The Los Angeles City Council recently approved a contract with a 250 MW PV plant.  It’s on tribal land, and according to this article, the tribe is pleased with the economics of the deal.

Ratepayers should also be pleased.  This contract adds 2.9% renewables to LADWPs mix, and at a price of 9.1 cents/kWh.  Read the details, here (pdf).

The cost of not switching to renewable resources is immense (depends on how much you value your children, drinking water, things like that).  But the good news is that price of making that switch is not that high at all.

An update on the City of Palo Alto’s progress towards meeting its 33% renewable energy standard:

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Guest blog post from our friend & former colleague Shaun Chapman, SolarCity.

Even two weeks later, the air quality in the hardest hit areas of New York City is still extremely poor. There is an enormous amount of dust, human waste, and previously buried pollution in the air.

The stench of gasoline is also pervasive. Since the storm hit, you can smell gas all over parts of Rockaway and Staten Island, as people line up in cars or on foot waiting for to get what little gas is being rationed each day. It’s ironic that gas is so scarce yet, due to all the emergency gas generators and stoves, our lungs are filled with the stuff.

In the hardest hit places like Rockaway and Gerritsen Beach, people have two choices each day: (1) go get some food for the day, maybe find someone to fill a prescription, or inquire about FEMA assistance; or (2) do none of those things, and wait in a four-hour gas line so they can have some heat that night.

It is in this bleak context that the Solar Sandy Project was conceived. » Read the rest of this entry «

With the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and Once-Through-Cooling plants, Southern California Edison has serious local capacity constraints.  So much so that that SCE is warning their customers that blackouts will result if they don’t conserve energy.  The question is: what’s the long term solution?  Will it be increased renewable distributed generation and energy efficiency, or will it be new natural gas turbines on old OTC sites?  It’s a decision with serious consequences.
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In 2008, Southern California Edison made headlines with an ambitious proposal to build and own 250 MW of solar PV on customer rooftops.  The proposal drew both praise and controversy — the praise for thinking big on distributed generation, and controversy because SCE made the case that not only could they do solar more cheaply than anyone else, but that other programs, such as customer-owned solar, should perhaps go away.
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Solar is a global industry.  It’s important to stay on top of international developments as they can provide important insights into market dynamics.  Joanna Gubman is a penpal of ours–she’s a scholar currently in Germany, studying incentive and business model changes as the German FIT reaches grid parity.  After a recent correspondence, we asked if she’d contribute an article on some recent changes to the German solar market  so that her insights may receive broader exposure.  It’s important to note that these opinions are her own, and do not represent BSW or the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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Massachusetts is one of our nation’s great success stories, due in no small part to their first-rate net metering program. This program has enabled thousands of Massachusetts homes, businesses, and public agencies to go solar, save on their energy bills, and invest in a healthier, more sustainable power grid for us all.  But now, a cap on the state’s net metering program threatens to prevent new customers from getting fair credit on their utility bills for the valuable clean power they put back on the grid for other to use.
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Robert Margolis of NREL was kind enough to give us a presentation on the DOE’s Sunshot Vision Study.

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Vote Solar participated in a hearing at the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission today that was the culmination of several months of work by the electric utilities, the Commission staff, customers, the solar industry, and others to address some of the basic renewable energy policies the Commission has had in place for a number of years.

The purpose of the hearing was to present testimony on, and discuss, the “RCT” or reasonable cost threshold (NM’s version of a rate impact cap). The RCT acts, effectively, as a cap on renewable progress. For 2011, it was 2% of all customers’ aggregated overall annual electric charges, increasing by 0.25% per year until Jan 1, 2015, at which time it will be 3%. Vote Solar is advocating for a methodology that would require the benefits of solar to be considered, thus expanding the amount of solar development in the state. It may not be hugely sexy . . . but trust us, it’s very important!

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Yesterday afternoon in front of a packed house of renewable energy supporters and those opposing clean energy, the Delaware House Energy Committee shot down a bill intended to stop the development of renewable energy. Specially, the legislation (HB 247) called for an immediate freeze to the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard.

The bill’s supporters claimed that Delaware’s policy-makers need a chance to reassess the state’s energy strategy in light of many “changes” that have occurred over the past several years. They must not be referring to those job-creating and clean air producing changes.

After hearing testimony and deliberating the bill, it was clear that Delaware’s elected officials have no desire to reflect upon the decisions that have propelled the state forward as a clean energy leader. A motion to table the legislation, which would have kept HB 247 on life support, was voted down and stopped the bill dead in its tracks – in other words, opponents of Delaware’s clean energy future were sent packing.

Delaware’s elected officials clearly understand the economic, job-creating and environmental benefits that renewable energy brings to the First State. We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Delaware’s renewable and solar champions take a step or two further towards making state an undisputed renewable energy leader for generation to come.

Stay tuned…