said. Its silicon solar panels can convert about 21 percent of the sunlight into electricity, higher than other silicon solar panels on the market today. Silicon solar panels accounted for 89 percent of the solar panels made in 2012, according to GTM Research.

SunPower has had to cut production and costs in the past two years as the global solar market saw a pricing collapse from an oversupply of solar panels.

The average wholesale prices worldwide fell 50 percent from 2011 to 2012 while demand for them grew only 5 percent during 2012, said NPD SolarBuzz. Dozens of solar panel makers around the world have filed for bankruptcy.

SunPower executives said they have beaten their cost-cutting goals.

“It’s brutal to be exclusively a module manufacturer,” Werner said. “As you look at SunPower, we moved from modules originally to systems a few years ago, and what we sell today is energy in the form of leases or PPA (power purchase agreements).”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Global Solar PV Market Poised To 'Rise From The Ashes' Of 2011

(author unknown) — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:24:00 PDT

The solar photovoltaic market is poised to rise from the ashes of its 2011 crisis to grow to $155 billion in 2018, as market forces [...]

North Carolina definitively defeats effort to repeal renewable energy policy

(author unknown) — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:42:30 PDT

A bill to repeal the US state of North Carolina's Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Standard (REPS) has stalled in a committee of the North Carolina House of Representatives, failing to win the support of some members of the Republican Party. A companion bill, S 365, has stalled in the Senate Commerce Committee, after being passed out the Senate Finance Committee through a questionable vote. Both bills failed to meet the May 16th, 2013 “cross-over” deadline for this session of the legislature, and thus are dead in the water.

A New Model for Valuing Distributed Energy

Adam James — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:55:13 PDT

The process of valuing energy resources can be very complex. As a result, the current model for assessing value is a reflection of the assets that have traditionally populated the grid, such as large centralized power plants, sprawling transmission and distribution lines, and the inherent costs for operating and managing this system. The valuation model has been to compensate these big investments over long periods of time through consumer’s electricity bills.

However, there is a transformation underway that is uprooting this model. Since distributed energy -- including energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation, and storage -- reduces consumer’s bills, the value it offers must be fairly accounted for and compensated.

A new paper from Travis Bradford of Columbia University and Anne Hoskins of Princeton University has tackled this issue head on, laying the groundwork for an expert energy policy roundtable that will aim to come up with a new model for valuing distributed energy. The full report has two important points:

1) A new valuation model must consider both the energy and capacity value of distributed energy. This requires understanding the difference between long- and short-term energy value, and accounting for the next best alternatives so that economic savings from avoided costs are included.

2) A new valuation model should consider both the costs and benefits of distributed energy. New technologies present new challenges and benefits that have nuances not always captured in traditional models. This includes cost-shifting to customers who do not use distributed resources, as well as benefits like hedging against volatile fuel prices. Other unique benefits can also be included, such as environmental preservation, greenhouse gas abatement, and job creation.

So how do you know what energy is really worth?

For starters, there needs to be a new understanding of the energy and capacity value of distributed energy technologies. Short-term energy value is usually the marginal costs of operation, including fuel costs and equipment maintenance. Long-term value is the average cost of capital investments and fuel over the life of the equipment. Either way, the criteria for determining the value of distributed energy would be based on “the value of the next best alternative for energy being fed into the grid at a specific place and time.”

Capacity value for distributed energy is assessed in capacity markets, which secure resources years in advance to maintain system reliability. The Effective Load Carry Capacity and Loss of Load Potential models are steps in the right direction, but most fail to incorporate the avoided costs from not building new transmission and distribution infrastructure. The bottom line is that variable resources like wind or solar can contribute to reliability even if they aren’t valued at 100 percent.

Considering the Full Range of Costs and Benefits

In addition to assessing the value of distributed energy, new technologies also have real costs. Those include loss of revenue, where generators will be online and wires will be transporting electrons, but increased use of distributed energy relegates the grid to “interim storage and backup supply.” The costs of operating and maintaining the grid are then shifted to other consumers. These costs may fall as the system downsizes to include fewer centralized generators and wires.

There will also be firming expenses as operational changes are enacted to manage a grid with higher penetrations of renewables, including forecasting technology and the costs of backup generation. Bidirectional electricity flows enable consumers to be transactional with the grid and leverage their personal resources like solar panels, but there will be additional wear and tear on circuits and costs for new security measures.

