Study: California could get 74% of power from rooftop solar

By Sammy Roth, The Desert Sun

Rooftop solar panels could meet three-quarters of California's electricity needs and about 40 percent of the country's electricity needs, according to a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Researchers at the federally funded lab, which is based in Colorado, had estimated in 2008 that rooftop solar could generate 800 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, supplying about 21 percent of the country's current electricity demand. Now they've upped their estimate to 39 percent, in an analysis sure to be embraced by clean-energy advocates who see solar power as critical to fighting climate change.

It's unlikely the United States will tap all the sunlight at its disposal, at least not soon. The study focuses only on rooftop solar's theoretical potential, without considering which systems would make financial sense for the owners of homes, businesses and other commercial buildings. Dramatically scaling up rooftop solar would also require big investments in the electric grid, which was built to accommodate large, centralized power plants.

But even if the United States never reaches the 1,432 terawatt-hours of annual rooftop solar generation that NREL estimates is possible, the study gives policymakers a starting point for discussion, said Pieter Gagnon, an engineering analyst and the study's lead author.

"It doesn’t speak to whether or not that’s something that should be supported through policy or not. That’s ultimately up to whatever institutions are making those decisions," Gagnon said. "But they can do it in light of the understanding of how much electricity could conceivably come from rooftop solar."

The research lab was particularly bullish on California, which has a lot of sunlight, many large buildings and low per-person energy use. Researchers estimated that California could generate 74 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar — far more than any other state. The next-highest percentages came from the six states of New England, which get relatively little sunlight but don't use much energy to begin with. Unsurprisingly, large, sunny states such as California, Texas and Florida have the greatest overall generation potential.

UC Riverside solar energy expert Alfredo Martinez-Morales said that while he hadn't seen the study, he trusts NREL, a widely respected, privately run research lab funded by the Department of Energy. Still, he cautioned that even if California could theoretically get 74 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar, there would be many obstacles to making that work in practice.

In 2014, California got about 2.4 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar, according to calculations by the California Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. Getting that number into the double-digits — let alone close to 74 percent — would require big changes in how the electric grid is operated, according to Martinez-Morales, the managing director of UC Riverside's Southern California Research Initiative for Solar Energy.

“My feeling is you should definitely exploit the rooftop option, but there are some challenges. It’s always a tradeoff," he said.

California is working to solve those grid challenges and ramp up rooftop solar, but not without pushback from utility companies such as Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric. They've have been fighting a state program that gives people a financial incentive to go solar, saying it has forced non-solar homes and businesses to spend millions of dollars subsidizing their solar-powered neighbors.

Solar advocates reject those claims, saying any subsidy is small if not nonexistent. They also say utilities fail to account for rooftop solar's main benefits: that it reduces human-caused climate change, and that it limits the need for new power plants and transmission lines. But even the technology's staunchest defenders acknowledge that California can't keep incentivizing rooftop solar at current rates forever. Eventually, policymakers will have to figure out how to allocate the costs fairly, and that could involve new charges for solar customers.

"I think there’s a need to come up with something that doesn’t penalize solar, but allows utility companies to recoup some of their investments," Martinez-Morales said.

The NREL study could provide ammunition for opponents of large-scale solar, who say big solar farms such as Desert Sunlight and Ivanpah have harmed species and ecosystems in the California desert. Many of those critics believe California should fight climate change exclusively through rooftop solar, which has fewer environmental impacts. Large-scale solar supporters have countered that big solar farms can generate electricity more cheaply than small rooftop systems, and that the environmental impacts can be minimized by building large-scale plants in the least sensitive locations.

Gagnon, the NREL researcher, said there are "excellent arguments" for both kinds of solar.

"Some of that rooftop area would be great in terms of cost effectiveness," he said. "Some of it would be less optimal."

NREL researchers estimated the country's rooftop solar potential by examining specialized aerial images — known as light detection and ranging, or LiDAR — for 128 cities, including Los Angeles, St. Louis and Buffalo, and then extrapolating their results to the rest of the country. The research lab didn't have access to LiDAR data during its previous analysis of rooftop solar potential, which is one of the reasons the estimates changed so much from 2008, Gagnon said. The estimates also went up because solar panels are much more efficient now than they were a decade ago, and because there are more buildings now than there were then.

Researchers estimated that "small buildings" — homes, for the most part — account for 65 percent of the country's rooftop solar generation potential. In California, that number is 59 percent.

Source: http://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/science/energy/2016/03/28/study-california-could-get-74-power-rooftop-solar/82360288/

County Supervisor Dianne Jacob helps rally protesters on behalf of solar energy incentives

By BJ Coleman, The Californian

The afternoon was sunny, and the solar power advocates were vocal on Wednesday, March 16, at the sidewalk protest rally outside San Diego Gas & Electric’s corporate headquarters in Clairemont. The protesters gathered to demonstrate opposition to SDG&E executives’ plans to lobby the California Public Utilities Commission for overturn of the CPUC’s decision that extends equal pricing treatment of customer-generated power from installation of rooftop solar panels with utility company-provided power.

The rally brought environmentalists and those advocating government interventions to mitigate climate change together with representatives of energy-cost ratepayers and solar energy businesses. There to represent residents of sunshine-abundant East County was Supervisor Dianne Jacob.

Organizers kicked off the event by explaining its purpose, to ensure that “making solar less affordable is not an option.” The activists reiterated their belief in a “100 percent clean energy future” that maintains solar power as a choice readily and equally available to local residents.

Jacob told the protesters, “We are here to deliver a loud message,” indicating one intended audience consisted of the SDG&E executives and employees in the nearby office building. “We are here to support competition in energy and to free up energy once and for all,” she said.

She cited the “8,000 jobs” in local solar businesses that would be cut, if SDG&E’s challenge for “modifications” of net metering is granted. Jacob said she was appearing at the rally to represent the “best interest of ratepayers,” and she listed recent questionable actions that SDG&E has taken, from the “unnecessary” Sunrise Power Line, to charging customers for closure of the San Onofre nuclear power station and costs associated with the East County wildfires.

“We are calling on the state regulators to stand firm,” Jacob continued. “The battle lines have been drawn. This is about who controls the energy future. We will continue to fight for the people.” Jacob predicted that the conflict over support for solar power could even spark a political campaign urging California legislators to “lift the cap on net metering once and for all.”

The relevant industry buzzword phrase is “net energy metering,” often abbreviated as “net metering.” The idea refers to customers with solar panels on their homes being enabled to transfer excess power beyond their household needs onto the energy grid and, in turn, being credited financially for that power supplied to other energy users, at the same rate as charged by the utility firm. 

In late January, by a narrow 3-2 vote, the CPUC approved a legally required update in “net metering 2.0,” affirming the continuation of full retail energy credit to customers for the power their solar panels send to the power grid. (Assembly Bill 327, which set out financial incentives to encourage rooftop solar panel installation, further required consideration of revisions to those incentives, to be implemented in 2017.) 

Should the CPUC vote stand, ratepayers with solar units will continue to have their utility meters “spin backwards” at the same use rate as meters are being charged when they need to take power from the grid at that time. Also under this CPUC decision, though, cost offsets will be added to solar power provider bills, as an accommodation to the regulated utilities. Customers with rooftop solar will pay an upfront installation fee and a monthly interconnection fee for power lines and maintenance of the grid.

Earlier this month, SDG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison filed a rehearing application, seeking to vacate the January CPUC decision that favors equal pricing treatment of customer solar energy and utility-provided power. That legal challenge was impetus for the rally. 

For its organizational part, SDG&E responded after the rally with a press release, arguing that the fixed costs the company incurs translate into “unfairness” in higher energy bills shunted off onto low-income and disadvantaged communities to make up for the reduction of bills to those enjoying solar power benefits. Of SDG&E’s 3.5 million customers, over 82,000 have installed solar panels.

Also addressing the ralliers was Alejandro Montes, a student member of the Sierra Club, who spoke on behalf of the “next generation” and their desire for “a 100 percent clean energy future.” Montes decried the SDG&E stance as a “monopoly versus choice.”

Tara Kelly, who chairs the San Diego Chapter of the California Solar Energy Industries Association, closed out the half-hour protest, “We are blessed with sunshine most of the year here in San Diego.”

She described the choice as being between money for executive salaries and lobbyists intent on “stifling competition,” as “the solar revolution is upon us.” She urged listeners, “We must move forward united. This is the most important fight we have, the fight for our future.”

Source: http://www.eccalifornian.com/article/county-supervisor-dianne-jacob-helps-rally-protesters-behalf-solar-energy-incentives

Net metering: Industry slams California grid operator’s ‘economic justice’ attack

By Andy Colthorpe, PV Tech

The chief of California’s bulk transmission system operator has slammed net metering as a “subsidy” of wealthy households by poorer ones, claiming it represents an “economic justice issue”.

Steve Berberich, CEO of CA ISO (California Independent System Operator), responsible for overseeing competition in wholesale markets and managing reliability of the grid – including long-term planning – said the issue of net metering was coming to a head in the state. Berberich was speaking at last week’s Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, at a panel discussion on how to use the grid and grid resources such as demand side response, to integrate more renewables.

“We do have a very aggressive NEM programme in California,” Berberich said.

“It doesn’t directly impact us, except [that] with this growth of renewables on the distribution system, what we’re finding is that we need to harness those resources to help maintain frequency on the bulk transmission system.”

Net metering is the predominantly used method in the US to incentivise the adoption of solar at residential level, paying households for the power they feed back into the grid from their rooftop PV system. It exists in a majority of states, around 40, with the California Public Utilities’ Commission (CPUC), the regulator, voting to keep the policy in place, albeit in a revised “Net Metering 2.0” form, in late January.

California’s new iteration of the scheme placed more value on time-of-use and generation than before, seeking to attach more value to the matching of load with demand. Customers will have to pay interconnection fees estimated to be between around US$75 and US$150 to get started. However, three investor-owned utilities: San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) have asked the regulator to “rehear” the case.

