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Tag:

Massachusetts

A Bright Future for Solar in the Bay State

A Bright Future for Solar in the Bay State

written by The Vote Solar Initiative

Long a national leader on clean energy policy, Massachusetts is close to raising the bar when it comes to solar, with a legislative package that would dramatically expand access to solar energy in the state. A comprehensive solar energy bill (H.4185) was introduced last week into the Massachusetts House of Representatives.  If passed, the bill will encourage more Bay Staters to go solar by removing the state’s caps on net metering, and by redesigning an incentive program to bring online 1,600 megawatts (“MW”) of solar energy by 2020.

If you live in Massachusetts take action today to urge your state lawmakers to vote YES on H.4185.

The legislation was negotiated by state agencies, renewable energy interests groups, and the electric utilities. As expected, the bill is a compromise for all parties. On balance, we believe it’s a compromise worth supporting. Here’s our breakdown of what this important legislation contains:

  • Uncapped net metering for schools, government entities and businesses: Massachusetts’ net metering program is one of the most important reasons for our solar success. Net metering is a simple straightforward policy that provides Bay Staters with full credit on their energy bills for any valuable clean electricity they deliver to the grid for use nearby. The problem is, customer participation in net metering is currently limited by an arbitrary cap. H. 4185 would uncap net metering, and this is fantastic news for our state’s energy customers. The program is fair, it’s working and it needs to be expanded so more Bay Staters can go solar. Net metering caps for schools and government entities have already been reached, and the cap for businesses and residents is also close to being hit. This legislation permanently alleviates this problem, and without such action, the Commonwealth’s solar market would have ground to a screeching halt in the near future. This provision paves the way for a long-term, sustainable solar market without administrative caps. This is a huge win for solar in Massachusetts.
  • Redesigned incentive program to bring the most solar bang for your buck: Governor Patrick has set an ambitious goal for bringing online 1,600 megawatts of solar by 2020. This bill would create a cost-effective and predictable incentive program to ensure that small and large-scale solar projects are developed in the state.  The new incentive program will replace the current solar renewable energy certificate (“SREC”) incentive program. The SREC program will continue to exist for solar systems that are already installed, but starting in 2016, new solar customers would have access to the new incentive program. The new program will provide solar customers with a payment for 15 years for each kilowatt-hour of production from their system (the payment is for the environmental attributes associated with the electricity, not the electricity itself). While the payments for each individual customer would be fixed for 15 years, the compensation for future systems would step-down as more and more systems are installed, eventually reaching zero as the state transitions to an incentive-free market. The exact level of compensation for each “block” of systems will be determined by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (“DOER”), and Vote Solar plans to participate in that public proceeding. This “declining-block” incentive has been successful in California, and has recently been adopted in New York. Below is graphical representation of a declining block program. This program should reduce financing costs for solar systems in MA, and thereby lower the overall costs associated with going solar.

csi

  • Minimum bills: A significant compromise for the solar community as part of this legislation is the establishment of minimum bills. To be clear, minimum bills are not a new charge on a customer’s bill. Instead, minimum bills prevent a customer from having a $0 electricity bill. No matter what, a customer’s bill will not drop below a certain threshold. The threshold will be determined as part of a proceeding at the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. For example, if a customer has a $100 electricity bill, and a net metering credit on their account of $100, the minimum bill would prevent an electricity bill of $0. Let’s say that the minimum bill is $15. In this scenario the customer would still pay the electric utility $15, and the remainder of the customer’s credit would carry-over to the next month. The minimum bill would apply to all customers – not just solar customers – which means that there is no discrimination against solar customers. The minimum bill ensures that customers of a utility will always pay something while they are connected to the grid. This approach addresses a concern by utilities that customers could avoid paying any electricity bill. Vote Solar does not share this concern because the evidence suggests that the long-term benefits that solar provides make up for any revenue loss utilities experience when customers go solar. Nevertheless, we view minimum bills as a more reasonable approach than some rate design changes proposed in other states – from additional charges on solar customers in Arizona (flat out discriminatory) to a very high fixed charge for all customers in Wisconsin (which reduces the motivation of customers to conserve energy). In the context of these other very bad proposals, minimum bills can be viewed as an acceptable proposal for MA.
  • Restructuring of virtual net metering: In Massachusetts currently, virtual net metering allows a solar system in one location to offset a customer’s utility bill in a different location. As such, the benefits of solar energy are available to all customers, even if the customers can’t install a system where they live or work. While this concept is in some ways preserved in H.4185, the bill credit offered under the new structure, which is simply called “virtual metering,” will no longer be the same as the net metering credit available to systems that generate and use electricity at the same location. Under the proposed legislation, the compensation per kWh for virtual metering projects would be fixed for the first 15 years, at a level to be determined by DOER in a public proceeding. It would include compensation for the electricity produced (at the sum of the generation, transmission, and transition rates) and compensation for environmental attributes (via an additional payment to bring the total compensation to the fixed level set by DOER). After the initial 15 year term, the payment for environmental attributes will end and virtual metering projects will receive only the generation + transmission + transition rate compensation. Let us note here that we disagree that this represents an appropriate long term valuation of the energy produced by these solar systems. We will actively participate in the DOER proceeding to fight for an appropriate bill credit level for these offsite systems, and will continue to work to ensure that Massachusetts’ market rules appropriately consider solar’s benefits in the longer term. Our goal is to ensure that customers without the ability to put solar on their homes and businesses still have equal and fair opportunities to access the bill-saving benefits of clean and reliable solar energy.
  • Multiple solar energy systems on one parcel of land: The compromise on virtual metering credit is slightly mitigated by another provision in the bill which would allow for multiple net metering solar systems on the same parcel of land, so long as the aggregate size of the solar systems on the parcel don’t exceed predetermined limits. This is very different from the current rules, which mostly forbid more than one solar system on a parcel of land. This change would allow, for instance (a) condominium owners to separately install systems, (b) low-income housing to have dedicated systems for each unit, (c) strip malls to have multiple systems to serve multiple customers, (d) farms to have multiple installations for multiple buildings. While we would prefer to see more of an aggregate net metering approach, which would allow all the meters on a parcel to be offset by the production of a single solar system, this provision in H.4185 is a small step in the right direction.