This is not to downplay the benefits. Reducing the need for transmission and distribution lines eliminates new construction costs, line losses, and congestion. Also, since electricity clearing prices are set by the most expensive unit required to meet demand, reducing peak demand means electricity demand is being met at a lower cost to consumers. Distributed energy is also a hedge against volatile fuel costs for coal-fired power plants and combined-cycle natural gas plants. Additional benefits, including environmental protection, greenhouse gas abatement, energy security, and local job creation, can be factored in as well.

Creating a New Valuation Model

Based on these findings, the authors suggest a new model for valuing distributed resources. The alphabet-soup version is "E+C-Co+Be+Ext." In layman’s terms, this means adding the savings from offsetting wholesale energy purchases (E) to the savings from avoided capacity investments (C), subtracting the range of costs listed above (Co), and adding the benefits (Be). The “Ext” part of the equation is the right of states to assess environmental, security, and job creation into the mix and value those benefits accordingly.

This is actually very straightforward. The equation boils down to valuing energy based on the savings from using distributed energy compared to using the next best option, along with considering the balance from a cost-benefit analysis perspective. There are a few real-world examples of this, but unfortunately, as the report notes, “none of them are comprehensive.” Examples include net energy metering, which allows consumers to be compensated for the electricity they generate, but only assesses retail energy value and not the long-term energy and capacity values or the costs and benefits.

There is also the Market Price Referent approach, which assesses the levelized cost of the energy by modeling cash flow for a proxy combined cycle gas turbine, factoring in capital costs, natural gas fuel costs, operations, maintenance, and environmental compliance.

Austin’s Value of Solar Tariff takes into account the avoided fuel costs for the marginal resource that isn’t being used, avoided costs of new capital investments to accommodate peak demand, avoided transmission and distribution investments and losses, and the environmental benefits.

Locational Marginal Pricing only values energy, congestion and losses, but in some places demand response is permitted to bid. State Integrated Resource Plans, long-term visions for a state’s energy mix, can also value distributed energy -- but few have.

The report is meant to inform and guide the discussion for creating a framework for minimizing costs, maximizing benefits and most importantly, finding the real value of distributed energy.

***

Adam James is a Research Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress and the Executive Director of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute. You can email him at ajames@americanprogress.org and follow him on Twitter @adam_s_james.

Study: Arizona Solar Energy Provides Millions In Ratepayer Benefits

(author unknown) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:50:02 PDT

Distributed solar generation (DG) and net energy metering will provide Arizona Public Service's (APS) utility customers with $34 million in annual benefits, according to a [...]

Clean Energy Companies Launch Alliance To Protect Solar Choice & Rooftop Solar, Combat Monopoly Utilities

Guest Contributor — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:00:08 PDT

This article was originally published on the website of The Alliance for Solar Choice.

The nation’s leading rooftop solar companies today announced the formation of The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC). TASC believes anyone should have the option to switch from utility power to distributed solar power. Founding members represent the majority of the US rooftop solar market and include SolarCity, Sungevity, Sunrun, and Verengo.

TASC is committed to protecting the choice for distributed solar. Most immediately, TASC will focus on ensuring the continuation of Net Energy Metering (NEM). Currently in place in 43 states, NEM provides solar consumers with fair credit for the energy they put back on the grid, which utilities then sell to other customers. In simple terms, NEM is like rollover minutes on your cell phone bill. Monopoly utilities are trying to eliminate NEM to halt the consumer-driven popularity of rooftop solar, which is helping create thousands of local jobs around the country.

“Americans are choosing solar in record numbers to save money on electric bills,” said TASC member and Sunrun co-Founder Edward Fenster. “While this benefits the American consumer and the economy, monopoly utilities want to stop this progress to protect their own interests.”

“Without consumer choice and empowerment, the utilities will continue to increase their rates and profits,” said TASC member and SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive. “If Americans are denied the right to choose how they produce and consume electricity, monopoly utilities will continue to choose their profits over the interests of consumers.”

Studies in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, and Vermont have all found that solar provides a net benefit to ratepayers and to state economies. For example, a study published this year by Crossborder Energy shows solar customers with net metering will deliver a financial benefit of more than $92 million annually to all California ratepayers, not just those with solar. Over the next 30 years,California schools and public agencies are projected to save more than $2.5 billion on energy bills through net-metered solar systems.

By contrast, the utility trade association Edison Electric Institute (EEI) recently issued a report that describes the increasing popularity of consumer-driven rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and demand response as a “vicious cycle.” The report shows that utilities view rooftop solar as a threat to their monopoly business model, which guarantees utilities high profits from large infrastructure projects funded by ratepayers. Distributed solar reduces expensive and inefficient investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure and decreases the need for expensive conventional power.

