SOLAR TODAY - June 2009

SOLAR TODAY
JUNE 2009
VOL. 23, NO. 5

A lot of the benefits of distributed solar systems are on
the utility side, but it will take collaboration to assure they
get counted and shared between utilities and customers.
By JILL K. CLIBURN

In February, while most of the country was locked in a literal and economic deep freeze, two announcements of utility plans to invest billions in solar photovoltaics (PV) burst through the frost like a couple of crocus blossoms. First, New Jersey’s Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) filed a plan with state regulators, proposing to invest in, own and operate 120 megawatts (MW) of PV at widely distributed sites, including city and school facilities, low-income housing sites, its own land and rooftops and some 200,000 neighborhood utility poles and streetlights. Then Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E), California’s largest electric utility, announced a 500-MW PV plan, including 250 MW that the utility would own and operate and 250 MW to be owned by independent developers under power purchase agreements with the utility. According to PG&E CEO Peter Dar-bee, “We can’t afford business as usual when it comes to protecting the environment and meeting our customers’ expectations.”

Indeed, if you thought that utilities would never come around to supporting solar energy, think again.

Jill K. Cliburn has presented on utility solar strategies at ASES National Solar Conferences and at the ISES Solar World Congress. Her consultancy, based in Santa Fe, N.M., is focused on helping utilities — including co-ops and municipal utilities — develop cost-effective solar and energy-efficiency strategies. She also continues to work with Chris Robertson and with Joe Bourg of Millennium Energy, innovating utility-scale solar development nationwide. Contact Cliburn at jkcliburn@gmail.com.

Top 10 Utilities
Ranked by Total Solar Electric Capacity
Watts-AC per customer

Learning to Love PV

The utility solar boom started in 2008. Since then, 28 electric utilities have announced a total of more than 2,200 MW of new PV projects, according to the Solar Electric Power Association ( solarelectricpower.org). These included relatively large (25- to 200-MW) “solar farms” and widely distributed projects, such as Duke Energy’s plan to scatter a total of 20 MW of PV over hundreds of North Carolina rooftops. State regulators recently cut Duke’s plan by half, and some other utility plans are bound to see revisions, but the outlook is for more and bigger utility PV investments from now on. These projections do not even consider the rush by some utilities to invest in immense concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. Generation from planned

1. Southern California Edison (California) 86.0 2. Nevada/Sierra Pacific Power (Nevada) 73.2 3. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (California) 28. 3 4. Kauai Island Utility Co-op (Hawaii) 24.1 5. City of Palo Alto Utilities (California) 20. 4 6. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (California) 19. 9 7. Tucson Electric Power Co. (Arizona) 11. 9 8. Sacramento Mun. Utility Dist. (California) 10. 9 9. Roseville Electric (California) 9. 7 10. Maui Electric Co. (Hawaii) 8. 9 Source: “Special Report: Electric Utilities and Solar, A Market Review,” October 2008, Solar Electric Power Association. Free download at solarelectricpower.org.