Thoughts on Solar

With very little fanfare, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District ("SMUD") just convinced the California Energy Commission to allow it to offer a SMUD-owned alternative to installing solar power systems on new homes under California’s just instituted New Solar Homes mandate. As other municipal utilities lined up in support – including PWP, LADWP, BWP and GWP – it is clear that this is nothing short of a full-on assault against the New Solar Homes mandate. Here’s our take…

Solar added to a new home in Altadena

The intent of the New Solar Homes mandate was to install appropriately sized solar power systems on every new home in California.  There are many benefits to such a program, including providing distributed power across the grid, thereby increasing grid reliability, as well as generating jobs and raising public awareness as solar becomes commonplace. 

The SMUD scheme thwarts all of that.  Instead, a SMUD-owned solar farm would have it production allocated across participating new homes.  (Tellingly, the SMUD scheme does not permit privately built community solar farms to participate in the program!)  Worse yet, the SMUD scheme effectively prevents subsequent home owners from adding local solar, since the first 4,700 kWhs must come from the SMUD-owned facility.

So how did this get approved?  In addition to all of the municipal utilities in California lining up behind SMUD’s power grab, so did much of the building industry (as they can simply fill out paperwork for compliance instead of actually building solar systems), and the IBEW (whose members get employed when utility-scale solar farms are built).  On the short end of the stick are local solar contractors, and consumers who lose the power to choose their own, local solar system because the builder decided to opt-into SMUD’s scheme.

What say you, PWP?

Which brings this back home.  While Pasadena Water and Power did not submit their own letter of support (that we could find), their trade association, the California Municipal Utilities Association, did.  Now there aren’t that many new homes being built in Pasadena at this point, but can we expect to see a similar power grab from PWP?  LADWP did submit their own letter and there are plenty of new homes going up within the City’s boundaries - is a similar scheme in the works?

The utilities rely on consumers being largely uninformed as to these schemes to push them through.  We will be keeping an eye on what our local utilities bring forward in the coming months.  Watch this space.

When you create a website, and beyond that, a blog, you sometime wonder - who is reading this? (Assuming that *someone* is reading it at all!) Capturing site visit data provides you a rough insight into who those folks might be, if you are willing to slog through the data. But heck, you know we love digging into data, so come along and let’s see who is out there!

The raw data, courtesy of Google Analytics, lists the service provider for every visit to the website (including this blog).  For this analysis we looked at data for the first 100 days of this year, a total of 9,983 visits from 7,398 distinct visitors who collectively looked at 12,607 pages.  Some 1,372 different service providers are listed in that data, but they are not categorized in any way - that is a process that must be done manually (ouch!).  The vast majority of the service providers are either not identified at all (39% of the total) or appear to be generic ISPs, such as “time warner cable internet llc".  Without anyway to get behind that lack of information, there is little to be learned from those entries, so we will exclude them and see what we can glean from the rest.

Filtered in that way leaves us with 526 different sources that accounted for roughly half of our visits, 4,845.  Our analysis broke these out into five categories: Company, School, Government, Non-Profit, and Other.  Here’s what that looked like:

Far and away the largest category of sources are visits from other companies, making up 49% of our sources.  That is encouraging since we provide solar installations to companies, it is nice to know that they are coming to our site!

The next largest source is schools - again, a major target for our marketing efforts - although we were surprised at the number of schools, particularly colleges, that visited.  (We always felt that we had a very educated readership and that would tend to prove that out!)

We have to admit that we were surprised at the large number of government sources, and frankly some of them have us a bit creeped out!  (More on that in a moment.)

The non-profit category was surprisingly small, given the number of phone calls and emails that we get from non-profits across the country.  Apparently there is very little on the internet about solar for non-profits, so lots of folks from far-flung corners of the country find their way to our solar for non-profits page.  Unfortunately we have to tell them that we are a local company and really cannot help them install solar on their church in Peoria!  (But we do point them to the NABCEP website!)

Let’s dig into these categories a bit more and see what we find!

