Duke Energy Unveils Commercial Solar Leasing In Carolinas

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

In an effort to bring 1 MW of commercial solar development to the Carolinas, Duke Energy has unveiled a solar leasing program to serve those consumers. Their application to be a solar lessor needs to be approved by the North Carolina Public Utilities Commission (NCPUC).

Duke Energy Clean Energy Resources (DECER), a non-regulated affiliate of the company, will build, own and operate on-site solar facilities that will allow customers to access renewable energy without a large upfront investment.

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“Customers want more solar power for their operations, but the large upfront investment can be an obstacle,” said Rob Caldwell, president, Duke Energy Renewables and Distributed Energy Technology. “Through DECER, we will be competing to provide customers a turnkey solar solution to meet their renewable energy goals, while managing the ongoing operations and maintenance of the facility.”

Caldwell added that DECER will target businesses and will mainly use local solar construction and maintenance companies to work on projects.

Residential, commercial and nonprofit customers can still take advantage of Duke Energy’s $62 million solar rebate program, which has four more years left to help North Carolina customers with solar installations.

Under DECER’s offering, companies can negotiate for solar facilities up to 1 megawatt of capacity – roughly 100 times the size of a typical residential home system. The agreement will have a term of up to 20 years. Customers will be able to use 100 percent of the electrical output of the facilities and be eligible for any rebates and net-metering options offered by Duke Energy. DECER will handle all the ongoing maintenance of the facilities.

The ability to offer such services was included in last year’s Competitive Energy Solutions for North Carolina law – also known as HB 589.

Before beginning operation in North Carolina, Duke Energy must receive approval from the NCUC. Complete details of the NCUC filing can be found here. Duke Energy can already offer such services in South Carolina.

New Hampshire Net Metering Veto Could Crush Rooftop Industry

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

New England is one of the hottest solar areas of the country, with New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts getting all the attention. Unfortunately, New Hampshire may not be joining them after their governor vetoed a bill designed to raise an arbitrary 1 MW cap on net metering.

The Concord (N.H.) Monitor reports on the turmoil into which the veto has thrown the rooftop solar industry. As David Brooks writes:

Not surprisingly, the governor’s veto of a bill to make large solar projects more profitable has put a number of municipal solar projects on hold, or at least up in the air.

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Under current law, any project over 1 MW is not eligible for net metering. The bill would have raised that cap to 5 MW had the governor not vetoed it.

But Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the bill anyway, arguing that net-metering compensation would hurt other non-solar consumers, who would pay for grid upkeep that solar consumers don’t pay for. In other words, it’s the old cost shift argument raised to the level of the governor’s office.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the “cost shift” argument, it is the erroneous lie that solar consumers don’t pay their fair share of costs for grid upkeep. The truth is that the cost shift doesn’t happen until at least 10% of a state’s electricity is generated from solar – currently only the case in five states, of which New Hampshire is not one.

And even in those five states, the cost shift is only only a fraction of a penny per kilowatt-hour. In other words, it’s not even worth talking about.

It’s the one disappointing part of Brooks’ article, which otherwise is quite good. He accepts the cost shift argument without challenge. It’s a common error among the popular press, who aren’t as familiar with the reality of the solar industry as some of the rest of us are.

It’s up to us to point this out in an effort to educate more people about this pernicious lie so that utilities – and their politicians like Sununu – can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the general public.

More:

Veto of net metering bill puts solar projects on hold

The Energy Show: Energy Toolbase with Adam Gerza

The Energy Show: By Barry Cinnamon

Solar combined with battery storage seems like magic to many residential and commercial customers. With a million and a half systems installed in the U.S., the question is no longer: “does solar work?” Instead, customers want to know how much money they will save with a system. And commercial customers are even more diligent about accurate savings predictions.

There are a plethora of “solar calculators” on websites all over the internet. But these crude calculators do not take into account detailed weather data, shading, orientation, equipment parameters and utility rates. Surprisingly, the utility rate information is hard to get, extremely detailed, and changes more often than import tariffs. And correlating hourly solar output data with these utility rates, time periods, rate tiers, fixed fees and demand charges can be a programming nightmare. I’ve had experience with huge spreadsheets that did these calculations for rates all over the country. Just thinking about a spreadsheet with 35,000 rows of 15 minute interval data is enough to make me reach for the Advil.

Traditionally, solar performance calculators only had to model energy flows in two directions: to the building or to the grid. With batteries there is a third path for the energy to flow, making it exponentially more complicated to optimize savings from a particular system design. Dedicated software tools such as Energy Toolbase provide an accurate software platform for modeling the economics of solar and storage products — and also provide professional proposal tools.

My guest on this week’s Energy Show is Adam Gerza, Chief Operating Officer of Energy Toolbase. Adam gained his solar chops after many years in the commercial solar industry. He knows the business and knows how to crunch the numbers. So leave the headaches to Energy Toolbase, and listen up to this week’s Energy Show as we speak with Adam about his company, solution and the solar + storage market.

North Carolina Advocates Push For Installer Conduct Standards

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

North Carolina has rapidly shot up the list of top solar states in the United States in the past several years as measured by the amount of solar capacity installed. And that’s a huge accomplishment for a state that 10 years ago wasn’t on anyone’s radar as having a significant solar market.

Most of that growth, however, has been through utility-scale solar until recently, when changes in state laws have now encouraged the development of residential and commercial solar. As those markets expand, at least one advocacy group is trying to deal ahead of time with some of the issues other states have had in those solar segments.

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According to a report in the Charlotte Business Journal, the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA) is demanding that its members who do residential and commercial installations pledge to follow the group’s Code of Conduct – or get the hell out.

As Mike Davis, president of NCSEA, told the Journal:

Between the organic growth in the business and the pop provided earlier this year by Duke Energy Corp.’s rebates for such solar projects, the association and its members wanted to establish baseline professional codes for the industry, says Mike Davis.

“A code of professional conduct is a good thing for any industry,” says Davis, director of membership for the Raleigh-based association. “But we have seen an influx of new players in the market (after Duke offered the rebates) and that gave us a sense of urgency.”

The goal of the standards is to head off any scandals involving unethical business behavior that includes “high-pressure sales, over-promising on rebates and incentives, overselling potential savings and, in some cases, doing shoddy workmanship,” the Journal reports.

While NCSEA has no enforcement mechanism or authority, it is requiring all its current members to sign the pledge and won’t take any new members who refuse to do so.

More:

Why this group wants NC solar installers on board with new conduct standards