U.S. Solar Capacity Grew Over 400 Percent In The Last Four Years

Solar energy is booming across the U.S., with capacity up an astounding 418 percent in the last four years alone, according to data released this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Residential and commercial rooftop solar, along with other forms of photovoltaic (PV), have grown steadily over the past four years, specifically those that are net-metered. When customers install their own solar panels in states with a net metering policy, they are compensated for the excess electricity they send back to the grid. According to the EIA, these net metered applications have increased every year by approximately 1,100 MW since 2010. California currently has the largest net metered solar capacity with 38 percent of the nation’s total. Not far behind are New Jersey and Massachusetts, which together represent 21 percent of the total capacity in the U.S. Solar_Capacity Net metering has been at the center of several recent battles between the solar industry, consumers and utilities across the U.S. As rooftop solar in particular booms, utility companies are growing increasingly concerned about the threat it poses to their bottom line. As more customers install solar panels, utilities will sell fewer units of energy and argue they’ll have to charge more in order to cover the cost of maintenance and labor. But distributed energy sources like rooftop solar also provide a benefit to utilities by generating during peak hours, when a utility has to provide electricity to more people than at other times during the day and energy costs are at their highest. Solar panels feed excess energy back to the grid, helping to alleviate the pressure during peak demand. In addition, because less electricity is being transmitted to customers through transmission lines, it saves utilities on the wear and tear to the lines and cost of replacing them with new ones. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the shadowy conservative group funded by fossil fuel corporations and petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch, has set its sights on weakening net metering laws across the country. Net metering survived attacks in Colorado and Kansas and Vermont increased its policy in a bipartisan effort. Last year, Arizona added what amounts to a $5 per month surcharge for solar customers, a move that was widely seen as a compromise, particularly after ALEC and other Koch-backed groups got involved. In the most recent net metering fight, Oklahoma took the controversial step of passing legislation to level a fee on customers who install solar panels or small wind turbines on their own property. Gov. Mary Fallin (R) signed the measure this week but took the rare step of issuing an executive order emphasizing the importance of renewable energy and fair implementation of the new legislation. According to the new EIA data, “utility scale PV applications, which are 1 MW or greater, have also expanded significantly and currently account for 5,564 MW.” And the third principal contributing factor to the explosive growth of solar energy in the U.S. is from solar thermal energy. Three major solar thermal plants — Solano, Genesis and Ivanpah — came on line in 2013, adding a total of 650 MW of capacity. Solar thermal technology is particularly groundbreaking for its use of a ‘salt battery’ that allows the plants to keep generating electricity even when the sun isn’t shining. While an increase of 9,731 megawatts (MW) in solar generating capacity since 2010 is remarkable, solar still accounts for just 1.13 percent of total electric generating capacity in the U.S. Electricity generation in America is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. As of November 2013, renewable energy sources, including hydro, accounted for about 13 percent of total net generation, according to EIA data.

Ontario Shuts Down Last Coal-Fired Plant

Ontario has become the first jurisdiction in North America to fully eliminate coal as a source of electricity generation. The Thunder Bay Generating Station, Ontario's final remaining coal-fired facility, has burned its last supply of coal and will be converted to burn biomass. According to the Ontario Ministry of Energy, this means the province has fulfilled its commitment to close all of its coal plants in advance of its year-end 2014 target. Ontario has replaced coal with a mix of emission-free electricity sources like wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, along with lower-emission electricity sources like natural gas and biomass. Last year, Ontario also introduced the Ending Coal for Cleaner Air Act, which the ministry says would ensure coal-fired generation as a source of electricity in the province never happens again. Citing a 2005 independent study, the ministry says the estimated cost of coal generation was approximately $4.4 billion annually when health, environmental, and financial costs were taken into consideration.

