Friday, May 27, 2011

Solar on the Move!

Solar Bill Passes Committee

Distributed Generation Amendment Act of 2011 Bill 19-10

Fantastic news! Thanks to all the hard work from solar supporters like you, the solar legislation we need to put more solar panels on DC rooftops passed unanimously out of committee in the D.C. City Council yesterday! Council members ( CM Graham CM Bowser, CM Mendelson, and CM Alexander) went out of their way to comment on the solar businesses in their Wards and all the strong reasons to support the bill!

The bill was changed slightly from the original draft but it is still a strong step forward—a victory.

How strong a step is this? This legislation will essentially guarantee a stable solar market for years to come allowing for solar to proliferate across all eight of the Districts wards. This legislation will enable the district to go from about 500 homes being powered by solar today to 15,000 homes being powered by solar in 2014. THat would be a solar boom! This bill takes us one step closer to a day in which we can all afford solar in DC! This bill is good for green jobs and the bill and even according to DC's own fiscal analysis -- the bill will have a positive impact on the DC Budget!!

The bill markup in committee is just the next step. We still need to pass the legislation out of the Council. Stay tuned for a notice asking you to show up to show your support at the City Council on June 7th.

The DC Solar Movement is getting stronger every day!

Anya Schoolman

Mt. Pleasant Solar Coop

DC SUN

P.S. Thanks to everybody who showed up at the Pepco shareholders meeting. Here is an article about the meeting.

http://www.examiner.com/solar-energy-in-washington-dc/dc-residents-pressure-pepco-to-provide-solar

Friday, May 20, 2011

DC Sun Sends Message to Pepco!

For those of you who missed the rally in front of Pepco today-- you missed a great event!
There was an awesome turn out, fantastic banners, great chanting and great spirit! The DC Police Department closed off a lane in the street in front of Pepco-- Their flashing bright lights and quiet, calm presence helped make the event even more substantial than it would have otherwise. Pepco sent out a security guard to film the participants. Local TV was there to cover the event. DC RISE UP was there, with megaphones and bags of coal to pass out to share holders as they entered the building. Tom Kelly-our fearless DC SUN Pepco trouble shooter—rocked sun shaped temporary tatoos on his recently bald head! Tom brought his custom printed "Power from the People" signs with lightning bolts to the event. Thanks to all of you that showed up! YOU REALLY MADE MY DAY!!!

Inside John Capozzi (Ward 7 Coop leader) spoke about his intention to introduce a shareholder resolution to require Pepco to affirmatively address climate change. He spoke about his interest as a shareholder in seeing Pepco embrace solar as a money making enterprise and suggested that Pepco might help finance and or market solar to residential customers. John said that Pepco was missing huge opportunities in this area.

John Rigby Pepco CEO expressed concern and said he wanted to address John's issues before John felt compelled to come back to the shareholder meeting next year! He offered to personally meet with John in the near future!

Inside, Anya Schoolman (DC Sun and MTP Solar Coop leader) spoke about Pepco's roll out of smart meters and smart grid and their apparent hostility to solar in general. She said that as a shareholder she was concerned that Pepco was turning the environmental and solar advocacy community into enemies instead of potential allies in the building of a new energy economy. She mentioned that there had been a number of complaints filed with the PSC. She also mentioned that Pepco's actions were engendering resentment that would translate into real regulatory risk affecting the bottom line of Pepco shareholders.

After the meeting, both John and Anya were approached by a number of senior executives from the Pepco team. Charles R. Dickerson, Vice President, Customer Care mentioned the November 2010 meeting with DC Sun and Pepco management in the office of DC Council member Bowser. Anya replied that there has been zero follow up since that meeting. Important news however, he announced that the staff of the Green Power Connection Team has been tripled! So maybe Lisa Bladen will have some help, and you won't be put on hold for 45 minutes any longer? I look forward to your reports.

Also, John Huffman, President of Pepco Energy Services expressed interest in meeting with us and working collaboratively with the Coops. Although PES works on efficiency and solar for large commercial and government buildings we suggested there might be ways to collaborate--for example, by bringing the Solar Coops in on a bulk purchase of PV panels to bring our price/watt down significantly. We would love your ideas on how we might take advantage of PES new “interest” in finding common ground with the Coops.

