By Rebecca Kern, Bloomberg BNA News
The community solar market is heating up thanks to favorable state legislation and interest from utilities in installing solar panels that provide cost-sharing among consumers who don’t have access to rooftop solar. With nearly 50 percent of the households and businesses unable to host rooftop solar systems, community solar is a largely untapped market for consumers looking to invest in solar, which is becoming cheaper than retail electricity in parts of the country.
Developers, analysts and utilities predict that the pace of community solar will continue to grow in the future as prices of solar decline and more utilities get involved. Solar developers and utility companies are driving a lot of the growth in the community solar market, leading to a projected 59 percent annual growth rate over the next five years. Legislation in a handful of states encouraging the development of community solar systems has also driven a lot of the growth in community solar over the past several years.
Minnesota, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, and New York are the states that “have set forth mandates in a very cookie-cutter program design to attract a lot of companies that are looking to scale up their community solar presence quickly,” Cory Honeyman, a senior analyst at GTM Research, said. Much of the near-term growth in community solar is concentrated in those four or five state markets “that have the right design in place for scale,” and 90 percent of the installations expected in 2015 and 2016 will take place in states with community solar legislation in effect.
Community solar is currently economically viable in parts of the country where electricity rates are high and has the potential to become more competitive in the future, analysts and developers say. The savings that community solar subscribers receive depend on the cost of electricity in the region and the solar resources in the state, and the electricity rates depend on the competitiveness of the electricity market, Glen Andersen, energy program manager at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said. “They have high electricity rates in California, for example, so it does make [community solar] more competitive. But if you were in a state like Kentucky, where electricity rates are really low, whether or not you’re going to see savings over just buying it from the utility is more questionable,” Andersen said.
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Related article: Note to Utilities: Here’s Why 2015 is the ‘Tipping Point’ for Community Solar (Aug 11)
California’s huge solar projects causing energy poverty
By Thomas D. Elias, The Los Angeles Daily News
When ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made their way onto a hot, dry alkali flat just west of the Interstate 15 freeway between Barstow and Las Vegas in late 2010, all anyone knew for sure was that they were opening an era of giantism in solar electricity in California. What no one could predict was that they were also putting a stamp of approval on the spread of energy poverty in many parts of this state.
The Ivanpah dry lake on which the two former officials proudly strode that day now hosts a huge solar farm easily visible as a glassy sea of deep blue to travelers just southwest of the California-Nevada state line. Ivanpah, built largely with federal loans, is the second-largest of half a dozen desert-region solar thermal developments that produce many thousands of megawatts for privately-owned utilities like Southern California Edison Co., Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.
Besides paying for the energy produced by those plants, including construction costs, the big utilities have erected hundreds of miles of power transmission lines to bring the sun’s energy to big cities in all parts of California. When they do that, they receive about 14 percent profit on their constructions costs each year for 20 years.
The solar farms are part of a plan first adopted by executive order by Schwarzenegger and later expanded on by current Gov. Jerry Brown. By 2020, California is to produce one-third of its electricity from renewable sources. By 2030, that’s supposed to rise to one-half. Of course, the current four-year drought has tossed a wrench into some of the calculations behind those mandates, causing enormous cuts in the power produced by hydroelectric dams for more than a century.
Read full article in the Los Angeles Daily News