Rapid cost reductions and business innovations like third-party ownership have made distributed solar even more attractive and affordable today. Two-thirds of home solar installations are now occurring in low and median income neighborhoods, according to a July 2012 California Solar Initiative report issued by the California Public Utilities Commission.

TASC Executive Director Anne Smart will manage the organization’s policy and public outreach efforts to combat growing threats to consumer energy choice in states across the nation. Prior to TASC, Smart was the Director of Energy for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a public policy business trade organization. She will oversee TASC’s expansion through the addition of member companies.

Clean Energy Companies Launch Alliance To Protect Solar Choice & Rooftop Solar, Combat Monopoly Utilities was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free!), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage (yep, free).

The spigot of money starting to open up for installing solar panels

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:34:51 PDT

There were a record number of solar panels installed in the U.S. on rooftops and on ground-mounted systems in 2012. Now both traditional financing companies and new types of investors are starting to get in on the trend of providing the funds for the high upfront costs of installing solar panels, in exchange for making some money back several years down the road. But the potential to make money in this way has only just started.

On Thursday solar installer SolarCity announced that it has signed up Goldman Sachs, and other investors, to create a $500 million fund to support leases for solar panels for home and business owners. With that much money, SolarCity can install some 110 MW worth of solar panels.

Solar leases are a contract between the building owner and SolarCity, whereby SolarCity pays the upfront cost of installing the system, owns and maintains the panels, and the building owner pays for the monthly electricity for the power from the panels over around 20 years. As Ucilia noted on GigaOM Pro today, the residential solar leasing market alone is expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2016, according to GTM Research.

Some banks and even companies like Google have been willing to put hundreds of millions into these types of funds. SolarCity has been able to raise $1.7 billion in funding over its lifetime to finance installations from groups like U.S. Bancorp, Google, PG&E and Credit Suisse. Other solar financing companies — and the competition is now getting fierce — include Sungevity, OneRoof Energy, Sunrun and Clean Power Finance.

There’s such a demand for solar leases and financing that even some companies are falling behind on getting funding for these businesses. SunPower said earlier this month that demand for its residential solar leases is far greater than the money available to finance them. Power company NRG Energy also wants to retry getting into this space, after trying out this market awhile back.

It’s not just banks and corporate do-gooders that want the opportunity to make a decent return — some 10 to 12 percent in some cases. Crowd-funding is starting to appear as an interesting blip on the radar. Startup Solar Mosaic says that it’s now raised $1 million from its crowd-funders for its solar panel systems, which offer around a 4.5 percent annual yield. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that commercial‐scale solar panel systems can reach returns of 8 percent to 14 percent in states like Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

As big power players, upstart solar financiers and even everyday crowd-funders grow these funds and receive the returns, this market will start to expand significantly. As a boom of solar panels continues to hit the U.S., various parties can make significant money off this transition. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that residential solar panels could be installed on 2.4 percent of U.S. houses by 2020.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Los Angeles First Graders Traveled to Sacramento to Shine Spotlight on Solar Power

TheOpenDaily — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:00:00 PDT

Holding signs reading “I Heart Solar Power” and “Go Solar CA,” the children held back-to-back events with Sen. Kevin de León and Assemblymember Gomez to rally for solar power, clean air, and environmental responsibility. Before a crowd gathered under the Capitol Rotunda, the children sang “Here Comes the Sun” and “Solar Power to the People,” conveying their vision for California, including Los Angeles, to be powered by clean energy.

VIDEO - Excellent Introduction to Solar Gardens

Joy — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:17:53 PDT

A group of students in Minnesota have put together this video that is a good first introduction to the community solar, or solar gardens, concept:

We'll be including this in the Solar Gardener Training ...

Give them a shout out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SArB0k0x8Is

- Joy

Los Angeles First Graders Traveled to Sacramento to Shine Spotlight on Solar Power

GoSolar.LA — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

Another Town Now Requires Solar Power For New Buildings

James Gerken — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:36:35 PDT

From Mother Nature Network's Matt Hickman:

Sebastopol, an agri-artsy Sonoma outpost about an hour north of San Francisco, can now claim bragging rights as being the second city in California where all newly built homes — commercial buildings and major residential remodels/additions, too — must be equipped with solar systems. Earlier this year, the high desert city of Lancaster in northeast Los Angeles County became the first to enact such a measure under the leadership of renewables-obsessed Republican mayor/Kenny Rogers doppelganger, Rex Parris.

