By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

With five days left in the legislative session, Massachusetts is running out of time to solidify and expand its burgeoning solar industry, and activists in the state are ramping up the pressure in an attempt to try to get something done before the end of the month. Yesterday, in an effort supported by advocacy group Vote Solar and others, city leaders from across the state joined forces to send a letter to the legislature urging them to pass the clean energy legislation currently pending before it, which is designed to accomplish three things:

• eliminiate the arbitrary net metering cap (or at least raise it by at least 5%);
• repeal Eversource Energy's (the state's largest utility) "demand charge" on solar customers; and
• raise the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) by at least 3% a year.

The letter quotes at least 20 municipal leaders in support of the legislation like Framingham City Council Member Adam Steiner:

As a City Council Member and a solar homeowner myself, I have seen the power of solar to benefit families, communities and our environment. Solar is a critical part of our local economy and our commitment to making our environment cleaner, but we need continued leadership from our state leaders to keep solar on track. We hope they will heed our letter and act quickly on these important solar policies.

As New York, New Jersey and even Pennsylvania start pushing into the clean energy future with aggressive plans to increase the solar industry, Massachusetts has been shockingly reticent and retiring about playing a significant role in growing the solar industry in the Northeast. It's mincing steps toward a solar future are a mystifying anomaly, and one that its legislators can fix right now - but time is running out. The legislative session ends on July 31. Massachusetts was one of the primary drivers of the American Revolution - and it's time they assumed their leadership in the Solar Revolution, too.

Bloom Goes Public. Count me in as positively surprised. Bloom Energy has gone public and left room for the shares to go up 63% during their first day. With ~300MW of capacity deployed, Bloom is largely viewed as the potential for distributed energy for corporates that make up their customer list. 16 years of operation before going public was not the plan but many people thought this day would never come, so congrats to the Bloom team.
Value Of DG (Again). This is a topic that is frightening, what happens if hackers take over a grid or power plants and cause a long term power outage. Utility execs will tell you that cybersecurity is one of their biggest worries and we continue to hear about the threat, Homeland Security officials started raising red flags a decade ago. We talk about the cost shift that IOUs claim about solar but this is a value to the grid that solar folks rarely get traction on or get credit for creating. If you want to read some of the best reasons to buy your solar neighbor a beer, make sure to read Vote Solar’s Adam Browning’s Twitter feed. 
Solar In Florida. Solar in Florida is going to grow at a rapid pace. Last year alone it doubled and this year it could double again before an exponential increase next year. I understand the Florida consumer and have heard my (former) neighbors talk about how badly they want solar. Moreover, you don’t have to ask any homeowners how much energy they use because with air conditioning you’ll never offset 100% of their usage. On the other hand, solar contractors that hope to go into the State will have to learn quickly that permitting and inspections are for real in Florida. You won’t get around installing subpar products without making sure that you are installing to the hurricane codes. In summary, don’t think you can give Floridians a cheap version of solar, you will have to plan on doing it the right way the first time.
Inside Look In SC Politics. This was the David vs. Goliath story that sounded like Goliath had exclusive access to special powers. South Carolina had all of the insider trading of an IOU exerting the power they have over the State legislators. I don’t know how much longer that power can exist before the largely republican legislators can no longer stand behind a monopoly when a free market is a better solution.
State Policies In MA and NJ. Keep your eyes and ears on the ongoing policies in MA and NJ. In MA, the solar industry is looking to increase the net metering cap once again and NJ is hoping to expand the market into the low income markets. Make sure to get a script and call list from your local solar advocates.

Have a great day!

News

 

Have a great day!
Yann

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

There are days when you read about academic studies and wonder out loud, "Did we really have to study THAT?" As I read the excellent story on KSL's (NBC, Channel 5, Salt Lake City) website about a study concerning renewable portfolio standards (RPS), I had just that sort of revelation. It seems that our intrepid researchers have discovered that states with stricter RPS's encourage great investment in renewable energy. In other news, water is still wet and the Pope is still Catholic. I'm not diminishing the work by KSL reporter Amy Joi O'Donoghue, who does an excellent job of discussing the issues surrounding RPS's and then bringing it back to the Utah RPS (which most solar advocates think is mighty weak), but I did scratch my head at the work of the researchers because, for reals, this outcome was as obvious as they come. The weird thing is, the researchers themselves seemed surprised by their findings. Take Lincoln Davies, a law professor at the University of Utah who participated in the research:

Strong laws work really well and weak laws don't. The more aggressive the law, the more effective they are, which means they will also push down price over time.

I'm not arguing with Davies, of course. It makes total sense that stronger laws would encourage stronger compliance, which in turn would lead to greater investment. But I just keep coming back to the question of whether this really was a question that needed to be studied in the first place. O'Donoghue notes:

About 30 states around the country have some sort of renewable energy standard on the books. Hawaii has the strictest standard at 100 percent, with Vermont at 75 percent. California has a standard of 50 percent.

So let's recap: States with strict RPS's have utilities that invest in renewable energy. States that have weak or loophole-riddled RPS's do not. Well, at least that's clear now. More: Study: Aggressive renewable energy standards spur solar, wind investments

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Because I need another thing to keep me up at night.... The Department of Homeland Security this week revealed that Russian hackers attacked our electrical grid last year and could have created electricity blackouts throughout the United States, thanks to our overreliance on a centralized grid. You'd think we'd have taken the hint by now. But no. In Washington, the geniuses at the Department of Energy are still trying to figure out how to bailout economically untenable coal and nuclear plants. Cool. Newsweek reporter Jason Murdock has the terrifying details:

Hackers working for a state-sponsored cyber-espionage unit with alleged links to Russia could have caused electricity blackouts in the U.S. last year after gaining access to some utility control rooms, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official disclosed this week. Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial control system analysis at the agency, said that hackers “got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and mess with power flows, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news from a federal briefing on Monday.

The best part of this whole story is that they didn't throw the switches. The Russian hackers were just letting us know they could gain access to them any time they wanted and throw them should they decide to do it. So the solution is...a more centralized grid? Maybe this report will be the wake-up call the federal government needs to realize it's time to take seriously electrical security and move to a distributed-generation grid. Heavily solar states are already moving in that direction, and as battery costs continue to plummet, you can expect the push for a decentralized grid to intensify. But I'm not hopeful. After all, we have put people in charge of these agencies that seem to think Russian hacking is just something we have to live with and not something we need to combat vigorously. I just fear that next time, we won't be able to escape unscathed. More: Russian Hackers 'Could Have Caused Electricity Blackouts’ In The U.S.