More Y-S residents harnessing the power of the sun

By Jake Abbott, Appeal Democrat

As more solar companies sprout up around Yuba-Sutter, customers looking to go green are faced with the decision of which plan is best for them — buy, loan, lease, or rent.

Having different options and plans to choose from makes some potential customers skeptical of what constitutes a good deal versus a bad deal. But representatives from local solar companies and customers said there are no bad deals in solar, only bad decisions.

"It all depends on the energy you need to produce," said Jenny Zimmerman, director of marketing for Alternative Energy Systems.

Mark Schaeffer, co-owner and CEO of Westhaven Solar, said the average house in the Yuba-Sutter area requires a 7.8-kilowatt solar system. The company determines a customer's need by referencing usage rates over the past 24 months.

Brad Heavner, policy director for the California Solar Energy Industries Association, said people looking into solar equipment should understand what the different companies in their area provide before choosing a solar plan.

"Get three bids," Heavner said. "There are plenty of options out there. It's a matter of preference."

Different options

Companies vary in regard to the options and plans they provide.

Renting is done much like other utility providers in that a power purchase agreement is signed by the homeowner. The agreement is for 20 years and states the homeowner buys power directly from the solar company, while the provider installs and maintains the equipment.

Another option is leasing the equipment through the solar company. This option locks a customer into a flat monthly payment for a set amount of time, and the company is responsible for any maintenance requirements during the time period.

"If you don't have the money up front and don't want to borrow against the house, a lease or a PPA are both good options," Heavner said.

Customers also have the option of taking out a loan through the solar company with the promise of paying back the amount over time.

When it comes to purchasing solar equipment, customers who have the cash up front can buy the system outright. Schaeffer said the price of systems can range between $20,000-$50,000 depending on the quality and number of panels.

The latter two options allow the owner to receive what is called the solar investment tax credit.

"With the cash or finance options, you can get a 30 percent tax credit from the government," Schaeffer said.

Heavner said the tax credit was scheduled to expire at the end of 2016 but was renewed within the past year, extending it through the end of 2019.

What users are saying

Dave Rosenberg, owner of Artistic Window Tinting in Yuba City, runs his business out of his house. Solar panels were an investment he decided to make on the advice of his father. He had been solicited years before by a solar company, but the equipment was much less affordable.

He is leasing his panels through Westhaven Solar through a 20-year agreement.

"It all made sense: the timing of it, the investment, how many gas appliances we use," Rosenberg said. "They say in seven years it should pay for itself. If that is the case, another seven years I could potentially make my money back."

Rosenberg said he made the decision because he knew he would be at the same location for the duration of the agreement. If he had any inclination that he might have relocated to a different home, he would not have invested in the panels at that time.

He said he was happy with his choice to transition to solar and hasn't had any problems thus far.

"I definitely think it is worth it," Rosenberg said. "It's good for my business. As far as technology goes, I think it's smart to lease it."

One concern for homeowners looking into solar equipment has been the impact it will have if they choose to sell the house.

Sarah Norris, co-owner and CEO of sales for Sutter Buttes Real Estate, has sold homes that use solar, with both leased and owned equipment.

"Buyers are becoming more familiar with solar, so it's not as hard to sell to them because they understand the benefits," Norris said.

Norris also leases solar equipment through SolarCity at her own home. She said she chose to lease because the warranty covers maintenance on the panels throughout the agreement period.

"I have two properties, which includes a guest house, so I chose two different options," Norris said. "We were on Tier Four at the time with PG&E. So we chose a flat fee for 20 years, which was 18 cents per kilowatt. The side house consumes very little electricity, so we chose a 15 cent flat fee. Already, PG&E has increased its kilowatt charge, so I'm actually saving now."

She said people's decisions to choose a certain company often comes by word of mouth, much like real estate. If representatives of a company — the door knockers — build up a good reputation in a certain area, other community members are more likely to work with the company.

Norris is also pleased with her decision to lease from SolarCity. She said the company is the best fit for her because it doesn't put a lien on the property.

Where solar companies and PG&E come together

Solar panels collect energy and store it into the power grid through a process called net metering. When solar users need electricity, they pull stored energy back out of the grid.

Zimmerman said her company has a number of experts who work with PG&E to help with discrepancies on a customer's bill. They are there to help customers understand and address any complications that might arise.

Paul Moreno, senior external communications representative for PG&E, said customers get credit for excess power generation.

He said power generated during peak or partial-peak hours builds up more energy that can be leveraged or drawn from at nighttime. These numbers are also dependent on where a customer lives, the climate, rates due and tier adjustments by season.

At the end of every year, a true-up statement is sent to solar customers that assesses a year's worth of usage and power generation.

"If you do produce more than you use, there is a credit, or a payback depending on how much you use from the grid," Moreno said. "There are tools online to help you find what you need."

PG&E is not foreign to solar power. It provides the solar choice plan to customers who can't install the equipment on their own but want to use solar power. The company has large solar farms that provide electricity to the grid that costumers on the plan can pull from.

"PG&E has more solar customers than any other company," Moreno said. "We have for years."

Source: www.appeal-democrat.com/news/more-y-s-residents-harnessing-the-power-of-the-sun/article_c8a7f6fe-4be8-11e6-9431-9b87eefb961b.html

The pv magazine weekly news digest: On a war footing

Back in the U.S., amid the news bombs dropping all around them, the solar industry’s great and good got on with the matter at hand: Intersolar North America. Day one was particularly interesting, setting an embattled tone that persisted throughout the show’s duration. Speaker after speaker addressed not only the rapid growth of the solar industry, but the forces that are pushing against that growth, including a public advocate who is suing to stop fossil fuel projects, and the CEO of perhaps the most combative distributed solar company in the industry.

"We are inherent disruptor of the status quo, and that has caused some to push against us," noted California Solar Energy Industries Association (CalSEIA) Executive Director Bernadette del Chiaro. 

Del Chiaro is a veteran of these conflicts, which are neither abstract nor distant. And while this last year’s regulatory battle over net metering was largely a victory for the solar industry in California, the same cannot be said of other states, most notably Nevada, where net metering was dismantled.

Source: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/the-pv-magazine-weekly-news-digest_100025425/#ixzz4EUxZpUve

The Imperial Irrigation District has a new rooftop solar plan, and solar installers say it's terrible

By Sammy Roth, The Desert Sun

The Imperial Irrigation District could end the months-long uncertainty over its solar policy next week. But critics say the district's new plan — if approved by the utility's board of directors Tuesday — would kill the rooftop solar industry in the Imperial and eastern Coachella valleys, leading to mass layoffs and making it impossible for all but the wealthiest families to go solar.

The agency brought rooftop solar installations to a halt in February, when it abruptly eliminated net metering, the program utilities have long used to compensate solar-powered homes and businesses for the excess electricity they generate. District staff now want to replace net metering with a new arrangement called net billing, which would dramatically reduce the value of solar. Installers say they'll stop doing business in Imperial Irrigation District territory if the board approves the plan, since they won't be able to offer deals that make financial sense for most families.

Nearly 100 people packed the district's La Quinta boardroom for a public hearing on Wednesday, including solar workers who said they could find themselves unemployed if the new proposal passes. Among them was La Quinta resident Laura Fonseca, who said some of her colleagues at SolarCity have already been laid off this year because of uncertainty over the district's solar policy.

"It's not because they don't know how to do their job. It's just that there’s no business," Fonseca said. "And if this continues and it doesn't change, I probably will lose my job as well."

Under net metering, solar customers who sent more electricity onto the grid than they consumed were able to zero out their energy bills. If they consumed more from the grid than they contributed, they only had to pay for the difference, at the retail electricity rate. So a customer who consumed 1,200 kilowatt-hours from the grid but sent back 1,000 kilowatt-hours only had to pay for 200.

Under net billing, solar customers would be charged the retail rate for all the electricity they take from the grid, then credited at a far lower rate for the energy they send back. So that same customer would be charged the retail rate, 11.69 cents per kWh, for all 1,200 kilowatt-hours they consume, then credited at just 6.8 cents per kWh for the 1,000 kilowatt-hours they contribute. The 6.8-cent credit rate would probably drop over time, making rooftop solar progressively less valuable.

The result: Solar customers would pay much higher bills. They would rarely zero out, if ever.

In a letter to the district's general manager, Kevin Kelley, earlier this week, the California Solar Energy Industries Association gave an example of what the changes would mean for a hypothetical solar customer, assuming the initial credit rate of 6.8 cents. A customer who would have gotten a $22 credit on her monthly bill under net metering, the group estimated, would instead pay $28.40 that month under net billing. A customer with a similar solar system but higher energy use, who would have paid $22 in a particular month under net metering, would instead pay $64 under net billing.

The net billing system "will effectively end the installation of rooftop solar on individual customer homes," Joe Deisenroth, who runs Revco Solar's Coachella Valley office, told the district's board of directors on Wednesday. Revco started focusing on the east valley last year, but it's already had to fire five of the six employees it hired to serve that market, Deisenroth said in a follow-up interview.

"I absolutely never will market in (the Imperial Irrigation District) again if they move forward with the current proposal," he said.

District officials have criticized net metering as an unfair subsidy, saying rooftop solar customers aren't paying their fair share to maintain the electric grid. They say the agency is losing $10 million per year in revenue due to rooftop solar, and that non-solar customers — who tend to have lower incomes than their solar-powered neighbors — will ultimately pay the difference through higher rates.

That argument has highlighted divisions between the Imperial Valley — where the district is based — and the higher-income communities of the eastern Coachella Valley, where most of its energy customers live. Due to some historical quirks, the Coachella Valley doesn't have representation on the utility's board of directors. Board members say their top responsibility is to keep electricity rates low for residents of the Imperial Valley, which is home to some of the lowest incomes and highest unemployment rates in the state.

"Solar around here in this town isn’t like it is in La Quinta, where everybody has it and has the money to pay for it," Brawley resident Gerald Gauna, a member of the utility's energy advisory committee, said at a committee meeting in El Centro on Monday. "Down here it’s a whole different story. I don’t see why we who don’t have solar should pay for the people that do get the benefit."

READ MORE: Imperial Irrigation District slams brakes on solar

Many solar advocates reject the idea that net metering is a subsidy. They've pointed to studies showing that rooftop solar actually benefits the grid by reducing strain on transmission lines and limiting the need for new power plants, and they've criticized the Imperial Irrigation District for refusing to take those benefits into account. Many environmentalists note that rooftop solar reduces air pollution and climate change by limiting the need to burn fossil fuels, providing public health benefits that don't show up in a utility's bottom line.

District officials, though, are unlikely to change their minds. They insisted Wednesday they're not trying to kill rooftop solar, although critics say that's exactly what the net billing proposal would do.

Under the new rate plan, solar customers would initially be credited at 6.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for the energy they contribute to the grid. District staff chose 6.8 cents because that's their cheapest contract to buy electricity from a large solar power plant. Utility officials say they shouldn't have to pay more for solar power from someone's roof than they pay for solar power from a big solar farm.

The 6.8-cent credit rate might not last long, though. The staff proposal would tie that rate to the lowest-cost solar contract signed by the district, meaning net billing customers would see the value of their solar drop if the utility signs new, cheaper contracts. That will almost certainly happen, since solar is getting cheaper all the time and state law will require the district to buy more clean energy.

Other utilities have signed solar contracts at under 4 cents per kilowatt-hour over the last year. So an Imperial or Coachella valley resident who signs up for net billing at 6.8 cents next year could find herself getting credited at a rate as low as 3 or 4 cents per kilowatt-hour in the not-so-distant future.

"They know they're proposing something that's going to kill the market for rooftop, but they seem to have no remorse for it," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

Indio City Council member Lupe Ramos Watson criticized the proposal to use the lowest solar contract rate, calling it "ridiculous." Ramos Watson, who represents Indio on the district's energy advisory committee, suggested using the average contract cost instead.

"These people are doing something that's better for all of us. Whether we can afford solar or not, going green is better for this universe, for the world, for the United States of America, for everyone," Ramos Watson said at Monday's committee meeting. "So let's give them a little bit of credit for that. We don't have to lowball them."

Homes and businesses that signed up for net metering before the district closed the program won't be affected by any of the changes, which only apply to new solar customers. But the changes will impact the hundreds of people who hurried to apply after the district closed the program, many of whom had already signed contracts with solar installers under the expectation of net metering.

It's unclear how many of those customers will sign up for the net billing program, if it's approved, and how many will choose not to go solar because they can no longer afford it.

Southern California Edison, which provides electricity in the western Coachella Valley, continues to offer net metering at retail rates. Edison also tried to gut the program last year, but its proposal was rejected by the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates investor-owned but not publicly owned utilities, like the Imperial Irrigation District.

Source: http://www.desertsun.com/story/tech/science/energy/2016/07/14/imperial-irrigation-district-has-new-rooftop-solar-plan-and-solar-installers-say-s-terrible/87063726/

Location Matters: California Regulators Investigate More Granular Solar Benefits

By Brad Heavner, for Solar Industry Magazine

In a transmission plan approved in March, the California Independent System Operator cancelled 13 sub-transmission projects that previously had been approved in Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) territory. PG&E supported the project cancellations, which will save customers $192 million. The utility pointed out that rooftop solar and energy efficiency have reduced their load forecast and stated, “The need for those is just not there anymore.”

This is a clear example of distributed solar’s reducing utility infrastructure costs, but it does not answer the question of how to quantify future spending reductions that result from increasing amounts of solar.

Optimal Locations For Solar
A primary conclusion of the recent net-metering debate in California was that more time is needed to accurately measure the benefits of distributed solar. That effort is now in full swing, with multiple working groups and proceedings.

The question is complicated by the fact that solar is more valuable to the grid in some places than others. Utilities have traditionally spread costs and benefits evenly across their service territories, but the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) may decide to give distributed solar different value depending on where it is connected. Nobody is quite sure where these regulatory discussions will end up, but they are certainly heading in an interesting direction.

A.B.327, passed in 2013, is known as the legislation that led to flattening the residential rate tiers and forcing the creation of NEM 2.0. A lesser noticed portion of the bill directs utilities to “identify optimal locations for the deployment of distributed resources.” Under the direction of the CPUC, utilities filed plans last July with proposals for how to determine location-specific costs and benefits.

