Yesterday, by a vote of 4-1, the Arizona Corporation Commission voted to expand the state's renewable energy standard to 15% by 2025, with 30% of that to come from distributed generation technologies. We're talking support for up to 2,000 MW of solar.
We'll take that over a sack of tootsie rolls and candy corn any day.
Best moment of the meeting? Commissioner Mundell, in response to complaints by Commissioner Gleason about subsidies for renewables, got a good laugh with: "When you're talking about subsidies and the free market, subsidies for the (traditional) energy industry would make Adam Smith spin around in his grave so much that he'd qualify as an alternative energy source."
Indeed.
With world-class sunshine and explosive population growth, Arizona is well positioned to become a key solar market. The game's not over yet, however. It takes more than incentives to make a sustainable solar market. The state has no regulations for interconnection standards, nor net metering. The financial incentives are the engine for solar's development, but these policies are the road, and we need both to get to solar nirvana. We are hip-deep in Commission workshops to redress the lack, and we have also intervened in an Arizona Public Service rate case to fight a horrible net metering rider.
Onwards.
Comments
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:03 am
01 Nov 2006
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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David Roberts Posted 8:23 am
01 Nov 2006
Net metering is a state level electricity policy for consumers who own "qualifying facilities," which are generally smaller, renewable energy sources such as a wind or solar power. Under net metering, a system owner receives retail credit for at least a portion of the electricity they generate. The ideal has your existing electricity meter spinning backwards, effectively banking excess electricity production for future credit. In reality, the rules vary significantly by country and possibly state/province if net metering is available, if and how long you can keep your banked credits, how much the credits are worth (retail/wholesale), etc. In North America, 40 U.S. states have some form of net metering in place, and Canada has an ongoing net metering project. The United Kingdom government is reluctant to introduce the net metering principle because of complications in paying and refunding the value added tax that is payable on electricity, but pilot projects are underway in some areas.
Germany, on the other hand, has adopted an extreme form of net metering, whereby customers get paid for any electricity they generate from renewable energy on their premises. The actual electricity being generated is counted on a separate meter, not just the surplus they feed back to the grid. For the power generated, roughly 3 times the market price per kWh for residential customers is being paid in order to boost renewable energy (figure from 2006).
www.grist.org
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ffletcher Posted 9:22 am
01 Nov 2006
Net metering does not meter the electricity resource seperately. Because it does not measure it seperately there is no way the resource does not, in effect, get the benefit of the retail price. Letting the meter turn backwards to undo past purchases is a great feature of the approach.
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