By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

There are days when you read about academic studies and wonder out loud, "Did we really have to study THAT?" As I read the excellent story on KSL's (NBC, Channel 5, Salt Lake City) website about a study concerning renewable portfolio standards (RPS), I had just that sort of revelation. It seems that our intrepid researchers have discovered that states with stricter RPS's encourage great investment in renewable energy. In other news, water is still wet and the Pope is still Catholic. I'm not diminishing the work by KSL reporter Amy Joi O'Donoghue, who does an excellent job of discussing the issues surrounding RPS's and then bringing it back to the Utah RPS (which most solar advocates think is mighty weak), but I did scratch my head at the work of the researchers because, for reals, this outcome was as obvious as they come. The weird thing is, the researchers themselves seemed surprised by their findings. Take Lincoln Davies, a law professor at the University of Utah who participated in the research:

Strong laws work really well and weak laws don't. The more aggressive the law, the more effective they are, which means they will also push down price over time.

I'm not arguing with Davies, of course. It makes total sense that stronger laws would encourage stronger compliance, which in turn would lead to greater investment. But I just keep coming back to the question of whether this really was a question that needed to be studied in the first place. O'Donoghue notes:

About 30 states around the country have some sort of renewable energy standard on the books. Hawaii has the strictest standard at 100 percent, with Vermont at 75 percent. California has a standard of 50 percent.

So let's recap: States with strict RPS's have utilities that invest in renewable energy. States that have weak or loophole-riddled RPS's do not. Well, at least that's clear now. More: Study: Aggressive renewable energy standards spur solar, wind investments

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Because I need another thing to keep me up at night.... The Department of Homeland Security this week revealed that Russian hackers attacked our electrical grid last year and could have created electricity blackouts throughout the United States, thanks to our overreliance on a centralized grid. You'd think we'd have taken the hint by now. But no. In Washington, the geniuses at the Department of Energy are still trying to figure out how to bailout economically untenable coal and nuclear plants. Cool. Newsweek reporter Jason Murdock has the terrifying details:

Hackers working for a state-sponsored cyber-espionage unit with alleged links to Russia could have caused electricity blackouts in the U.S. last year after gaining access to some utility control rooms, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official disclosed this week. Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial control system analysis at the agency, said that hackers “got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and mess with power flows, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news from a federal briefing on Monday.

The best part of this whole story is that they didn't throw the switches. The Russian hackers were just letting us know they could gain access to them any time they wanted and throw them should they decide to do it. So the solution is...a more centralized grid? Maybe this report will be the wake-up call the federal government needs to realize it's time to take seriously electrical security and move to a distributed-generation grid. Heavily solar states are already moving in that direction, and as battery costs continue to plummet, you can expect the push for a decentralized grid to intensify. But I'm not hopeful. After all, we have put people in charge of these agencies that seem to think Russian hacking is just something we have to live with and not something we need to combat vigorously. I just fear that next time, we won't be able to escape unscathed. More: Russian Hackers 'Could Have Caused Electricity Blackouts’ In The U.S.

Duke Aims At Full Monopoly. Just after taking a victory lap for no longer allowing homeowners the ability to put solar on their homes, Duke Energy in South Carolina is giving homeowners that can’t install solar on their homes the ability to join their community solar projects. In this episode of up is down, Duke hopes that solar doesn’t work for people becomes a message that gets homeowners to stop trying to put solar on their homes. Folks in South Carolina, especially solar workers, should be on the phone all day long to their local news outlets and tell the real story, your jobs are on the line. The broader question about public opinion is something that was prompted by BNEF’s Jenny Chase’s tweet. I agree that we do our work but rarely talk about climate change in our work. A
What Michigan Could Have Been. Michigan was the manufacturing leader for solar and the ecosystem of raw materials about 10 years ago. Since then, it has essentially reversed on most of the policies and now is focused on destroying net metering and replace it with something that is nowhere near net metering. Quite the opposite this new policy would result in residential and distributed solar to essentially stop. Politicians should feel a political reality for this kind of policy and those running races should use the issue to make that decision be a bad one politically.
EV Benefits Everyone In Kansas City. KCP&L is making an interesting point about electric vehicles that have a funny similarity to the solar argument. I don’t disagree with KCP&L when they say that they should be able to rate base electric vehicle charging stations because it is a good thing for everyone including the utility shareholders by growing demand. The part that I find intriguing is that solar doesn’t get the same benefit when they argue about net metering and the benefit to all, instead arguing the cost-shift which isn’t real.  
Get Active And Win More. I am bringing this back up for discussion since it is relevant with this data point. Every single solar company should be doing legislative outreach at every level, including the local City and County level. In Riverside County, the utility didn’t want to increase net metering caps even when the County passed a ordinance to do so. Now a local company is helping the company put some pressure to enable the market to grow again which all started with local outreach. Job well done in this case. Are you doing any local outreach that I can highlight?
SEIA Feedback. Nice to see the outreach from many of you about the changes made in SEIA’s C-suite. The general consensus I agree with, why now and what happened. The trade cases and tariffs didn’t happen last week and it seems like an odd time to make the moves but we have to hope that the board has a strategy in mind to meet the strategic vision. As the changes at FERC enable a potential bailout for nuclear and coal plants, maybe the concept is to drive some victory for solar so that more distributed generation can be built at the same time to help the grid stability that FERC could be looking for. I look forward to seeing what’s next for Tom Kimbis and really hope that it is in solar, his voice and advocacy has been great for a long time and hope this continues.

Have a great day!

News

 

Have a great day!
Yann

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Last week during Intersolar North America, Duke Carolinas announced it had hit its 2% net metering cap in South Carolina for residential solar installations, meaning anyone that installs after August 1 will be compensated under less generous net metering rules. And low and behold, a week later, Duke Energy opens its first community solar farm in the state. Fancy that. I'm sure you can see my two minds fighting with themselves over here. On the one hand, I'm all about community solar. As someone whose house is not optimally oriented to have solar on my roof, I'm on the email every couple of months or so begging my mayor to start a community program in my home town (Hi Mayor Welo!). On the other hand, it's pretty convenient that the community solar program only starts when most South Carolinians within Duke's service area won't be ABLE to put solar on their roofs for full compensation. Here's a quotation from Kodwo Ghartey-Tagoe, state president for Duke Energy in South Carolina, about the "Shared Solar Program" (Duke South Carolina's community solar program) from the release announcing the program:

This is a great program for any customers who don't own their residence or are unable to put a solar facility on their property. We estimate that residential customers will earn back their initial payment in credits from the solar array in three years. Customers are not only saving on their electric bill, they are directly supporting a renewable energy future in South Carolina for generations to come.

Huh. "Unable to put a solar facility on their property." After the utility (and, in fairness, other utilities in the state) put the kibosh on raising the net metering cap a few months ago, thereby putting a lot of people in the position of being "unable to put a solar facility on their property" because it was no longer financially viable. Now, I'm not suggesting there's some great conspiracy here. It's actually a brilliant business decision, looked at from strictly that perspective. I just feel a bit sorry for the South Carolinians who are now at Duke's mercy when it comes to deciding from where they can buy their solar electricity. More: Duke region hits South Carolina net metering cap