Dana Hull covers clean technology and energy policy for the San Jose Mercury News. She often writes about electric vehicles, the smart grid, the solar industry and California energy policy, from RPS goals to Gov. Jerry Brown's big dreams for distributed generation.
Community solar bill dies in Assembly
A bill to increase access to solar power for millions of California residents and businesses who don’t own their roofs died late Friday in the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce.
State Senator Lois Wolk, a Democrat who represents the progressive city of Davis, said the bill died as a result of intense end-of-session lobbying by PG&E and Southern California Edison.
“Unfortunately, PG&E and Southern California Edison control the committee,” said Wolk in a statement released late Friday. “There was an agreement between the Assembly Speaker, the Committee Chair, and me that would have scaled the bill down to a pilot program under the Public Utilities Commission’s guidance and oversight. That agreement wasn’t honored and the bill died in committee, depriving the public of innovative energy policy in line with Governor Brown’s initiatives.”
Dana Hull covers clean technology and energy policy for the San Jose Mercury News. She often writes about electric vehicles, the smart grid, the solar industry and California energy policy, from RPS goals to Gov. Jerry Brown's big dreams for distributed generation.
7 comments
» Community solar bill dies in Assembly – San Jose Mercury News » Energized Energized
[...] Community solar bill dies in AssemblySan Jose Mercury NewsA bill to increase access to solar power for millions of California residents and businesses who don't own their roofs died late Friday in the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce. State Senator Lois Wolk, a Democrat who represents the … [...]
Sep 1, 2012
Community solar bill dies in Assembly « My Blog
[...] on http://www.siliconbeat.com Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like [...]
Sep 1, 2012
» California Community Solar Bill Dies in Assembly Committee – CleanTechnica » Energized Energized
[...] according to a San Jose Mercury …California Community Solar Bill Bites The DustEarthTechlingCommunity solar bill dies in AssemblySan Jose Mercury NewsWolk's energy access bill stoppedDaily Democratall 5 news [...]
Sep 3, 2012
The Solar Wakeup
[...] Community Solar Bill Dies In Assembly - Silicon Beat [...]
Sep 4, 2012
» Utilities Kill Community Solar Bill – KCET (blog) » Energized Energized
[...] solar bill dies in California legislaturesolarserver.comEarthTechling -San Jose Mercury News -Daily Democratall 8 news [...]
Sep 4, 2012
Rich Mignogna
This is rather remarkable for California. Community solar is more cost effective than putting the same amount of PV capacity on a hundred (or more) individual roofs. We’ve recently implemented this in Colorado. If the rules are done well, it just shouldn’t be that big a problem.
Sep 4, 2012
Rich Mignogna
Looking further I can see two problems with this bill right off the bat. 500MW was considered a pilot program! Colorado’s community solar program started with 18MW. Even accounting for a 10-fold difference in the size of the state you can’t get to that difference. Second, as I understand it, utilities would not be allowed to apply the generation toward their RPS requirement. That’s nuts. If the utilities ratepayers are paying the freight for the program, it should absolutely apply toward the RPS.
Sep 5, 2012