The Company We Keep

There are all manner of companies represented in the data, from 3 Day Blinds to Amazon, Bloomberg, Facebook, Hubspot, Intel, Kaiser, Microsoft, Navigant, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Rolls-Royce (I don’t think they make an EV!), to Yogurtland - and dozens and dozens more in between.

There are two interesting sub-categories: Utilities and other Solar companies.  First utilities - there are 15 of them represented in the data including LADWP, SCE and SoCal Gas.  But there are also utilities from across the country including Duke Energy, Dominion (Virginia) Power, and even the Electric Power Research Institute, which is the think tank for the electric utility industry.

But there are even more solar companies checking us out - certainly a complement of sorts - 16 in all.  Some of these are manufacturers, including Canadian Solar, Hanwha, and even SolarEdge!  Some are distributors, like Krannich, but most are competitors, ranging from nationals like Vivint to regional players like Sullivan Solar Power.  Hey guys, don’t be shy, feel free to leave a comment!

Somebody’s Watching Me…

Remember that song?  Looking into the Government category turned up a few, kinda creepy, surprises.  For example, we got visits from a number of military-affiliated sources like the 754th Electronic Systems Group which is located at the Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts, and has the following mission statement:

Deliver integrated information driving war winning decisions by shaping, acquiring, and sustaining warfighting IT capabilities through responsive, adaptive and cost-effective logistics, enterprise services and infrastructure solutions—to fly and fight in air, space and cyberspace.

Yikes!  Not sure what that has to do with a website about PV in SoCal, but they visited three different times! Or there is the DoD Network Information Center (four visits, Google them if you are into conspiracy theories!), the Navy Network Information Center (five visits), and the Headquarters USAISC (two visits).

There were also some really cool government sites including CERN, NREL, NASA (though NASA’s may have been my daughter!), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - even one hit from the U.S. Senate (welcome to D.C., Senator Harris!).

The largest government category, however are various municipalities, with 27 different towns, cities and counties dropping by, including locals like Pasadena, LA (city and county), Santa Monica, Anaheim, etc.  But also some from far away like Boston, San Francisco, and Westchester County. 

Various states stopped by as well, including: Washington, D.C. (I know, it’s not a state, but it should be, so there), Maine, Maryland, New York, New Mexico, and Utah, to name a few.  Fun!

No Profit Here

The non-profit category was very small, but interesting.  While there were a handful of churches, including my favorite, Yosemite Church - the setting alone should be inspiring! - the more interesting fact was that the largest sub-category was related to medicals services, including six hospitals!  Hey we’ve never put solar on a hospital, but we would love to help you out!

School Me

Which brings us to our final category, schools.  99 of our sources were categorized as school related, with sub-categories of school districts, elementary schools, and colleges.  There was only one elementary school in the mix, our client, Chandler School.  Interestingly, there were 27 school districts in the data from all over the country ranging from LAUSD to the Cambridge Public Schools.

Our connection to colleges, however, was truly amazing with 70 different schools showing up.  Lots of famous names in this list including our neighbor Caltech, USC, UCLA (along with roughly half of the overall UC system!), Stanford, American University (Go Eagles!), Duke, Johns Hopkins, LMU (my alma mater), NYU, Princeton, Rutgers, Notre Dame, University of Utah (my second alma mater!), even Oxford!  Wow, I feel smarter already.

Most of these sources provided just one visit - they hit a given page and then left.  But some sources were more, shall we say, studious.  For example, we only got one hit from Azusa Pacific University (located at the very end of the Gold Line), but they looked at 11 different pages in the three minutes that they were on the site.  (Average duration on the site overall was 55 seconds.)  The winners for most time on site were Notre Dame (one visit, seven pages, more than 20 minutes) and Colorado State (one visit, five pages, 18 minutes).  It is quite rewarding to see that the resource that we have created can have real value for people, especially (we presume here) students. 

So that’s it - thanks to all who visit this site, we appreciate your time and interest.  We hope we will continue to provide a resource that brings you back - well, except for the creepy ones!

