California Universities Set Aggressive Renewables Path: 100% By 2025

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The state university system of California just took the aggressive renewable energy goals set at the state level and turned them up to 11. The University of California system is committed to reaching its own goal of being powered 100% by renewable energy by 2025 – 20 years before the entire state’s deadline of 2045.

The announcement is in parallel with the system’s intent to become carbon neutral the same year. According to the release, the California universities’ system has already saved $220 million with its energy efficiency programs, and continues to leverage the benefits of its solar farm in Fresno, the largest solar purchase of any university in the United States.

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“From LED lighting to all-electric fleets, we are proud of the countless energy efficiency and clean energy actions we have taken to tackle climate change,” said David Phillips, UC’s associate vice president of Energy and Sustainability. “These ambitious new targets, which align with those of our student environmental leaders, will ensure that our electricity comes from clean sources, extending UC leadership in modeling sustainability solutions.”

The systems new goals go far beyond just increasing renewables, however. Among the related goals are:

Clean energy: In addition to its 100 percent clean energy commitment by 2025, UC will endeavor to reduce its energy-use intensity (energy per square foot per year) by 2 percent year over year through more efficient measures. By 2018, the university’s own power company will provide 100 percent clean electricity to participating UC campuses.
Green buildings: No new universities’ buildings or major renovations after June 2019, except in special circumstances, will use on-site fossil fuel combustion, such as natural gas, for space and water heating.
Sustainable procurement: UC will use its market power to drive the availability of more sustainable products and services. Examples of new goals include 25 percent green spend and 25 percent economically and socially responsible spend. Enhanced requirements for its procurement departments and new standards for their suppliers will further support sustainable sourcing.

As usual, California is leading the way, and in this case it’s the students leading the charge. It makes one almost take stock of the future and not freak out. Almost.

California Governor Must Sign SB 700 To Make SB 100 A Reality

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Something magical happened in California yesterday. Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 100, which takes the state’s renewable portfolio standards (RPS) to 100% by 2045.

Imagine that. The world’s fifth-largest economy is now on its way to getting 100% of its electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources within the next 30 years. If you had suggested such a thing even seven years ago, when I first joined the solar industry, people would have called you insane (or worse).

But now that it’s done, it’s time to complete the circle and get the governor’s signature on SB 700, the companion bill to SB 100 that extends the incentive program for energy storage.

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Governor Brown himself appears to recognize that the two bills are inextricably intertwined, saying at yesterday’s signing ceremony that the 100% by 2045 goal couldn’t be reached without a significant increase in storage.

“To get to 100% clean energy in a manner that ensures reliability and reduces cost, we must use a variety of strategies,” Brown said in his signing statement. “Energy storage, increased efficiency and adjusting energy use to the time of day when we have the most power will all help with the transition.”

So what’s staying your hand, governor? Get on this and sign SB 700 already.

When SB 700 passed a couple of weeks ago, Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association, said this:

SB 700 will do for storage what SB 1 did for solar over a decade ago, namely create a mainstream market by driving up demand and driving down costs all while creating jobs and clean energy choices for consumers.

From SB 1 we got to SB 100, and it’s time for California to lead on storage as well as it has lead on solar energy. After all, as California goes, so goes the rest of the country – and the rest of the country has a lot of catching up to do.

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SB 700 Passes California Assembly – SGIP Program Extended Five Years

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The final days of the California legislative session have been big ones for clean energy. First, the Assembly passed a 100% renewable portfolio standard (RPS) on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they moved on to extend the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) for five years, as well as adding $700 million in additional funding.

Now the bill will go back to the Senate for a concurrence vote and then on to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature. There are not expected to be any blips in that process.

As the California Public Utilities Commission says on its website:

The CPUC’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) provides incentives to support existing, new, and emerging distributed energy resources. SGIP provides rebates for qualifying distributed energy systems installed on the customer’s side of the utility meter.