As reported by the Santa Rose Press Democrat, Sebastopol Mayor Michael Kyes comes across as being just a touch resentful: "We were going to be number one. Now we're number two.”

What’s perhaps most fascinating here — and perhaps the root of Kyes’ runner-up status bitterness — is how wildly different Sebastopol and Lancaster are. The former is a sleepy, super-liberal town of less than 8,000 residents including, once upon a time, Jerry Garcia. Police officers drive hybrids, city landscaping is pesticide-free, and although now primarily vinous in character, the big annual event is an apple fair. With a population of more than 155,000 and roots in the aerospace industry and not agriculture, Lancaster is not only larger but also dramatically more conservative in nature:

Kyes noted that Lancaster is a ‘Republican community’ and that Sebastopol is ‘liberal,’ asserting that speaks to the ‘broad support’ for solar power.

The new building ordinance in Sebastopol is rather straightforward: all new homes will be required to include solar systems that provide 2 watts of photovoltaic-derived power per square foot of insulated building area. Or, according to the Press Democrat, the system must offset at least 75 percent of the building’s total annual electric load. Homes and businesses constructed in areas were solar isn’t possible must either pay a fee or look into other means of alternative energy.

Noting that his fair and fertile town already produces 1.2 megawatts of solar energy through a municipal program, Kyes notes that the newly passed ordinance “will add to it. Keep greenhouse gases from getting worse.”

The ordinance will go into effect 60 days after it receives the final stamp of approval from the Sebastopol City Council and will not apply to homes and other in-the-works building projects already on file with the city.

Any Sebastopol residents care to chime in with your thoughts about the new ordinance?

Via [The Press Democrat] via [Grist]

Community Solar Workshop in Montecito Heights

GoSolar.LA — Mon, 06 May 2013 01:06:26 PDT

Open Neighborhoods Community Solar

Join your neighbors for a FREE community solar workshop, hosted by the Montecito Heights Improvement Association.

Space is limited. Advance registration required. RSVP at:

www.GoSolar.LA/MontecitoHeights

Find out how you can go solar with no upfront costs, lower your monthly payments for electricity, and qualify for a neighborhood group solar discount. Learn about solar financial incentives and financing programs, including rebates, home energy loans, tax credits, and zero down lease options.

• Request a free solar assessment for your home or business.

• Participate in a neighborhood discount for group solar savings.

LOCATION

Montecito Heights Community Center

4545 Homer Street

Los Angeles, 90031

More information: (310) 893-3100

Los Angeles, CA 90031 - USA

Thursday, May 16 at 7:00 PM

Attending: 3

Details: http://www.meetup.com/CommunitySolar/events/117942352/

Adding an electric car cut the payback point of our solar panel investment in half

Kevin C. Tofel — Sun, 12 May 2013 08:00:05 PDT

When we discussed our home solar panel project in mid-2011 with friends, one of the first questions everyone asked was, “What’s the payback period before you break-even?” The second question was unsurprisingly, “How much is it costing you?” but the focus always ended up on the payback. After all, if you’re going to invest in green technology, you’re hoping that at some point in the near future, you get ahead of the game. It turns out that something we didn’t plan for — our Chevrolet Volt — is actually helping us boost the ROI and cut our payback time in half.

Details of the solar panel investment

I shared details on both the solar panel project and the car before, but let me step back and recap a bit. In October 2011, we added 41 solar panels to our southern-facing roof in southeastern Pennsylvania. Each panel is rated for 230W of Direct Current (DC) so that works out to an array of 9.43kW DC. In our family of four, with two work-at-home adults, we average around 7,500 kWh of electricity usage. So the system may be a bit oversized for our needs — about 125 percent — but we planned ahead. It’s a four-bedroom house so we thought that the next occupants could have at least one more family member and therefore use more electricity.

At the time, we were quoted a price of $5.50 per watt for the project. When you multiply that price times the 9,430 watts of the system, you get the total cost: $51,865. That’s just the gross cost, however. We received a 30 percent Federal tax credit for $15,560 and a state rebate check of $7,100, bringing the net cost to around $29,205. Our typical electric bill for a year had been roughly $2,500, which makes the break-even point around 11.7 years.

Adding an electric vehicle one year later

A year after the solar panels were installed — they generated 13.8 MWh in the first 12 months and you can see the real-time stats here — we opted to add an electric car to our garage. So we traded in an Acura RDX and, after shopping around, replaced it with a 2013 Volt. This was to be our primary car, just as the Acura was. We have another vehicle in the garage, but it’s a rarely driven sports car: A 2007 model that just passed 18,000 miles on the odometer.

Since the Acura was our primary vehicle, we racked up miles quickly. Even though we both work from home, my wife and I are often driving the two kids to activities or head a few miles into town most days for food or other goods. With the Acura we were averaging about $250 per month on gas as a result. Now, with the same general driving habits, we pay a maximum of $50 on gas in a given month.

With the Volt — you can see driving stats for that too — we’ve already turned 7,228 miles in the six months of ownership. That’s normal driving behavior for us: We typically drive about 15,000 miles on the main car. Of those miles, 5,255 have been solely on battery power and the car reports our gas mileage at 125.33 MPG so far. Even though we’re averaging 1,250 miles per month, we’re only filling up the gas tank once — or maybe twice — in a given month. The tank is small too: Just over 9 gallons.

So what does this do to our solar panel payback? It cuts it nearly in half to around six years. How so?

The reduced payback on our investment

Three-quarters of our driving is powered by electricity. Even with the addition of the Volt, which we charge every night, we still don’t have an electric bill. We’re at the point where we’re much closer to using all of the electricity our panels produce, but we’re not there yet. And we’ve cut down on our gasoline expenditures as a direct result of both the car and the solar panel system, saving around $200 per month that we used to spend.

That works out to $2,400 a year in gasoline savings and when added to the $2,500 in electricity bills we’re no longer paying each year, you get $4,900 in net cash flow savings. Divide that figure in to the net cost of the solar panel project and it works out to 5.96 years before break-even. Best of all, the payment for the Volt is slightly less than the Acura payment was, but I don’t consider that as part of the solar panel payback.

There was a recent intangible benefit gained by the solar investment, as well. Just before we bought the Volt, we decided to refinance our home. The appraiser added $30,000 in value to the house just for the solar panel array. That gave us the best possible rate because of our LTV, or loan to value, ratio.

Without that extra boost in the appraisal, we would have had to pay more in fees to get our low rate or simply have a marginally higher rate. I don’t consider this part of the payback either, but it sure helped!

This post was updated at 7:22 am, May 13, to reflect to correct Federal tax credit percentage.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Shared Renewables Bills Moving Forward In California

TheOpenDaily — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:30:27 PDT

A lot of people can go solar today and get a very good return on their investment, while also feeling great that they are doing something to help protect our climate, air, and water. However, many people cannot. Have a roof covered by trees? Rent your home? Live in an apartment building? You know know what I’m talking about.

California is no exemption to this problem, and with its strong and successful California Solar Initiative (CSI) sunsetting, renewable energy leaders in the state have been looking to jump to the next step of the solar revolution by making solar power (and wind power) a possibility for people in homes like those mentioned above. The effort to offer such an option is running under the name “Shared Renewables.”

Image Credit: California Shared Renewables

As you can see on the interactive map on the Shared Renewables site, not many states have shared renewables laws in place, and just a handful have campaigns in place to try to enact such laws. Naturally, though, California has one law in place and has a campaign aimed at getting a much stronger one. The website for the campaign is called California Shared Renewables.

I’m not a resident of California, but I’ve been keeping up with the news there, and I’ve got some good news to share with you.

But wait, I still need to give you a little more background…. There are two bills working their way through California’s legislative process — SB 43 and AB 1014. In the end, presuming both make it through the various hurdles required, a single proposal will be hashed out. For now, though, the two bills have to take things one step at a time.

From a previous article about these bills, Silvio Marcacci writes:

If passed, SB 43 and AB 104 would allow the 75% of California utility customers who can’t install their own on-site generation to subscribe to “shared” renewable energy projects of up to 20 megawatts (MW).

Advocates say a 500MW shared renewables pilot program within the state’s three largest utility service territories would create 7,000 green jobs, earn $60 million in state sales tax revenue, generate $2 billion in economic activity, and voluntarily surpass the state’s 33% renewable portfolio standard.

A lot more details regarding the benefits of shared renewables are discussed in that post, if you want to learn more. But let’s get back to the news at hand….

This week, AB 1014 “passed though the Assembly Utility and Commerce Committee on a vote of 9-0, with no opposing testimony” (but with some significant amendments made beforehand), California Shared Renewables Policy and Market Strategies Director Tom Price informed me. Tom noted:

This is tremendously positive news. While it’s not the bill we started with, it does help us advance the goal of broadening access to renewable energy.

As an indication of the sweeping changes, and how that effected the politics, PGE asked to be the second speaker on the bill, so they could speak in favor.