Los Angeles doesn’t have a great reputation for being green. Sadly we are better known as a car-centric city frequently afflicted with smoggy skies. In fact, Los Angeles has been ranked the worst air pollution in the nation. Recently our fair city took one step closer to changing that! Last April the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to approve a motion asking the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to develop a plan for how the city can move toward 100% renewable sources of electricity. LADWP - the largest municipal utility in the country - currently gets about 20-25% of its energy from renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and waste). The biggest challenge to going 100% green will be to convert from a grid which relies on coal and natural gas, which can adjust supply to meet demand, to one which can handle the fluxuations of solar and wind. The largest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions - nearly 9 million metric tons - will be through DWP’s existing plan to eliminate coal-fired power plants from their energy mix by 2025. (Side note: Shockingly, Pasadena’s energy mix coming from Pasadena Water and Power, has an extraordinarily high percentage of power coming from coal at 34% compared to CA average of 6% with no plans as of yet to move toward renewables! Hopefully they’ll follow in LA’s footsteps!)

Another 7 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions result from the remaining energy sources in LADWP’s mix, largely natural gas. As we move away from coal we need to be careful to not be lured to just switch to cheap natural gas. Last year the Aliso Canyon gas leak disaster - the worst in US history - proved this fossil fuel is a very dangerous source of energy for our communities. 11,000 residents were evacuated and hundreds reported methane-related illnesses from the leak. Aliso released 100,000 tons of methane, which has a warming effect 80 times higher than CO2 over the short-term. Currently there are also natural gas storage facilities in Playa del Rey and Playa Vista. Obviously natural gas is a serious threat to our public health and the environment. If we are going to get to a fully clean power supply a commitment similar to the departure from coal needs to happen with natural gas… and the faster the better. 

With a 100-year old grid supplying 4 million Angelinos with power, LADWP is poised to make significant infrastructure investments. This is the perfect opportunity for the city to upgrade the system to accommodate the potential for a fossil-free future. Councilman - and co-author of the City Council motion - Paul Krekorian, emphasized the urgency for Los Angeles to move to clean energy:

“This is an enormous step forward that will help restore our environment and lead us to a sustainable, fossil-free future. For the third year running, Los Angeles was ranked as having the worst air pollution in the country, which is unacceptable and unhealthy for our families and neighborhoods. To reverse this trend we need big thinking and bold, smart action." 

While Mayor Eric Garcetti has already set a goal of reaching 50% renewable energy by 2030, this recent legislation is only a starting point to research how to get to 100% but has no set timeline. This is a crucial first step, however, we are really looking forward to hearing the results of DWP’s research. A realistic but ambitious time-bound roadmap to ending our reliance on fossil fuels is crucial to improving our chances of preventing climate change’s most damaging effects.

San Francisco and San Diego are also among eighteen other cities who have committed to 100% clean energy goals recently. Four cities are already proving it is possible with fully renewably powered systems! Los Angeles, as the 2nd most populous city in the country and most polluted, can serve as a particularly powerful role model for cities and jurisdictions across the country. These plans have the potential to both help stop devastating climate change impacts but also to boost economies in the process. Some opponents of a renewable transition worry that it will hurt the economy but the growth of renewable jobs in recent years and a growing local economy has proven that is a false threat. Last year’s solar census reported that 10% of solar jobs - over 21,000 well paid jobs - are in Los Angeles! Going green saves money in the long-term. A report from the New Climate Economy found cities could save $17 trillion by 2050 by pursuing low-carbon solutions such as public transport, building efficiency, waste management and ‘aggressive’ solar implementation.

Now is the time to kick our transition to clean energy into high gear at local and state levels! We look forward to being part of the solution!

UPDATE - 5/28/16 - Despite our best efforts, AB 2339 was HELD in the Appropriations Committee, effectively killing the bill this session.  Thank you to everyone who took the time to call and voice their support for the bill.  Special thanks to Frank Andorka who created a podcast in support of the bill, all the way from Cleveland!  We lost this battle, but the fight continues.

