Got my CPS PV solar rebate approved

[Wild Cobra]

I doubt the $0.0584 per kWh is accurate. I hope to be shown wrong, but I don't see that as a realistic selling price to also cover construction, maintenance, etc.

your blind ideology has a tough time facing hard reality

I doubt the $0.0584 per kWh is accurate. I hope to be shown wrong, but I don't see that as a realistic selling price to also cover construction, maintenance, etc.

My God, you are a first class idiot.

[TDMVPDPOY]

man i was going to get a system then the oxymoron leader down here pulls out all money into solar to protect stake holders in the energy sector that has a vested interested in energy stocks and coal, in other words dont fix which isnt broken

anyway the pos leader is proposing a deal with energy suppliers, where the consumer pays for panel product and installation, gets a cheap rate for energy supplied in return...but the panels dont belong to the consumer but the energy supplier...ROFLMAO monkeys

[boutons_deux]

man i was going to get a system then the oxymoron leader down here pulls out all money into solar to protect stake holders in the energy sector

yeah, Abbott is conservative, and conservatives EVERYWHERE stuff up, which is the definition of conservatism.

[CosmicCowboy]

CPS is killing all their subsidies at the end of this year and the Federal tax credits expire too. