Craig Miller/KQED

Most Californians can't install rooftop solar panels.

California’s big utilities are working toward the goal of generating 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, but some people want more renewable power, sooner. And there’s a solution to that: generate your own. But for most Californians — those who rent, who live in condos, whose property isn’t suitable for solar or wind installations or who just can’t afford it — that solution isn’t really an option.

Senator Lois Wolk, from Davis, has written legislation with a new solution. If Senate Bill 843 passes, customers of one of California’s big three investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison or San Diego Gas and Electric, would be allowed to purchase renewable energy directly from small, independent producers. Those producers send energy into the grid, then customers get credits on their regular utility bills.

SB 843 Bill Summary, credit: Environmental Entrepreneurs

These offsite facilities could take a range of forms, solar arrays over parking lots, small wind installations or bio-gas facilities, but they can generate no more than 20 megawatts each (a typical nuclear plant puts out 50 times that much). And the total amount of energy generated in the state through the program can’t exceed two gigawatts, equivalent to about two nuclear plants. So in size and scale, they fall somewhere in between household-by-household rooftop solar and the giant installations being built in some parts of the state.

“They’re pooling the community resources in order to create an economy of scale, if you will, offsite,” Wolk said. “Schools or cities could do it, churches could do it, renters could do it. They could buy in to one of these facilities and receive a credit on their bill.”

The utilities aren’t united in their opinions on the program. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric have opposed it. Denny Boyles from PG&E said a concern for his company is how the program would affect utility customers who don’t participate in it.

“In an effort to increase renewables, you could drive up the costs for everyone else,” he said.

For example, the cost of building and maintaining transmission lines. But backers of the bill emphasize that those costs are built into the program, and non-participants won’t shoulder any extra burden.

San Diego Gas and Electric not only supports the bill, but spokesman Erin Koch said it’s an idea the utility had already considered.

“San Diego Gas and Electric strongly supports the concept of community solar, and we think there’s a way to make this work,” he said.

The legislation passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Thursday, and now goes on to the Assembly floor. If it passes, the new program would go into effect January 1, 2013.

Craig Miller

Most Californians rely on electricity from distant sources.

By Thibault Worth

California’s mandated goal of 33% renewable energy by 2020 may be bold and ambitious. But there’s room to raise the bar still higher, say proponents of local renewable power.

A report commissioned by Governor Jerry Brown last year — and released this week by Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) — lays out a plan for developing 12,000 Megawatts of renewable power generation close to homes and workplaces by 2020.

It’s an ambitious goal – three times the capacity of California’s two nuclear power plants.  But it’s attainable, say co-authors Jeffrey Russell and Steven Weissman, who examine barriers to local renewable energy production — from grid planning and financing to fire safety and building permits — and provide a step-by-step guide to overcoming them.

“Developing renewable energy in urban areas will create jobs, help the environment, and give communities more control over where their energy comes from and how much they pay for it,” says Russell, a senior research fellow at Berkeley Law School.

But the biggest challenge to the plan may be political. The electrical grid is currently designed to take energy from a small number of discrete power sources located far from urban centers.  The priority of the California Independent System Operator, which manages 80% of California’s electric grid, is to forecast demand and reduce uncertainty in supply. Vastly increasing the number of inputs through local renewable generation complicates matters.

“The plan is controversial because it is changing the business model that utilities that have been used to for some time,” says Russell. “It’s decentralizing the generation of power.”

Localization has its benefits too. In addition to giving end-users more control, it would also help address the problem of line loss, by which about seven percent of electricity generated in the U.S. dissipates during transmission over long-distance power lines.  Local micro-grids would also help reduce congestion on the main grid during peak demand periods.

“The report is a blueprint for California, and it also offers a model for the rest of the country,” said report co-author Steven Weissman, director of the energy program at Berkeley Law School.

The report’s recommendations reflect discussions at the Governor’s Conference on Local Renewable Energy Resources, held this past July in Los Angeles, as well as extensive research and analysis by Russell and Weissman.

You can watch a video of that conference here.

