Southeastern States Like Solar. In Other News, Water Is Wet

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: Bloomberg looked into southeastern states like Georgia, South Carolina and Florida and discovered, by golly, those states LIKE solar now. In other news, water is wet.

  • According to the report, states have been reluctant to add solar because of the cost was too high.
  • Bloomberg looked at the recent explosion of solar installations in Florida, Virginia and South Carolina to reach its conclusion (and oddly left out North Carolina for some reason).

SolarWakeup’s View: OK, I know I should let Bloomberg off the hook for this one. After all, they don’t write about solar full time the way I do. But their simplistic analysis of the development of the southeastern states sudden interest in solar just isn’t really news.

Let’s be honest here: Although Bloomberg says the previous reluctance of utilities in places like Georgia, South Carolina and Florida to adopt solar was cost, it’s pretty clear the real reason was that they were afraid of losing their monopolies. After all, if solar is good for the utility, why wouldn’t it be good for its customers in southeastern states? Right, it would be good for them – and the utilities don’t want to cede that power to anyone.

Now price drops have certainly played some part, and if prices continue to fall (in conjunction with concurrent decreases in storage technology prices), you can be utilities in the Southeast will continue to add more solar to their portfolios.

Here’s one note of caution, however: While increasing utility-scale solar plants is a good idea in the short term, it will damage the long-term prospects for the rooftop, distributed-generation market. And it should be noted that while utilities are embracing solar more often for themselves, they are still trying to impose extra charges (penalties) for solar customers who control their own generation.

So while you can applaud the increasing amount of solar in southeastern states, don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security that solar is safe there, especially when the utilities feel their bottom lines are threatened.

More:

Sunny U.S. Southeast Is Finally Becoming a Hot Spot for Solar

Arizona Court Allows Solar Property Tax Exemption

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

What Happened: Yesterday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that homeowners that lease rooftop solar systems do not have to pay state property taxes on that home improvement.

  • The court found that since the homeowners don’t own the “electrical generation facilities,” they have earned a state property tax exemption
  • It refused, however, to offer an opinion on whether counties could levy property taxes on the solar arrays.
  • The case stretches back to 2013, when the state’s Department of Revenue, with the support of APS (the state’s largest utility), decided it could collect property taxes on the arrays.

SolarWakeup’s View:  The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to provide a property tax exemption for homeowners who lease their rooftop solar arrays was not only the right decision, but I believe it will go a long way toward restoring a residential rooftop solar market hammered by Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) decisions over the past two years.

As you may or may not recall, the ACC ended a bruising three year battle over net metering in December 2016 by deciding to end retail net metering (a 1:1 exchange for electrons at the retail rate) for all new rooftop solar installations (in fairness, it did eventually grandfather current users, but not without a huge effort on the part of the state’s solar industry).

The state’s rooftop installers worried it would devastate their market, and the ACC’s decision certainly slowed down the market, all while APS started building utility-scale solar at an ever-increasing pace. The utility-scale building could be seen as a direct challenge to the rooftop industry and as a blatant attempt to maintain their monopoly generation power.

Yesterday, the Arizona Supreme Court evened the playing field a bit, at least for companies that lease panels to their customers. Frankly, it would have been a much bigger victory had the rule applied to all rooftop solar installations (like Florida did two years ago for commercial rooftop installations), but right now Arizona rooftop installers will take anything they can get.

Sometimes a small victory can blossom over time into a much bigger one. The Arizona Supreme Court decision yesterday could be the start of just such a process.

More:

Solar customers don’t have to pay some taxes, state Supreme Court rules (AZ Central)

Natural Gas Plans Hit Snag For Arizona Utility

Lucy Mason – Arizona SEIA’s Executive Director and Former Republican State Legislator

Yann is joined by AriSEIA’s Lucy Mason. Lucy is the executive director of Arizona’s State Chapter, a republican and former Chair of the Water and Energy Committee in the State House of Representatives in Arizona.

Arizona has been the battleground for solar net metering for many years and Lucy has recently joined a settlement. We talk about how solar can speak to republicans and the mutual benefits to both sides. This is the last in the conversations with State Chapter directors.

Make sure to check out SolarWakeup Live! in Boston on 10/31 and D.C. on 12/6. Tickets available but selling fast.

If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform including iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher radio. Please subscribe and share with your friends how much EnergyWakeup is helping you!

EnergyWakeup – Episode 3 – Interview with SEIA President, Abby Hopper, and Bryan explains what NV Energy is really doing

In this Episode, sponsored by Conductive Capital,  Yann and Bryan cover a wide range of important topics for the solar and cleantech industry. Yann interviews Abby Hopper, the new SEIA CEO and President, who joins the solar industry after leading the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. We cover her vision for SEIA, how to get new members to join and if she sees SEIA working with EEI, the utility’s lobbying group.

Bryan and Yann go into the nominating hearings of Scott Pruitt, and why the environmental groups are trying to make him the target, why the nominees are normalizing Rex Tillerson, a man that is synonymous with Exxon, and Rick Perry’s continuing ability to make soundbites for SNL.

At the State level, Bryan covers what is actually happening in Nevada with NV Energy’s latest filing and if it really matters. Yann argues that the solar industry may be getting too soft when it comes to playing politics.

Listen to the Episode and subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud or Stitcher. This episode was supported by Conductive Capital, a distributed generation platform looking to acquire your projects.