Berberich made the same argument put forward by SDG&E last week.

“The policy issues are starting to come to head. In California, there’s a subsidy roughly from one group of ratepayers to another group of ratepayers of about a billion-two (US$1.2 billion) a year, where those who have solar get a subsidy from those who don’t have solar.”

The utilities claim, as have lobbying groups alleged in the past to be funded by pro-fossil fuel interests and recently by billionaire investor Warrent Buffet, that the scheme causes an imbalance as net metered customers are “subsidised” to use the grid by the rest of the utility’s ratepayer base. In Nevada and Hawaii, this has led to drastic scaling back of the schemes to only pay the greatly reduced wholesale rate rather than the higher retail prices paid in California or New York.

“The issue in California is those with solar tend to be the wealthier people who live on the coast, they both have money and they don’t use a lot of power so the people who are paying for it then are the non-solar people and generally, it’s poor people. That is becoming a policy issue in California, it becomes an economic justice issue and we’re having to deal with that,” Berberich said.

Industry group CalSEIA hits back

As with last week, when SDG&E was met with a protest march, Berberich’s words met with fierce opposition. California Solar Energy Industries’ Association (CALSEIA) policy director Brad Heavner responded to the CA ISO boss’ assessment with a scathing counter-argument.

“We are all bombarded with utility rhetoric, but the actual numbers show a very different picture,” Heavner said in a statement emailed to PV Tech.

“Low to medium-income neighborhoods have seen an increasing portion of solar installations in California in recent years, and the wealthiest neighborhoods are seeing their portion decrease.”

Heavner said it was ultimately not meant to be the responsibility of ratepayers to cross-subsidise one another and said that more long-term approaches to deal with the issue were needed.

“Net metering will only become a subsidy if grid managers continue to ignore it and overbuild infrastructure. One of the best ways to help low-income ratepayers reduce their energy costs is to help the solar industry continue to reduce costs rather then slapping new fees on solar that will take it out of reach for low-income households as it was previously.”

Heavner concluded by stating that he wanted the thinking behind grids and market design to fall more in line with the trend toward growing distributed resources.

“Players at all levels of the electric grid need to embrace the future, using distributed generation for grid support and ushering in an era of microgrids rather than clinging to the centralised past.”

Heavner also forwarded a whitepaper by energy consultancy Kevala, “Income Distribution of Solar Rooftop Customers”.

The report claimed that while the most recent owner occupier survey of income in California was conducted in 2000, 65% of installations are “deployed to zip codes where the median owner occupied income is less than US$70,000 a year”.

While the report’s authors admitted that adoption at the very lowest income bands has remained flat at around a 5% share of the total, the highest income areas have dropped their share significantly, from 19% in 2008 to just 6% in 2015, representing an expansion in the middle bracket’s share.

The issue has proved controversial at many levels of electricity system and market planning and design. Image: SDG&E.

Alternative voices

Erica Mackie, the CEO and co-founder of GRID Alternatives, a group developing community solar projects exclusively for low income customers, told PV Tech that utilities, the solar industry, ratepayers and other stakeholders are currently dealing with “substantial issues” around net metering.

Mackie would not been drawn in to condemn or condone either side’s argument, but did say that the state of California has been working to address solar’s “equity issue”.

“The good news is that California has also been very forward-thinking about the equity issue in solar through a variety of ambitious and successful low-income solar programmes that date back to 2006, to make sure that low-income communities throughout the state do have access to the benefits of distributed renewable energy.”

On a different note, a blog published for Energy Storage News today, John Merritt, director of applications engineering at power converter specialist Ideal Power, argues for increased use of energy storage as a long-term successor to net metering via the grid.

“Quite simply, wholesale net metering rate structures result in a net loss for every kilowatt-hour of energy the PV owner sells to the utility and buys back at a later time,” Merritt wrote.

“However your local utility structures net metering payments, energy storage provides PV owners with a self-use option that removes utility net metering rates from the equation, mitigating losses and shortening paybacks for the system.”

Source: http://www.pv-tech.org/news/net-metering-industry-slams-california-transmission-grid-operators-economic

Intersolar Summit Returns To Brooklyn on March 24th!

Intersolar Summit is returning to Brooklyn NY on March 24, 2016! With both solar and energy storage markets surging in the northeast, the organizers expect another sell-out to solar and storage professionals engaged in all aspects of these growing markets, especially now the solar investment tax credit (ITC) has been extended for another 5 years and Governor Cuomo has announced New York State’s approval of a $5 billion Clean Energy Fund to encourage renewable sources of electricity.

Intersolar Summit USA East gives its attendees a perfect chance, to stay on top of latest policy developments, opportunities and key issues impacting the U.S. East Coast solar and energy storage markets. Officially supported by the New York State Senate represented by New York State Senator Kevin S. Parker it offers great business matchmaking opportunities with regional market key players.

Further information: http://www.intersolarglobal.com/en/summits/usa-east.html