California Senate passes million solar roof legislation
SACRAMENTO, California, US, June 8, 2005 (Refocus Weekly)
The State Senate in California has approved a bill to promote solar PV, and the legislation now moves to the state assembly where it will have several more critical votes over the next few months.
The California Million Solar Roofs bill (SB1) was approved by the senate by a
vote of 28-to-3. Advocates estimate that 20,000 emails were sent to legislators
in response to action alerts from 15 different public interest, environmental
and solar industry groups.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to install 3,000 MW of solar capacity by
2018, to generate 5% of the state's power at peak periods. Supply shortages at
those times created crises in 2000 and 2001.
The bill would provide rebates for residential and commercial consumers that
install solar panels of at least 1 kW (but not more than 1 MW of capacity) and
which generate surplus power for sale into the grid. The legislation proposes
that ratepayers provide incentives for ten years in a move that "will
jump-start this very promising technology," according to republican senate
John Campbell, one of the bill's authors.
Co-author, democratic senator Kevin Murray, promised to work out objections from
labour unions and cap the level of incentive that could be offered each year to
ensure that power bills do not increase to pay incentives.
The legislation is “the most ambitious solar energy policy ever introduced in
the United States,” according to the Vote Solar Initiative in San Francisco.
Solar rebates will decline by 7% per year as the solar industry matures and cuts
costs to become competitive with conventional electricity.
It will require all homebuilders of developments of more than 50 homes to offer
solar power to all buyers by 2010, with the goal that 50% of all new homes would
be built with solar systems in 13 years. It would also raise the current net
metering cap to accommodate the 3,000 MW of solar and allocate 10% of the funds
for low income and affordable housing solar installations, along with technical
and financial assistance.
SB 1 provides higher rebates for super energy efficient buildings and
zero-energy buildings to capitalize on the benefits of combining solar and
energy efficiency, and requires that all utilities in the state offer rebates
for solar systems, allowing all Californian’s to participate in the program.
The initiative will reduce CO2 emissions by 50 megatonne over the lifetime of
the installed solar systems, make solar PV more affordable by creating economies
of scale, reduces reliance on imported fossil fuels, creates jobs and strengthen
the power grid. The proposed law limits the cost of administration to 2% of the
fund and would prohibit the California Energy Commission from establishing any
other program (beyond the Million Solar Roofs Initiative) to encourage
installations of residential or commercial solar PV systems. The CEC would
conduct random audits of solar energy systems to evaluate their operational
performance, and would be required to submit an assessment of the program to the
legislature by 2009 and every third year after that.
More than 150,000 homes will be built each year in California in coming years,
and funding a million solar roofs “is a cost-effective investment by
ratepayers in peak electricity generation capacity and ratepayers will recoup
the cost of their investment through lower rates as a result of avoiding
purchases of electricity at peak rates, with additional system reliability and
pollution reduction benefits,” the legislation explains.
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