This week representatives from the federal Department of Energy and Bureau of Land Management wrap up their California barnstorming swing, to gauge public opinion on the topic of siting solar projects. Throughout this often contentious debate, many have claimed that a potentially huge piece of the power solution is being overlooked; rooftop solar.

Acres of flat-roofed commercial buildings in California's Inland Empire. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Fly into Ontario airport in Southern California’s Inland Empire — or just zoom in on Google Earth — and you’ll see hundreds of block-long warehouses. There are acres — probably square miles — of flat, gray roofs sizzling in the San Bernardino County sun.  Soon, though, instead of merely soaking up the rays, hundreds of industrial rooftops in Southland cities will harness them to feed the local electrical grid.

Solar panels ready for installation on Ontario warehouse. (Photo: Ilsa Setziol)

Southern California Edison and independent power producers holding contracts with the utility are building 500 MW of solar panels on warehouses and, to a lesser extent, on the ground at other Southern California locations.

Together these projects are expected to produce enough energy to rival a traditional power plant, enough to serve about 325,000 homes.

Last fall, as the project was being ramped up, Edison’s rooftop solar manager Rudy Perez guided me through waves of deep blue panels—11,000 in all — atop an Ontario warehouse.  “They’re the same standard type of panel you’d get on a residential photovoltaic system,” he said, adding that the company will also deploy more efficient SunPower brand panels.

I was intrigued by the project because, for years, environmentalists have advocated this kind of energy, called “distributed generation,” as an alternative to the environmental concerns that often attend other power sources, including out-of-town solar farms.   The typical response from utilities has been, It’s just too expensive.

Hoisting panels onto warehouse roof. (Photo: Ilsa Setziol)

But the cost of solar panels has come down, and the sheer size of Edison’s project has allowed it to secure deep discounts, both on equipment and the installation costs. Plus, as the state’s solar industry has matured, there are more contractors with the experience to take on this kind of project. Perez estimates the installed cost for its portion of the project will be $3.50 a watt (conventional photovoltaic installations were running around $7 a watt when the project was launched).

That’s still more expensive than other power sources, including a large solar farm (plus transmission lines) in the Mojave desert.

But distributed solar has other advantages.  It can feed directly into neighborhood electrical circuits, alleviating the need for new transmission lines. And, with virtually no public opposition, no requirement for environmental review (just local building permits), distributed solar is basically a sure bet and relatively speedy. Although the entire project will take five years to complete, a single site can be up and running in nine months.

The company’s VP of Renewable and Alternative power, Marc Ulrich says the project will help diversify Edison’s renewable power portfolio: “You need multiple sources to ensure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

For a broken-egg example, Ulrich points to a contract the company signed with Oakland-based BrightSource Energy for a solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert. The project crumbled when Senator Dianne Feinstein placed new environmental restrictions on the land.

Still, V. John White, Executive Director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, doesn’t expect distributed solar to obviate large solar farms. “We have to recognize the scale of the energy we have to displace,” he says, “the [vast] amount of [renewable] energy we have to have to get off coal, and fuel electrical cars.”

The renewable piece of Edison’s power pie (close to last year’s state-mandated 20% milestone) is mostly made up of geothermal (more than half) and wind. Cooking up more solar makes a lot of sense because the panels produce the most power at essentially the same time — hot summer afternoons — that Californians demand it most.

Although the solar panels on the Ontario warehouse look and perform like those on my San Gabriel home, the distributed solar project is something of an experiment.  Pointing out a row of large inverter boxes, Rudy Perez says it’s still unclear how much photovoltaic can be loaded into a typical neighborhood electrical circuit without causing power fluctuations.  “As clouds roll over you get into issues with intermittency that mean our output is going to be rising and falling fairly quickly.” The utility will study the issue in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Edison’s preliminary testing suggests the problem may not be as significant as some fear, in part because of the size of the project. Perez explains,  “The nice thing about having so many buildings throughout an area is that as a cloud rolls over one building, it may be coming off another building, and the overall effect tends to balance itself out.”

New smart meters the company is installing on customers homes could also help respond to shifts in power production. The devices have met with with less resistance in Southern California than to the north, in regions largely served by Pacific Gas & Electric.