UPDATE - 5/26/16 - We passed the Assembly Utilities Committee on a 10-2 vote, but right now we are stuck in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, chaired by San Diego Democrat Lorena Gonzalez. The decision of whether to allow AB 2339 to  advance to the Assembly Floor rests in the hands of two people: Chair Gonzalez and Speaker Rendon.  Please take a moment to give them a call and urge them to support the bill.  Here are their numbers:

• Lorena Gonzalez, Chair Assembly Appropriations Committee: 916-319-2080
• Speaker Anthony Rendon: 916-319-2063

Thanks!

Back in February we wrote about the new Net Metering 2.0 rules that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved over the objections of the Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs), SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E.

We noted at the time that the CPUC rulemaking did not directly affect the Municipal Utilities (munis, like Pasadena Water and Power). Boy was that right as muni after muni is looking to shut down Net Metering altogether! Here’s our take, and more importantly, an action item that you can take to preserve Net Metering with the munis.

How We Got Here

The munis  are generally free, within the limits of state law, to set their own policies as confirmed by the local city council.  So here in Pasadena, PWP sets its policy but has to have that policy ratified by the city council’s vote.  When it comes to Net Metering, state law requires that the munis, like the IOUs, offer Net Metering agreements until the amount of solar deployed exceeds “5% of the electric utility’s aggregate customer peak demand.” (CA Public Utilities Code § 2827)  Now if that quote seems like less than a model of clarity, you are quite right.  Before the CPUC, the IOUs argued that it meant that you look at a utility’s highest peak demand as of a certain point in time, and that would be the cap.  Such an interpretation, however, reads the words “aggregate customer” out of the statute.  The CPUC agreed, and the proper interpretation requires the utility to sum the aggregate demand from each customer and that becomes the cap.

The results are dramatic - the proper interpretation effectively doubles the total amount of solar allowed under the cap.  That decision by the CPUC back in 2012 redefined Net Metering, but only for the IOUs.  At the time there was little concern regarding the munis since none was close to reaching their cap. 

Fast forward to today and five munis have already reached their caps, as calculated under the old, pre-CPUC ruling, methodology.  That leaves them free to replace Net Metering with whatever they choose, and at least one, Turlock, has adopted new rules that have resulted in an 85% decline in the solar market there!  (In contrast, LADWP has already agreed to the new methodology thanks to leadership from Mayor Garcetti.)

Support AB 2339!

Fortunately there is a fix in the works.  AB 2339 (Irwin - D-44) will require that the munis calculate their caps in effectively the same way as the IOUs.  The bill is presently in the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce, chaired by Mike Gatto (D-43) - a former student and colleague of mine, and a champion of clean energy.

We need the strongest bill possible coming out of the committee, and you can help make that happen.  How?  Our friends at CALSEIA have compiled a target list of key assembly members who need to here from their constituents on this bill.  From the CALSEIA newsflash:

Target List:

• Jim Patterson (R-Fresno/Clovis) 916-319-2023
• Susan Eggman (D-Stockton/Mountain House/Thornton/Tracy) 916-319-2013
• Mike Gatto (D-Burbank/Glendale/La Canada/La Crescenta) 916-319-2043
• Bill Quirk (D-Hayward/Ashland/Castro Valley/Cherryland/Fairview/ Fremont/ Pleasanton/San Lorenzo/Sunol/Union City) 916- 319-2020
• Miguel Santiago (D-Huntington Park/Vernon) 916- 319-2053
• Eduardo Garcia (D-Imperial/Blythe/Brawley/Calexico/Cathedral City/Coachella/Desert H.Springs/El Centro/Indio) 916- 319-2056
• Christina Garcia (D-LA/Bell Gardens/Bellflower/Cerritos/Commerce/ Downey/Montebello/Pico Rivera) 916- 319-2058
• David Hadley (R-Torrance/Gardena/Lomita/Manhattan Beach/Palos Verdes Estates/Redondo Beach/West Carson) 916- 319-2066
• Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) (916) 319-2019
• Rocky Chavez (R-Oceanside/Calsbad/Encinitas/Vista) (916) 319-2076

If you live in one of those districts, or if you run a business in one, or have customers there, please contact that member.

