Renewable Energy Focus
Greentech Media - Apr 15 The renewable portfolio standards that many states have enacted are responsible for 60 percent of the growth in non-hydro renewable energy generation, according to a new Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study. Most of the additional capacity to meet RPS requirements has come from wind, but in recent years, solar energy is gaining traction. Renewable portfolio standards call for a certain percentage of power generation to come from renewable resources, although what qualifies as renewable and which power generators have to meet the obligations varies by state.
NPR - Apr 20 San Francisco will soon begin requiring new buildings to have solar panels installed on the roof. It's the first major U.S. city to have such a requirement, according to Scott Wiener, the city supervisor who introduced the bill. The ordinance, which was passed unanimously by the city's Board of Supervisors, builds on an existing California law requiring new buildings to set aside 15 percent of the roof as "solar ready" — clear and unshaded. Now, instead of just preparing the roof for solar panels, residential and commercial buildings 10 stories or shorter would need to actually install some form of solar energy, either electricity-generating panels or solar heating units.
SolarServer - Apr 14 Southern California Edison connected 1,258 new megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity to the grid in 2015, more than any other utility in the U.S., according to the annual utility solar market survey conducted by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). SCE was one of two utilities claiming the No. 1 spots on SEPA’s Top 10 utility solar lists: one for total new megawatts and the second for watts per customer. Pacific Gas & Electric, which had claimed the No. 1 spot in total megawatts for the past eight consecutive years, fell to No. 2.
Desert Sun - Apr 14 The Salton Sea is home to one of the world's most potent geothermal reservoirs, thanks to underground heat that brings salty water to temperatures greater than 500 degrees Fahrenheit. But while 11 geothermal plants already generate electricity along the Salton Sea's southern shore, energy development has ground to a halt in recent years, due to the high cost of building geothermal facilities. Only one of those 11 plants opened after 2000. According to a new report published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a clean energy trade group, the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, using Salton Sea geothermal to help meet the state's 50 percent clean energy mandate could save energy consumers $735 million per year by 2030.
Solar Industry Magazine - Apr 21 On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate passed a long-stalled energy bill after lawmakers ended a partisan dispute over funding for the water-contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan. S.2012, also called the Energy Policy Modernization Act, includes several provisions that could prove helpful for solar. However, a proposed amendment, authored by Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Harry Reid, D-Nev., focused on protecting solar customers from retroactive net energy metering (NEM) changes did not make the final cut. The provision would have limited the ability of state agencies and utilities to retroactively change NEM rates for existing customers. However, King did manage to get another NEM-related provision included. According to a press release, the amendment would require the U.S. Department of Energy “to conduct a study on net metering and release related guidance to ensure that owners of [distributed energy resources, such as solar] are properly compensated for the energy they add to the electricity grid.”
Renewable Energy Magazine - Apr 19 The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a new ‘Orange Button’ scheme, which will create unified data standards to help the solar industry reduce market inefficiencies and lower costs for consumers. The scheme, launched by the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative, targets a reduction in soft costs by streamlining the collection, security, management, exchange, and monetizing of solar datasets across the solar industry’s value chain. The scheme will create an industry-driven standardized data landscape, which will facilitate the growth and expansion of distributed solar.
Courthouse News Service - Apr 18 The Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Army Corps of Engineers in Federal Court to try to stop a 247-megawatt solar farm planned for the Panoche Valley, west of Fresno. The groups allege that the solar project will threaten the survival of three endangered species. The developer, Solar Valley LLC, said the project will help California reach its mandate of producing 33 percent of its electricity via renewable resources by 2020.