The bodies speaking out in favor of the bill included:

Coalition for Adequate School Housing
US Department of Defense
Sonoma County Board of Supervisors
Vote Solar
Solar Energy Industries Association
Large Scale Solar Association
TURN
Scott Wetch/Utilities Employees Union
Southern California Edison

The day after this success, SB 43 also made it through a vote, this one in the California Senate Energy Committee. Vote and testimonial details are below.

Votes in favor:

Hill
DeSaulnier
Pavley
De Leon
Wolk
Corbett

Testimony in favor from:

California Environmental Justice Alliance
Vote Solar
League of Cities
Department of Defense
Coalition for Affordable School Housing
Schools Energy Coalition
Recurrent Energy
Solar Electric Industry Association
Large Scale Solar Association

Testimony against from:

Southern California Edison
PG&E
SDGE
TURN
Farm Bureau
Coalition of California Union Employees

“It was close, but we got the votes when it counted,” Tom noted.

“With both AB 1014 and SB 43 passed, we now have two ways to broaden the availability of renewable energy in California, and thanks to your support and help, we’ll get there.”

As stated above, each bill still has several hurdles to get past: “they need to then get through their respective Appropriations Committees, then full chambers, then pass over to the other side and go through the opposite chamber.”

The keys now are to fight for the most important details in each bill and to make more people aware of what’s going on in order to stimulate more public support for the proposals. Hence, this article.

We’ll be following up soon with discussion regarding the differences between the bills and the most important components. Stay tuned!

Shared Renewables Bills Moving Forward In California was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free!), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage (yep, free).

Solar Firms Launch Alliance Focused On Net Metering

(author unknown) — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:11:02 PDT

Rooftop solar companies SolarCity, Sungevity, Sunrun and Verengo have formed The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), which will initially focus on ensuring the continuation of [...]

Prices of PV Solar Panels are Continuing to Fall Globally!

GoSolar.LA — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:14:35 PDT

Prices for photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are falling globally and soon generating your own electricity by putting a few panels on the roof of your house may become a reality for people even in the poorest parts of South Africa. Many reasons are contributing to the fact that these costs are...

This is a content summary only. Visit ases.org for the full story and more.

Solar Power And What Could Be Its Biggest Obstacles

Ensia — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:30:29 PDT

The sun has long been seen as one of the most promising power sources of the future. Plentiful, clean and free, solar energy tantalizes with the promise of solving the global energy crisis and alleviating climate change.

For a while, the world seemed to be on board with this vision. In 2008, venture capitalists backed hundreds of solar energy startups. The money flowed, and with it came ideas and innovations aimed at fast-tracking renewable energy on national and even global scales.

Then clouds — political, economic, social — began to cast shadows on the once-promising industry. Increased efforts to tap into the massive oil sands reserves beneath Alberta’s boreal forests lent the impression that North America was on the verge of energy independence, lessening the perceived need to develop renewable technologies. Then China entered the photovoltaic panel market, revolutionizing solar energy with amazingly low prices and forcing a number of companies that could not compete out of business. The cheap prices drove investors away and made it seem like solar no longer needed financial support, even though renewable energy in the U.S. was only in its infancy.

“It would be better to sell popcorn right now — there’s more money in that.” – Herb HaydenThe global recession dealt the final blow, turning focus toward cheap energy and quick solutions and distracting from long-term investments and thinking. As political and social interest in solar declined along with the economy, funding likewise dried up. Droves of once-promising startups and solar ventures, including those managed by major companies such as BP, Bosch and Sharp, declared bankruptcy. Others underwent major restructuring and hunkered down their efforts, just trying to survive. The solar energy bubble had burst.

“It would be better to sell popcorn right now — there’s more money in that,” says Herb Hayden, president and chief technical officer of Southwest Solar Technology LLC in Arizona, one of the companies that chose to restructure rather than give up. “I’m serious when I talk about how horrible it is. It’s just a thankless activity now.”

Political “Won’t”

In the new landscape of solar energy, several factors continue to confound recovery efforts. The lingering scars of the recession are no small obstacle. In the U.S., the average cost of electricity is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, whereas solar costs around 30 to 50 cents for that same amount of power. Some European governments in similar circumstances get around this problem by aggressively subsidizing production of solar-powered electricity with taxpayer money. In the U.S., on the other hand, solar must compete with cheap, largely subsidized natural gas.

image via Shutterstock

“That is why Germany, which has about one-fourth the population of the United States, has a total amount of solar power about six times higher than us,” says Martin Hoffert, a professor emeritus of physics at New York University.