Overall, this bill is a win for solar in Massachusetts, and an important demonstration of how one leading solar state has chosen to move past the heated solar vs. utilities debates happening across the country, and strike a compromise that will keep Massachusetts customers going solar in a big way. Go Bay State, go.

Article by Nathan Phelps.



June 20, 2014 1 comment
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Raise the Roof on Solar in Massachusetts

written by Walter Wang

With its innovation economy and leading energy policies, Massachusetts has been a bright spot of solar growth. In fact, solar has proven so popular in Massachusetts that the state met its 250 MW goal four years early! Not one to rest on his laurels, Governor Patrick went ahead and upped the ante with a higher 1,600 MW by 2020 target.

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February 3, 2014 0 comment
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Scituate in Massachusetts is 100% Powered by Renewable Energy

written by Walter Wang

With the inauguration of a 3 MW solar power station, Scituate (MA) became the first town in Commonwealth to get 100 percent of its power from alternative energy sources.

The project was developed by Gehrlicher Solar America, which earlier in 2013 opened a regional

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July 31, 2013 0 comment
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Win for Massachusetts and Net Metering!

written by Walter Wang

Great strides for solar occurred in Massachusetts last week with the passage of the 2012 Energy Act. This comprehensive energy bill expands an important solar program called net metering that gives customers credit for the valuable clean power they send to the grid.

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August 6, 2012 0 comment
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Westford Solar Park: Largest Private Solar Park in New England

written by Walter Wang

Just over a week ago, the largest solar park in New England was inaugurated by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, when he switched on Westford Solar Park, a 4.5 MW solar farm in Westford, developed by Cathartes Private Investments and Nexamp.

The park, spreads across 22 acres and features

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May 8, 2012 1 comment
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Massachusetts Town Undoes Revolutionary Bottled Water Ban

written by Walter Wang

Historic town changes mind about historic bottled water ban… in unhistoric fashion

One year after making international headlines as the first town in the United States—and possibly the world—to ban the sale of bottled water, voters at the annual Town Meeting in Concord, Massachusetts last week rejected the water

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May 1, 2011 3 comments
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Top Ten Reason Massachusetts is a Cleantech Leader

written by Shawn Lesser

Massachusetts is one of the most active states, with forward-thinking policies and institutions to support renewable energy development and efficiency programs. Massachusetts is a leader in Cleantech research and VC investment, with many Cleantech startups located in Boston and along Route 128, the state’s “Technology

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February 7, 2011 1 comment
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Massachusetts Fires up Solar Hot Water Rebates

written by Solar Calfinder

Massachusetts may seem like an unlikely state for solar power. When you look at its solar insolation value of only 4.0 kilowatt-hours (compared to California’s 6.0 and Florida’s 5.0), the New England state seems lacking in sunshine.

In spite of that, Massachusetts has shown a definite fondness for solar energy ever

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January 11, 2011 4 comments
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U.S. Looks to Flywheel Tech to Green Electric Grid

written by Elsa Wenzel

The U.S. Department of Energy has granted a $43 million loan to a Massachusetts-based company to prove the value of a new technology in which spinning flywheels are used to improve the efficiency of the electric grid. Beacon Power Corp. will build a 20-megawatt flywheel plant in upstate New York in which flywheels spinning up to 16,000 times per minute will act as a sort of short-term power storage system for the state’s electrical distribution system, according to the Associated Press.

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September 25, 2009 2 comments
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Obama Flexing Executive Muscle for Renewable Energy

written by Joe Walsh

Ken Salazar's solar array and cowboy hat combo should be more common under the plan announced yesterday for the Southwest

Yesterday’s big announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar heralded what may be a new era for solar power, as thousands of acres of federal land in six Southwestern states were set aside to become a special federal solar energy zone designed to facilitate siting, construction and deployment of as much as 70,000 MW of new solar capacity.

Today, it is wind’s turn in the sun. The front page of the Boston Globe and local broadcast reports are abuzz with the news that Governor Deval Patrick’s administration has released a new plan to re-zone state coastal waters to better balance the need for marine ecological protections with the hope that Massachusetts can harvest more of its offshore wind as useful electricity.

In the absence of all of the plan’s details (a full presser was scheduled for the afternoon of July 1 at the New England Aquarium in Boston), the media has already shifted to score-keeping. There is at least one clear loser, as the plan deals a death blow to a particular Buzzards Bay proposal for 300 MW of offshore wind. The wind farm would sit in what is now a restricted area.

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July 1, 2009 0 comment
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