Many Solar Incentives May Soon Go DarkSep 27 - San Diego Business Journal (CA)Many of the incentive programs that have helped California - and San Diego in particular - lead the nation in solar installation projects are quickly running out. Thanks to the stunning popularity of adding rooftop solar panels to homes and businesses, the incentive programs are being depleted of cash earlier than projected. "There have been a number of federal and state incentives that are designed to get more adoption of solar power, but pretty soon these policy initiatives are going to sunset," said Holly Smithson, president of clean energy trade group CleanTech San Diego. San Diego Gas & Electric and Pacific Gas and Electric have stopped accepting rebate applications for residential projects - and that will likely extend to commercial projects as well, said Jackie Pitera, strategy and markets manager for San Diego-based Borrego Solar Inc. In California, incentives include California Solar Initiative rebates and certain utility rate structures that work particularly well for solar-generating customers. In San Diego County, 379 businesses have taken advantage of the CSI rebates and have gone solar. This is the second highest in the state, following the 614 businesses that have done the same in Los Angeles County. About 1,200 businesses in the nine Bay Area counties have adopted solar, government data show. Urgency to Install These rebates and solar-friendly rate structures can make or break a solar installation, and with both structures set to reach capacity in the near future, there's urgency to act now to take advantage of the economics of going solar in San Diego, Pitera said. Pitera projects that incentives through San Diego Gas & Electric will likely run out at the end of 2015. In other parts of the state, businesses and homeowners will have to act sooner - the incentives are quickly declining and could expire by next year. But that might not matter to consumers, who are investing in them anyway, according to a new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association. Statewide, California added 258.3 megawatts of residential and commercial rooftop-based solar energy during the first half of 2013. About 20 percent of this power went to consumers who didn't take advantage of the CSI incentives, but rather found value in investing in solar for its own merits. "In terms of state goals, solar's been very successful, and the uptake has happened much more quickly than we thought," said Neal Reardon, interim supervisor of the customer generation section at the California Public Utilities Commission. The CSI rebate program, which received government approval in 2006 and launched in 2007, planned to subsidize about 1,940 megawatts of such installations over a 10-year period, Reardon said. But because of the popularity of solar in California, it'll likely expire much sooner than 2016. "The idea was, as solar became more and more competitive over time, incentives would drop down and eventually go down to zero when they were no longer necessary," Reardon said. Bill Could Halt Rooftop Solar Despite the quickly decreasing availability of state incentives, a number of policies exist to encourage consumers to adopt solar. Net metering is one of the key ways that solar companies are still growing their customer base despite the reduction in CSI incentives, according to the SEIA report. California's three utility providers - SDG&E, PG&E and Southern California Edison - must buy excess clean energy produced by a consumer. That means during peak sunlight hours, for instance, consumers can make a profit from any unused energy. "At night, when the sun stops shining, you're going onto the standard utilities grid," Smithson said. "But you're not paying for that because you had excess power during the day with the solar panels." This could change, however, due to a new bill awaiting approval from Gov. Jerry Brown. The bill, called AB327, could have tremendous impact on the way solar consumers are compensated for the energy they produce. It's important for consumers considering installing solar panels to follow the passage of the bill, Smithson said, because the bill would allow the utilities companies to switch the on-the-grid rates for solar users. "This is going to have an impact on whether or not people go solar, because consumers will have to be convinced that it'll still be economically advantageous," Smithson said. "Consumers are really going to have to understand whether they're going to realize savings on their energy bills, or this could bring the solar rooftop market to a screeching halt." http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=30135036 |