While Germany’s government may see the need for aggressively pushing forward with a renewable energy agenda, U.S. politicians are not the best prepared for engineering and science decision making. Out of the 541 seats in the U.S. Congress, fewer than a dozen are held by scientists or engineers. Lacking technical expertise, U.S. politicians can struggle to discern the best source of information about renewable energy. Conventional energy suppliers try to convince them that newfangled solar technologies will not be a success, while scientists assure them that solar is the way to go. In between are the public, advisors and various interest groups, all pulling in different directions.

Though lack of political will may stand as solar’s biggest obstacle, the technology, too, has a ways to go if it’s going to be implemented on a much larger scale.“I think the biggest obstacle are politicians,” says David Faiman, a professor emeritus of engineering and physics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. “Specifically, I think they’re probably nervous about making very large changes and are also under considerable pressure from current power suppliers not to make those large changes.”

Will Work for Innovations

Though lack of political will may stand as solar’s biggest obstacle, the technology, too, has a ways to go if it’s going to be implemented on a much larger scale.

The labs and start-ups that have managed to survive are striving to get various solar-energy-capturing options up to par, particularly in scalability and pricing. In Arizona, for example, Hayden is building high-performance photovoltaic cells that require less capital and less risk investment than other companies, many of which have gone or are going out of business. Unlike other venues, Southwest Solar Technologies will build a key part of the system but also incorporate equipment made by other groups. This will lend Hayden’s product versatility and robustness, he thinks, that others who custom design their entire technologies lack. Still, even with these cost-saving strategies, in order for Hayden and others to survive they will need some resources.

“It’s not a slam dunk,” he says. “As we work on attacking the problems, we also have to come up with less risky ways of introducing the technology in order to be more attractive to potential partners.”

Storage is another issue. One of the biggest impediments to solar is its dependence on the sun’s unbroken glare. Ideally, solar energy could be captured while the sun brightly shines and then stored for later use after sunset or when clouds roll in, but current power storage capabilities are not up to task for storing the massive amounts of energy widespread deployment would bring. Researchers are working on storage technologies, but again, such efforts need funding to reach their goal.

Transmission is another challenge. Most of the world’s power grid relies upon alternating current, but this form of electric power delivery is not well suited to traveling long distances. Using direct current — as some areas in Canada, China and Africa do — would enable solar energy collected in sunny Albuquerque to travel to overcast Seattle with minimal loss. When the energy reaches Seattle, local power companies would convert it back into AC before distributing it to homes. Some researchers imagine such transmission lines even crossing continents. “Back in the ’70s, there was this idea of the global grid,” Hoffert says. If power line efficiency were optimized, he says, “we could ship electricity all over the world, from a place where the sun is shining to the nighttime hemisphere.”

Finally, integrating solar energy into the grid will require a major restructuring of current power generators, slowly phasing out stations that rely upon burning fossil fuels and replacing them with others that handle energy from renewable sources like solar. “We need to restructure the power system completely in terms of the types of generators we’re building,” says Solomon Abebe Asfaw, a postdoctoral fellow at theRenewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Though this is one of solar’s major hurdles, he believes it can be done. “I personally think, yes, this is solvable, and that solar has the capability to supply the world’s energy demand,” he says.

Solar Incentives Are Dead, Long Live Solar

Barry Cinnamon — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:00:52 PDT

The California Solar Initiative (CSI) program, which provides rebates for homes and businesses, is no longer providing rebates for homeowners in PG&E territory. That's terrific news. PG&E solar incentives are dead! Long live solar!

As a solar enthusiast, you may think I'm crazy for celebrating the upcoming demise of the single most effective state solar policy in the U.S., but it's true. The California Solar Initiative was the vehicle for accomplishing the goal of a million solar rooftops in California, established by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005. The CSI program kicked off at the beginning of 2007 to encourage the installation of 2,000 megawatts of customer-owned solar in the state, leveraging about $2 billion in ratepayer "public goods" funds.

To be clear, there are still some rebates available for commercial systems in PG&E territory, as well as lower incentive level rebates in SCE territory. There are also plenty of rebates available for solar thermal systems. But PV incentives for homeowners are effectively gone -- and it won't cause even a blip in California's solar growth rates.

From the start, it was all about energy, jobs and the environment. The CSI program has been a rousing success in every one of these dimensions. As of the beginning of May 2013, California had installed 148,989 solar projects (including both the CSI and earlier California Energy Commission incentive programs) and 1,548 megawatts of solar, at an average cost per watt of $5.40 per watt (DC). And these figures do not include the state's utility-scale solar, which has 1,190 megawatts of operating capacity and 3,063 megawatts of capacity under construction.