Battle Lines Drawn in State-by-State Defense of Net Metering and Solar

It’s been an interesting month on the net-metering front. Investor-owned utilities (IOUs), led by their trade group the Edison Electric Institute, last fall launched a state-by-state campaign claiming that net metering creates an existential threat to their traditional regulated-monopoly business model. Beginning in 1982, net metering laws have been adopted in 43 states, where state legislatures were convinced that the practice was fair value to both utilities and all ratepayers. IOUs want to slash net-metering rates, or impose high fixed-rate connection fees or surcharges, or eliminate net meter entirely. Where they’re successful, they will reduce the value of solar to homeowners and sharply cut the profits of third-party solar providers (often called leasing companies) like SolarCity, Sunrun, Sungevity and Verengo. The solar lease companies have formed their own lobbying group, The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) to defend net metering. TASC finds allies among local installer groups (state solar energy industry associations), advocacy organizations like ASES chapters and Vote Solar, and even with the new, conservative-leaning political group TUSK (Tell Utilities Solar won’t be Killed), now actively lobbying on behalf of solar in Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma, Louisiana and both Carolinas. The name was not chosen randomly: TUSK’s logo features an elephant, and the organization is co-chaired by Tom Morrisey, former chairman of Arizona’s Republican Party, and former Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr. While Vermont last month greatly expanded its net metering provisions, the battle continues in other states. In California, where state law requires a replacement for the existing net metering system by the end of 2015, the Public Utilities Commission voted at the end of March to let existing solar owners keep their existing net metering contacts for 20 years from the time of installation. Here in Colorado, the public utilities commission separated the issue of net-metering rates from the Xcel Energy rate-setting process. A series of meetings to hash out the value of rooftop solar is scheduled to begin April 29. Xcel, which now pays 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour, will argue that the rate should fall to 4.5 cents. TASC and allies like Vote Solar and the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (CoSEIA) will argue that the rate should reflect the savings solar provides in all costs of providing power to homes, including the costs of fuel, central power plants, transmission lines and pollution abatement. Xcel’s home state of Minnesota has already begun that process to determine the value of solar (VOS). The result may turn out to be a rise in rates paid to solar homeowners. In Austin, Texas, where the municipal power company pioneered the VOS concept, the VOS tariff paid to solar homeowners dropped from 12.8 cents/kWh to 10.7 c/kWh in January, due mainly to the reduced cost of generating electricity with natural gas. Louisiana’s Public Service Commission last month decided to hire a consultant to figure out VOS issues, and after a false start in the bidding process now hopes to name that consultant within a month. Casting Loose from the Grid? While all this is going on, the Rocky Mountain Institute issued a report claiming that the real long-term threat to regulated utilities lies in the falling cost of energy storage systems. Driven by the growing popularity of hybrid and fully-electric cars and delivery fleets, efficient batteries are growing cheaper. That process will accelerate rapidly as Tesla and Panasonic carry through plans to build the world’s largest battery factory somewhere in the American Southwest. When solar homeowners can afford to store their own electricity in a big, cheap battery bank, they’ll no longer need the grid, RMI argues. In less than 20 years, if electricity prices continue to rise, consumers will begin to leave the grid in droves, just as cell phone owners have cut loose from land lines over the past decade. Source: American Solar Energy Society

Colorado solar advocates speak up for net metering

Rooftop solar advocates raised their voices in Colorado this week. The Alliance for Solar Choice, a solar industry group focused on public policy, coordinated several events aimed at raising awareness and support for solar among Colorado lawmakers and regulators. Colorado is one among many states where utility companies are pushing to reduce net metering benefits. Net metering is the policy in 43 states that require utilities to pay home and business owners for the excess power they generate and feed back onto the grid. Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy pays the retail rate for excess solar – 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour – that rooftop solar customers generate. However, the utility is arguing that the power is only worth 4.6 cents and has asked the Public Utilities Commission to change the net metering policy. Hundreds of Colorado solar industry leaders showed up on capital hill Tuesday for Lobby Day, said Meghan Nutting, TASC member and director of government affairs for SolarCity. “We don’t have a legislative play in Colorado right now,” Nutting said. “We just wanted to get the conversation started. We did have a really good discussion with the house majority leader.” There was also significant public support for solar spreading throughout the state Tuesday. “Colorado Solar Rights was the most trending topic on Twitter in Denver,” Nutting said. On Wednesday, the PUC heard from stakeholders in three hours of comment. The speakers had signed up in advance and brought great insight and perspective to the discussion, but there was no public comment allowed. Commissioners will be taking public comment through April 29 when they are expected to make a decision about how to proceed. PUC Chairman Joshua Epel said he wanted everyone to “put their stake in the ground” and say what they thought the price should be excess power generated with rooftop solar panels. “He’s definitely ready to get into it,” Nutting said. Others said the PUC should commission a study. And still others argued there are already too many studies – it’s time for action. One recurring point in the discussion was that net metering poses no serious threat to utilities yet. Less than 1 percent of Xcel’s energy portfolio in Colorado comes from distributed solar, Nutting said. That hasn’t stopped utilities in other states from fighting net metering either. The Kansas legislature just secured the future of net metering there. The utilities tried to do away with the benefit even though only 201 of 900,000 households have rooftop solar panels or small wind turbines. “With such a tiny solar market, these powerful utilities thought they would be able to completely eliminate net metering without anyone noticing,” according to a release from TASC. “Instead, more than 550 customers contacted their Senator in support of net metering.” The various battles against net metering around the country are just a distraction from the real issue, Nutting said. “This is really about the utility business model,” she said. “It hasn’t changed in more than 100 years. It’s time.”