Monday, May 16, 2011

DC SUN Meets with Sustainable Energy Utility

The Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) was established by DC Council to chart a path forward for the District with regard to renewable energy and energy efficiency.  While the solar Renewable Energy Incentive Program (REIP) has provided rebates to help more than 400 DC residents go solar, the program is set to expire next year and it is already over-subscribed.  With 440 more people on the waiting list (which has now closed due to the popularity of the program), what is next for solar incentives in DC?   

Anya Schoolman, Akili West and I recently sat down with the Managing Director of the SEU to discuss this very question.  DC SUN is advocating that the SEU develop a long-term set of goals for reaching solar adoption rates that will make the District a leader in locally-produced renewable energy.  While it is important that the SEU advocate for BOTH energy efficiency AND solar energy (among other things), our message was clear – “Get out of the box quickly on solar!”  We have momentum, a diverse installer base, and a long waiting list of citizens ready to go.  DC SUN has offered to help develop ideas for a second round of REIP that can fix some of the problems we saw in round one – in particular, the lack of an independent trust fund, and uneven distribution of solar projects across all eight Wards. 

It is clear that the price of solar will continue to drop, so rebates can be less generous than Round 1.  Within 4-5 years, it may be that the economics of solar will work without any DC rebate.  However, in the near term, smaller rebates are important.  Funding for solar rebates continue to come in from utility ratepayers, but there is currently no mechanism with the expiration of REIP to direct that funding to solar projects.  We need REIP Round 2 to leverage that funding and ensure continued solar growth – which we have seen double from year to year.  Because of the uncertainty regarding the rebates, many homeowners are putting projects on hold until a new program is announced.

We left the meeting with the SEU very encouraged that they understand the issues and dynamics of the solar market in DC.  They understand that stabilizing the sREC market is critical, that community involvement is a must, and that certainty in regard to future rebate programs needs to happen quickly.  That said, they are just getting off the ground and have not yet determined how to transition into programs that have been traditionally run by DDOE.  While these issues play out, we are hopeful that DC SUN will continue to have a strong voice in developing solar programming in the City.  Please comment with any thoughts you have.

Mike Barrette

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

DC Petition;s City Council --Don't Let Solar Die

DC Sun Fights for DC Solar!

Yesterday, nearly a dozen solar advocates met at the Wilson Building to present members of the DC Council with a petition asking:

"We the undersigned residents of the District of Columbia urge our City Council to pass the Distributed Generation Amendment Act of 2011 to help put more solar on the rooftops of our homecity. Let's build DC solar to create jobs, grow DC businesses and protect the environment.”

To date we have 2,104 signatures on the petition—but the numbers continue to grow! It is not too late to sign!

http://signon.org/sign/build-dc-solar-dont-let

We were very surprised by the reaction we got at CM Cheh’s office—as she has been the long standing champion in the DC Council on renewable energy. We have been in conversations with her office about the need to fix the SREC market for one year now. We went to her office to ask why it is taking so long. She seemed severely annoyed to see us there and told us the bill was more complicated than we thought! We left wondering if Cheh had lost interest in being Washington’s solar champion.

After the meeting we got the following statement from CM Cheh’s office: “As the primary author and lead introducer of this bill, I fully support moving forward. I have been advised by Councilmember Alexander’s office that she plans to move the bill in front of the Committee for markup this month.” -Mary Cheh

CM Alexander warmly welcomed our delegation, and agreed to take pictures with our group handing over the 175 page petition! She said the bill would be marked up and moved in May and promised the bill would be done before summer recess. This is good news, however, the bill mark up still has not been scheduled, and we are getting conflicting reports on how strong the bill will be when finished.

We also visited with staff from CM Wells and CM Graham’s offices as we had strong representation in our group from Ward’s 1 and 6. They assured us they would look into why the bill appeared to be stalled and see what they could to do help.

Stay tuned!

Anya Schoolman

President DC Sun

PS If anyone wants to help deliver the petition to the other members of the DC Council please contact me! We need constituents to educate their representatives in all of the DC Wards.

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