One of the first steps is to improve the mapping of existing capacity on the grid. Many solar developers in California are familiar with the “RAM maps” that were created for the renewable auction mechanism. These maps show distribution circuits throughout a utility territory that are color-coded based on how much capacity there is to host new solar installations. Developers have been able to use the maps to identify good locations for site development. The idea is good, but the data has been crude and unreliable.

As part of the new planning process, these maps are now being improved. The ultimate goal is a plug-and-play grid, where circuits are essentially pre-engineered to determine how much solar can go in each location at any time.

Currently, the maps show hosting capacity based on distributed resources that are already connected, but there is no way to know if there are other projects already in the queue that will use up available capacity. If developers are going to rely on the maps, and the interconnection process is going to use them, the maps need to include projects under development. To update their maps in real time as projects move through the development process is no small feat for the utilities.

Another initial step that is moving in parallel with the mapping exercise is to develop a methodology for determining location-specific values for the benefits of solar and storage. Stakeholders have identified the categories of benefits that need to be quantified. Once that list is finalized, the hard work begins to decide on the math.

Competitive Solicitations
One practical outcome in the near term is to look at the list of distribution system projects that are already planned and figure out which ones can be deferred by distributed alternatives.

Southern California Edison has held competitive solicitations to address local needs stemming from the loss of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. These have been generally successful, and the experience can be applied to ongoing system growth and maintenance. In addition, the CPUC has proposed a pilot project that would direct utilities to announce at least two requests for offers (RFOs) per year for alternatives to traditional investments.

The proposal includes a sweetener for the utilities: guaranteeing them equal profit for distributed and centralized solutions. Utilities have traditionally resisted giving solar credit for its value to the grid because utility profits are pegged to capital expenses on infrastructure. Their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders pushes them to favor substation upgrades over customer-sited solutions.

CPUC Commissioner Michel Florio has responded to this problem with a proposal to give utilities an incentive to propose alternatives to substation upgrades. The proposal seeks to give utilities the same return on distributed solutions to grid challenges as centralized infrastructure solutions. Utilities put out an RFO for distributed energy resources in a specific area, companies bid project portfolios, utilities sign a power purchase agreement, developers build systems, utilities get a return and everybody’s happy.

It is not clear, however, that regulated profit on utility procurement of distributed solutions would truly motivate utilities to propose alternatives to the traditional way of doing things. Their official response was that consideration of incentives and profit motive is premature.

Data And Tariffs
An alternative to encouraging utilities to propose distributed solutions is to make enough data available for third parties to be able to see system needs and propose alternatives. Solar and storage companies have recommended a long list of data types to become publicly available. Utilities are concerned that companies competing in RFOs would not price their bids low enough if they have too much visibility into utility cost-savings.

Yet another approach would be to create tariffs based on locational benefits and let the competitive market deliver results. Getting the utilities to change their procurement strategies to address system needs is one thing; trusting markets is another.

Nobody wants tariffs that change every time you turn the corner, but markets can move faster than top-down procurement. The CPUC is looking for the right balance between consistency and precise price signals.

One potential tariff structure is simply the inclusion of a locational benefits adder that could be layered on top of existing rate schedules for projects located within specified zones. Other ideas may emerge. The CPUC has signaled it will develop tariffs incorporating locational benefits but intends to work on competitive solicitations first.

Aliso Canyon
From last October through February of this year, a failed wellhead at a natural gas storage facility at Aliso Canyon, located near Los Angeles, leaked an estimated 5.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The greenhouse-gas emissions from this leak equate to half a million cars driving in circles for a year.

Aliso Canyon is the largest natural gas storage facility in the West. It has been key to assuring electric system reliability in the transmission-constrained LA Basin. During hot summer months, when demand can increase quickly when people turn on air conditioners, gas-fired power plants ramp up production in a hurry.

On some days, gas pipelines and electric transmission lines are tapped out, and it is only local power plants fueled by gas stored in Aliso Canyon that can meet demand. This summer, that’s not an option, and regulators have warned of potential blackouts.

The state has been scrambling to clear the way for more solar PV, solar water heating and energy storage in the LA Basin to help alleviate this problem. In this case, nobody is even questioning whether local energy solutions can avoid the need for new transmission. It is painfully obvious.

As solar penetration grows, solar customers will probably be required to pay more in fees or accept less in compensation for exported power. Location-specific values may become available to offset those changes for customers that are in the right places, and improved interconnection tools can reduce soft costs. If the solar sales process keeps pace with more sophisticated opportunities, market growth can remain strong.

Author’s note: Brad Heavner is policy director at the California Solar Energy Industries Association.

Source: http://solarindustrymag.com/location-matters-california-regulators-investigate-more-granular-solar-benefits