By Billy Ludt, Solar Power World
Alternative Energy Store (altE), a Massachusetts-based distributor of solar energy products and systems, acquired Real Goods, a California-based solar retailer.
Founded in 1978, Real Goods is an early purveyor of off-grid living supplies. Envisioned as a one-stop-shop to meet all the needs of remote homesteaders, the store began with the sale of the first retail solar panel in the United States. In 1982 Real Goods published the Solar Living Sourcebook, a resource for off-the-grid living, renewable energy, green building, homesteading and all things sustainable. Since then, over 500,000 copies have been sold in 44 English-speaking countries.
The Real Goods office and warehouse will remain Hopland-Ukiah, California, focusing on both off-grid and grid-tied renewable energy systems and sales. With the acquisition, Real Goods will also begin offering competitive programs for professional solar installers on the West Coast, with expanded inventory and distributor pricing.
- Press Release: altE Acquires Real Goods – Sept. 4, 2019
Smug About Your Solar Roof? Not So Fast
By Severin Borenstein (Professor, UC Berkeley), The Los Angeles Times
If you’ve installed solar panels on your roof and feel aglow with environmental virtue, you may be in for a rude awakening. There’s a good chance someone else has purchased your halo and is wearing it right now.
In most states (including California), rooftop solar panels earn Renewable Energy Certificates, which quantify how much clean electricity they produce. But if panels are leased or installed under a power purchase agreement, it’s the “third-party owner” — not the homeowner — who gets those certificates. Most then turn around and sell the RECs, a process that magically turns brown electrons green.
Here’s how it works: Joe’s Solar puts panels on your roof that produce 7,500 kilowatt-hours a year, and Joe sells you the electricity under a power purchase agreement. Because Joe still owns the panels, he gets credit — in the form of RECs — for that renewable electricity. Meanwhile, Bob’s all-fossil utility wants to “green up” so it buys RECs from Joe. That allows Bob to relabel 7,500 kilowatt-hours of his coal- or gas-fired power generation as “renewable energy.”
It may sound strange, but a market to sell or trade RECs can be extremely useful. California, for instance, has a mandate for its utilities to generate 33% renewable power by 2020, but some parts of the state have little sun or wind resources. Still, utilities in sunny or windy spots can produce more than their requirement and then sell the extra RECs to areas where it would be much more costly, or impossible, to hit the target. Thus, the RECs market allows a utility in one region to finance additional green energy production in another where it is cheaper, supporting more carbon reduction at a lower cost to consumers.
That seems sensible enough. But something’s wrong if the buying and selling utility companies both claim that green power as their own. And that’s essentially what’s been going on with solar rooftops.
Read full op-ed in the Los Angeles Times