More generally, there is a website where anyone can go to express their support for expanding the benefits of Net Metering to muni customers throughout the State.  Just click on the button to make this happen:

Sadly, the list of entities opposing this bill includes Pasadena Water and Power - looks like we need some political leadership here in our own backyard to get PWP on board.

We will update this post as the bill progresses through the legislature - watch this space!

The new year is well underway (Happy New Year!), and so it is timely to revisit the question of financial incentives to Go Solar in the Run on Sun service area.  (You can read more detail about all of these incentives on our Solar Financing page.)

Federal Tax Credit

Beyond a doubt, the most significant incentive for going solar is the 30% federal tax credit.  Previously set to expire at the end of this year, the federal solar tax credit was extended late last year, continuing at the present 30% through 2019. 

The credit applies to solar installations in every utility’s territory, so no matter where you live in the U.S., this credit applies to you.  (NB: this is a tax credit, not an income deduction, so you need the tax “appetite” to take full advantage of this incentive - check with your tax advisor.)  For residential clients, the basis for the credit is the full cost of your solar project, less any rebate that you might receive from the utility.  Commercial clients, who must declare any rebate as income, do not need to deduct their rebate from the system cost when calculating the basis.

Utility Rebates

Once common everywhere, utility rebates are going the way of the dodo—with one or two notable exceptions.  We have rank ordered the local utilities below, based on the reliability of their rebate program.

Pasadena Water & Power

The big winner, again and by far, is the solar rebate program operated by our own Pasadena Water and Power.  Year in and year out, PWP offers rebates to its customers in a transparent and consistent manner - something that cannot be said of any of its neighboring utilities.

As of this writing, PWP is offering a rebate of $0.45/Watt for both residential and commercial customers, and a rebate of $0.90/Watt to non-profit customers (who cannot take advantage of the federal tax credit).  Alternatively, PWP also offers a performance-based incentive that is paid out over two years based on the actual production of the system.  Residential and commercial customers are paid 14.4¢/kWh, whereas non-profit customers are paid 28.8¢/kWh.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

LADWP offers a rebate, if you have the stamina to receive it. Vexed with the most bureaucratic process to be found this side of Orwell’s 1984 dystopia, applying for and receiving a rebate from DWP often feels like a reward for a life well spent.

That said, LADWP is currently offering rebates of $0.30/Watt to residential customers, $0.40/Watt to commercial, and $1.15/Watt to non-profits.  Just don’t hold your breath.

Burbank Water & Power and Glendale Water & Power

These two municipal utilities often feel like one and the same given their similar approach to rebates - which is to say, now you see ‘em, no you don’t.

Unlike their neighbor to the east, neither BWP nor GWP is able to maintain a rebate program throughout the year.  Instead, both open their rebate windows on or about July 1st (i.e., the start of their fiscal year) and then hand out money until it is gone, at which time the window slams shut until the following July 1.

Burbank’s program operates under a lottery, which last year opened on July 1 and was exhausted by August 15.  In addition, BWP imposes restrictions on the azimuth and pitch of rebated systems, despite their being no technical justification for doing so.

Glendale’s program is even less transparent, and the installation/rebate process is outlined in a 23-step ode to inefficiency.

We will revisit both of these program in mid-June to provide what guidance we can to the residents of these two cities.

Azusa Light & Water

The “Solar Partnership Program” in Azusa is fully subscribed.  There is a wait list that solar-hopeful customers can get on in the hope that at some point there will be rebate funds available - with no guarantees that there ever will be.

Anaheim

The Anaheim Solar Incentive Program was fully subscribed as of October 1, 2015 and is now closed, with no published plans to revise the program in the future.

Southern California Edison

SCE’s rebates, which were part of the larger, California Solar Initiative, have expired and no new funds are anticipated.  Of course, SCE customers still have the highest electricity rates around, which provides its own—albeit perverse—incentive to Go Solar!