Xcel Energy Will Offer Solar To Ratepayers at a Higher Price than Customer Owned Rooftop Solar

According to an April 4, 2014 story on KUNC, a public radio station in Northern Colorado, Xcel, a local utility, is asking Colorado state regulators for permission to offer its customers the option to receive some of all of their electricity from a centralized solar power plant. The catch is that those who opt for solar over more conventional forms of energy production will have to pay a surcharge for the privilege. Customers would be able to buy solar created electricity in 25 percent blocks to up to 100 percent of their monthly electric bill. Thus customers can go solar without installing solar panels on their rooftops. Apparently there are a number of residential and business customers who will pay a premium to get their electricity from renewable energy sources. Xcel already has a wind power program called WindSource which charges an extra $2.16 per 100 kilowatt hour. The program has 36,000 customers. The new program, to be called SolarConnect, will start in 2015 pending approval by state regulators. The amount of the surcharge is yet to be determined.

Colorado’s largest solar power facility coming to Pueblo

Xcel Energy and renewable energy developer Community Energy of Boulder on Tuesday announced plans to build the state’s largest solar farm — and the largest east of the Rockies — near Xcel’s Comanche power plant and substation. The solar farm will cover 900 acres of privately owned land. It will feature more than 450,000 small solar panels that move in tandem to track the sun as it crosses the sky. The electricity generated will be equal to the power used by 31,000 homes, according to the developer. Xcel’s main customer base is the Denver area. The project will take about 15 months to build with construction set to begin by late this year or early next year, pending land-use approval by Pueblo County government. The start date for operations is tentatively set for summer 2016. The number of construction jobs tied to the project remains to be finalized, the developer says. The final project cost is undetermined but in excess of $200 million, the developer says. “This project is part of our vision begun in 2010 to bring utility scale solar at a competitive price to Front Range Colorado,” Eric Blank, president of Community Energy’s solar division, said in a statement. “We were drawn to Pueblo County and the Comanche substation as a great combination of high solar insolation, a welcoming community with open land and a strong interconnection point” to the Front Range’s electricity grid, he said. In a telephone interview Tuesday morning, Blank reiterated the company’s yearslong interest in Pueblo and the building site. “We just really liked a number of things about it . . . It just seems a really nice match.” The announcement comes five years after Pueblo County leaders responded to the nation’s call for more solar energy by launching a campaign marketing Pueblo as a prime spot for solar development. Key selling points are the area’s 300 days of sunshine per year and its location on the Front Range grid. Initially, utilities and the solar industry — along with federal and state government officials — opted to focus in Colorado on the San Luis Valley but that push has slowed over the need to build a transmission line to link with the Front Range grid. The Pueblo site is near the electricity substation at the Comanche power plant, which provides a “strong interconnection point with existing infrastructure close to Front Range load centers,” Blank noted. The company says the location offers other benefits: It is under-utilized grazing land surrounded by existing and future industrial users; and the land also is gently sloping that will require minimal grading to prepare it for the solar installation. The solar farm will ultimately be comprised of more than 450,000 mono-crystalline PV modules utilizing a single-axis tracking technology, the company says. The tracking technology follows the sun as it rises in the east and sets in the west, producing power during Xcel Energy’s peak demand periods and generally providing a nice match to daily summer air conditioning loads, the company says. Over the course of its 25-year life, the project will produce more than 6 billion kilowatt hours of solar energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 3.5 million tons, the company says. Pueblo County Economic Development Director Chris Markuson called the project a “huge win for our community” and a “tremendous shot in the arm for our local economy.” “This project demonstrates that renewable energy is ready for prime time and Pueblo County is perfectly positioned to be the center of utility-scale renewable energy production in Colorado,” Markuson said in a statement. “The clean energy produced by solar arrays in Pueblo is both profitable and sustainable while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. David Eves, president and CEO of Public Service Co. of Colorado, a part of Xcel Energy, issued a statement noting the project continues Xcel’s efforts to diversify its energy portfolio. “We believe strongly that solar is for everyone and it is clear that many of our customers and fellow Colorado citizens share our passion for solar energy,” Eves said. “This large-scale generating facility provides the advantage of renewable energy at a price that is right. Solar energy is a part of our future and we want to make sure that solar energy policy encourages the development of solar technology.” - See more at: http://www.chieftain.com/news/2346770-120/solar-energy-pueblo-project#sthash.zuJyc6e0.dpuf