Southern California Edison is asking regulators for approval of 75 new PV contracts, totaling 105.53 MW. All priced at the cost of building a new natural gas plant. Now can we stop saying that solar is too expensive?

Details in their Advice Letter, here (pdf). (more…)

A much anticipated bill that would have expanded access to solar energy to the majority of Californians failed in the final hours of California’s legislative session on Friday.

SB 843, sponsored by Senator Lois Wolk, would have created a 2 GW shared solar program that (more…)

With the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and Once-Through-Cooling plants, Southern California Edison has serious local capacity constraints. So much so that that SCE is warning their customers that blackouts will result if they don’t conserve energy. The question is: what’s the long term solution? Will it be increased renewable distributed generation and (more…)

California’s failure to pass 33% RPS legislation is creating real havoc in the renewable market.

A month ago, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to create a new 1,000 MW program for distributed generation renewables (Reverse Auction Mechanism (RAM)). It’s a great program, but earlier this (more…)

It’s not good news, but it represents an all-too-human failing, one we call NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard). Even if a project is beneficial, offering jobs and clean energy, some people don’t want it becoming part of the view out their windows.

A step up from that is those individuals and groups who oppose projects on other (more…)

Not so long ago, consumers seemed to like energy efficiency just a little bit more than going to the dentist. Clearly that has changed, as evidenced by the recent run on appliance and home retrofit subsidies in several states.

Greens are no longer alone in swooning over front loader washing machines and (more…)

FERC may have recently put the kibosh on states implementing European-style Feed-in Tariffs, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. is left high and dry without ways to drive wholesale solar markets. We’re seeing daily action from utility PV programs that play by FERC’s rules.

Just today, Southern California Edison announced 60 MW worth of contracts under (more…)

Southern California Edison has had a voluntary Renewable Standard Offer Program for the past several years–a fixed-price offer to buy renewable energy from systems under 20 MW in size, with the price set at the Market Price Referent (MPR). It’s not a FIT per se, as it is not ‘must take’, but a standard fixed-price offer nonetheless.

In 2009, SCE contracted for 140 MW of PV. (more…)

First Solar, a maker of thin-film solar cells, has signed an agreement with Southern California Edison to sell the utility 550 megawatts of electricity produced by two massive photovoltaic solar farms in the Mojave Desert.

The plants, expected to go online by 2015 and produce enough electricity to power 170,000 homes, would be built on federal land set aside for such solar projects.

(more…)