Marin County is now offering an excellent solar leasing program through the combined efforts of GoSolarMarin (a nonprofit dedicated to advancing solar in Marin County) and SolarCity (solar design and financing). This is GoSolarMarin’s second effort to push solar in the county. Their first effort resulted in 100 new solar installations, an achievement they hope to surpass this time around. By bringing the benefits of community or essentially “bulk” pricing to the no-money-down solar leasing program, the program is able to price systems at $6.56/watt DC. Compare that to national averages that range between $8-9/watt DC, add the newly uncapped federal ITC of 30%, and you can see this is one sweet solar deal.
A bit further south, councilmen in LA have okayed a draft for a solar initiative for the March ballot. The initiative, planned largely by the IBEW, looks for 400mw of additional solar power on commercial roofs by 2013. The LA City Council voted unanimously in favor of the initiative (14-0), though no one seems to have had time to figure out how such a measure would affect local electric rates. (Though they do hope to have this information by the time they have to decide whether or not to actually include the measure on the ballot–the deadline is November 7.) It sounds pretty swell, but at an estimated cost of up to $3 billion, hopefully the Council will have it figured out sooner rather than later.
Briefly: the first solar thermal plant to be installed in California in over 20 years is being launched by Ausra. The 177-mw plant in Bakersfield will produce enough electricity to power over 120,000 homes.
Now to the other coast. North Carolina has just had a strange week of it: Duke Energy, the major electric utility for the state, announced it was cutting back its solar energy plan in a serious way: the plan is being cut in half, down to $50 million from $100 million. Why the change? Because critics thought Duke was going above and beyond. Your Renewable News reports:
Under Duke’s original proposal, the utility would generate 16 MW of electricity…The Utilities Commission staff objected, saying that Duke doesn’t need the full rooftop plan to meet its solar-power obligations through 2014. Duke has already contracted to buy 16 MW from a SunEdison solar farm to be built in Davidson County…The size of the original proposal could also have handicapped development of cheaper forms of renewable energy, the staff said. Duke could “bank” excess solar credits for future years, it said, but miss the chance to generate power more cheaply if solar costs come down as expected.
That’s certainly a blow to solar in the state over the next few years, but this home to the DSIRE database isn’t going to stop trucking along just because Duke’s plan got ambushed. A new 1mw solar plant is going up on the site of an old landfill in Asheville, courtesy of Project Energy Carolinas and FLS Energy.
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