California lawmakers stall on electricity bill surcharge

 

The San Diego Union-Tribune --Aug. 13

Aug. 13--If all went right, in the view of solar power advocates, Henk Tysma of Alpine would have become an adult "poster child" for their clean energy technology. For one thing, Tysma's installation of a photovoltaic system on the rooftop of his auto rental dealership marks a local milestone. San Diego Gas & Electric officials mark it as the 1,500th such system in the region, which includes 1.3 million electric customers.

Utility officials further note that applications for solar power installations have soared from a couple of dozen in 2000 to more than 475 so far this year.

But Tysma's public demonstration of his system today comes a day after legislators stalled a bill that advocates say could lead to the construction of a million solar homes in the state over the next decade. Senate Bill 1652, sponsored by Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Culver City, with input from the state Environmental Protection Agency, was put on hold yesterday by the Assembly's Appropriations Committee.

And despite Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's repeated expressions of support for solar power, he did not offer public support for the legislation backed by his own agency.

While not a final defeat, the setback in the Assembly makes passage of the measure a long shot in the two weeks remaining until the Legislature adjourns. "We still have a pulse here," said V. John White, director of the Center of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento. What gives White hope is Schwarzenegger's earlier public commitments to solar power.

White also says the governor's staff now understands that widespread adoption of solar power can spare the state the cost -- and resultant pollution from the construction of peaker power plants, units used only at times of highest power consumption.

SB 1652 would raise $100 million annually over the next decade by tacking a 25- to 30-cent monthly surcharge onto residential power bills. The money would be disbursed to home builders to subsidize the installation of photovoltaic power systems on new homes.

The legislation would also mandate that at least 5 percent of new homes come solar-equipped, and increase that by 5 percent each year until half of all new homes had photovoltaic systems. By comparison, fewer than 1 percent of new homes now are built with such systems.

"We want to jump-start this market," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, clean-energy advocate for Environment California, which claims 50,000 members and was a prime supporter of the bill.

Del Chiaro said the bill focuses on new home construction because building with solar is 30 percent cheaper than adding it later, and increases the payback on the investment.

The subsidies would decline each year, reflecting what advocates say would be the falling cost of photovoltaic systems as mass-production efficiencies kicked in.

"For every dollar a ratepayer invests in a solar power system, the return ranges from $2 to $5 over the life of the system, 25 to 30 years," said Del Chiaro.

But the legislation was opposed by the home-building industry and SDG&E, which says it fears adding costs to residential power bills. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the utility said the solar technology was particularly useful for power management.

"One of the real advantages is that solar is most active (on hot days) when we have our highest demand, so it is in effect a peaking resource," said Ed Van Herik.

Tim Coyle, senior vice president of the California Building Industry Association, representing 6,000 home-building companies, said his group did not like mandates requiring solar home construction, and it fears adding costs to housing that already is the highest-priced in the nation. "It remains questionable as to whether $20,000 photovoltaic systems can be absorbed into a marketplace in which housing affordability is declining every month," Coyle said.

By the builders' calculations, he added, photovoltaic systems will be costly to homeowners -- not save them money -- and the industry prefers a nonmandated program that would reduce those costs.

"But we are not opposed to the idea of harnessing this technology and making it useful and effective for our home consumers," he said. Solar advocates say the building industry exaggerates photovoltaic system costs, plus the likelihood those costs would fall as adoption of the technology grows.

What's more, they say, the solar program would eliminate the need for more than 30 peaking power plants, with a combined cost of $1 billion, while reducing pollution and dependence on fossil fuels.

Cecilia Aquillon, director of business development for Kyocera Solar, said that the company will begin large-scale manufacturing of solar panels in Tijuana this fall, with an engineering and sales support center in San Diego. The new manufacturing plant, she said, was planned partly in response to the company's anticipation of a rapidly growing market in the state. "California is the third-largest solar market in the world," she said. "Japan is No. 1, and Germany is No. 2."

What was important to Tysma, the Alpine businessman, was slashing soaring bills down to something manageable and tapping a source of clean energy to boot.

Mission accomplished, he reports.

"My monthly power bill is $8.75," said Tysma, who lightheartedly added that it is more than the $5 monthly bill for his 5,000-square-foot home, which is also solar-powered.

Tysma's only complaint is that current rules fail to give him credit for all the excess electricity his system generates and is used by others on the SDG&E grid.

"Maybe I should run extension cords to my neighbors and give them the power, or light up a whole hill around Christmas," he said.

 

-----

To see more of The San Diego Union-Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.uniontrib.com .

(c) 2004, The San Diego Union-Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. SRE,