The Solar Foundation has tallied up 43,700 solar jobs in California and 1,703 solar companies. The Foundation also points out that there are "only" 32,300 paid film and TV actors in California; unfortunately, it did not compare the lifestyle differences between Hollywood actors and rooftop solar installers.

Continued price declines in the cost of installed PV systems were the single most important factor in the success of the CSI program. These price declines were expected when the CSI program was established, and, although the declines did not arrive in the nice smooth line that was anticipated, the effect was the same. When both home owners and business owners realize that it's cheaper to make their own power than to buy utility power, adoption accelerates. It's an electricity paradigm shift -- just like the transition from landline phones to cell phones and from horses to cars.

Solar is being installed on a wide spectrum of buildings: affordable housing, new construction, commercial and public buildings, parking lot structures, and over 100,000 single-family homes. Significantly, I've seen a subtle shift in homeowner attitudes toward solar over the past decade: rooftop solar is no longer a granola, left-wing, rich-person indulgence -- solar has gone mainstream. It makes good financial sense. As in Germany, we no longer have to convince customers that solar works, because they see literally dozens of homes, business and schools with solar panels every single day. And solar keeps working; those systems that were installed ten or more years ago are still merrily kicking out the kilowatt-hours and running electric meters backwards.

But now is not the time to rest on our laurels. Two critical policies help keep solar operating in top gear, both in California and the rest of the U.S.: net metering and the 30 percent ITC. And both policies are facing active, organized, well-funded attacks from incumbent energy providers, including utilities and fossil fuel companies. We must strive to retain net metering in every single state, since utilities everywhere are trying to eliminate this simple and cost-effective incentive mechanism. And we must work toward an extension of the Investment Tax Credit for both residential and commercial systems, an incentive that is scheduled to expire at the end of 2016.

The reality is that policies like the CSI program, net metering and the ITC don't just appear magically out of thin air. They are the result of the sweat and effort of countless enthusiastic volunteers and policymakers, as well as generous financial contributions from companies and individuals in the solar industry. The solar industry will continue to grow, but we've got our work cut out for us since our opponents now realize how much of a threat solar can be to their existing businesses.

(click to enlarge)

***

Barry Cinnamon is a solar and renewable energy strategist and founder of Akeena Solar.

Shared Renewables Bills Moving Forward In California

GoSolar.LA — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:30:27 PDT

Image Credit: California Shared Renewables

I’m not a resident of California, but I’ve been keeping up with the news there, and I’ve got some good news to share with you.

From a previous article about these bills, Silvio Marcacci writes:

If passed, SB 43 and AB 104 would allow the 75% of California utility customers who can’t install their own on-site generation to subscribe to “shared” renewable energy projects of up to 20 megawatts (MW).

Advocates say a 500MW shared renewables pilot program within the state’s three largest utility service territories would create 7,000 green jobs, earn $60 million in state sales tax revenue, generate $2 billion in economic activity, and voluntarily surpass the state’s 33% renewable portfolio standard.

A lot more details regarding the benefits of shared renewables are discussed in that post, if you want to learn more. But let’s get back to the news at hand….

This is tremendously positive news. While it’s not the bill we started with, it does help us advance the goal of broadening access to renewable energy.

As an indication of the sweeping changes, and how that effected the politics, PGE asked to be the second speaker on the bill, so they could speak in favor.

The bodies speaking out in favor of the bill included:

Coalition for Adequate School Housing
US Department of Defense
Sonoma County Board of Supervisors
Vote Solar
Solar Energy Industries Association
Large Scale Solar Association
TURN
Scott Wetch/Utilities Employees Union
Southern California Edison

The day after this success, SB 43 also made it through a vote, this one in the California Senate Energy Committee. Vote and testimonial details are below.

Votes in favor:

Hill
DeSaulnier
Pavley
De Leon
Wolk
Corbett

Testimony in favor from:

California Environmental Justice Alliance
Vote Solar
League of Cities
Department of Defense
Coalition for Affordable School Housing
Schools Energy Coalition
Recurrent Energy
Solar Electric Industry Association
Large Scale Solar Association

Testimony against from:

Southern California Edison
PG&E
SDGE
TURN
Farm Bureau
Coalition of California Union Employees

“It was close, but we got the votes when it counted,” Tom noted.

“With both AB 1014 and SB 43 passed, we now have two ways to broaden the availability of renewable energy in California, and thanks to your support and help, we’ll get there.”

We’ll be following up soon with discussion regarding the differences between the bills and the most important components. Stay tuned!