For consumer-sited solar, that typically means batteries.

Bill sponsor. Senator Scott Wiener, had this to say to SolarWakeup after the bill passed:

“We are one step closer to meeting our aggressive renewable energy goals,” said Senator Wiener. “By expanding our use of energy storage we will be able to use solar power every hour of the day, not just when the sun is shining. This bill will also help to expand solar use in every city and neighborhood in California, not just those that can afford it. SB 700 will ensure that all communities benefit from these rebates and from an increase in renewable energy.”

“We are making the sun shine at night!” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, the 500-member clean energy business group that has championed SB 700 for the past two years. ”SB 700 will do for storage what SB 1 did for solar over a decade ago, namely create a mainstream market by driving up demand and driving down costs all while creating jobs and clean energy choices for consumers.”

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Reaction from across the California solar industry was positive.

“Today’s Assembly vote to pass Senate Bill 700 is a win for clean energy and for all Californians,” said Alex McDonough, Vice President of Public Policy at Sunrun. “Sunrun has seen demand for home solar paired with batteries grow rapidly in recent years, as homeowners seek increased control over their energy bills and security for their families during power outages. We now look forward to the Senate’s concurrence on this important legislation that will unlock the incredible value that home batteries can provide for all Californians and our electricity grid.”

“Storage is an essential piece of building a carbon-free electric sector, and we applaud the Assembly for recognizing its role in our clean energy economy and passing SB700,” said Susannah Churchill, Vote Solar’s California Director. “Solar and storage are like peanut butter and chocolate: great on their own and even better together. We’re inspired by the last two days of forward-thinking among our California lawmakers and encourage continued momentum toward a fully decarbonized power sector. That means passing AB 893 and AB 813, which are both critical pieces of legislation to move the state and the country forward on clean energy and climate.”

“We are thrilled to see SB700 pass the Assembly,” said Rick Umoff, SEIA’s California state director. “This is a measure that we were proud to support because it will grow customer-sited energy storage, create local jobs and offer more tools to stabilize the grid. Our members and their customers will have an easier time deploying critical storage technology to the betterment of low income and disadvantaged communities, schools, hospitals and homes among others. We applaud CALSSA for the work it did to get this measure through the Assembly and we urge speedy passage in the Senate and enactment by Governor Brown.”

The Coming Battle: FERC Rules Storage Consumers Can’t Be Treated Differently Than Others By Utilities

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The new battle lines are being drawn, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave consumers a victory yesterday as utilities struggle to come to grips with customer-sited energy storage.

For years, utilities have tried, using various methods, to treat solar consumers as a separate class of customer, giving them the right to charge extra fees (among other mechanisms) that they charge to no other customer in their ratepayer base. These efforts, by and large, have been met with appropriate scorn by public utilities commissions around the country and have been rejected.

Now, however, a new front is opening, and it concerns energy storage consumers and curtailment, and the utilities are at it again.

In this specific case, Southern California Edison (SCE) brought its curtailment plan to FERC and asked if it could treat storage consumers differently than other consumers by charging an additional fee for “wholesale distribution access.” FERC, appropriately, said, “Greedy utilities say what now?”

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Through our invaluable friends at Utility Dive, we get this from FERC:

SoCal Edison has failed to demonstrate why it is just and reasonable and not unduly discriminatory or preferential to curtail one class of interconnection customer’s load (in this case, an energy storage device’s Charging Demand) without providing an opportunity to have the energy storage device’s load studied and to pay for the system upgrades needed to allow its load to have the same curtailment priority as other wholesale loads.”

In other words, get the heck out of here with that weak nonsense.

Of course, SCE has 30 days to get its ducks in a row and try again (say, by doing the study that FERC says is necessary), but the initial finding protects energy storage customers from being targeted by utilities looking to recoup losses from other investments, and it protects distributed-generation options for the moment. Kudos to FERC for doing the right thing.

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FERC says SCE can’t treat storage customers differently in service