California Raises the bar for Solar Renewables

Glad to see the push for advancing solar projects in Kalifornia, I just completed 80 hours of training in Solar PV and Wind Turbine classes....whoo hoo!!! As long as your commercial system is 3 MW or better, looks like you could earn a buck or two on your system power. I can't wait to become a NUG (Non Utility Generator)

 

"MW's per year" is ambiguous, but I see no ambiguity in the news article's usage "up to 3 megawatts in size".

 

How did you switch to a TOU meter? Did you have to buy it? Does edison install it?

 

Yeah, not quite clear from the article under what conditions residential PV owners would get paid - the article focused mainly on the small commercial installations.

From the article:

From the article, it seems that you should not need a TOU meter to benefit from this measure.

Good news to me - I hope to have a 3.2kW DC system on my roof by the end of the year and I expect to produce extra energy (oversized the system based on current bills in anticipation of adding central air for summer and hopefully getting a PHEV or EV in the next year or two).

Edit: Found a better article on the new net-metering law.

Solar users to feel surge in wallet

Goes into effect in 1/1/2011 as is bill AB 920.

I think the bill will go a long way towards encouraging customers to install larger PV systems, where current law highly discourages it.

 

its too bad we have to continously go thru the "wait and see what Cali does first" syndrome.

solar and wind should be top priorities NATIONWIDE

 

Just called Edison, they said that they'd install the TOU meter this month. Guess I'll have to do all optional electrical stuff off peak.

 

No point in rushing. Our Washington State Legislature has been out of session since April, and won't return to session until mid-January. My experience with leaving messages this time of year is that they are all thrown in the trash so the critters can start with a clean slate in January.

This year was the "long session", 105 days. But most of it was spent huddled in the secret Democratic Caucus to settle on a budget in the middle of a fiscal catastrophe without the glaring attention of the Press and any contribution from the Opposition Party or the general public.

Next year will be the "short session", just 60 days. We are still in the same predicament and they have 43% less time to deal with it, so I don't expect them to listen to us any better than they did/didn't during this year's session.

If you really want input to our Legislature, you need to attend your local party meetings, caucuses, and conventions. And considering the seriously lopsided split of the current Legislature, those party events had better be Democratic.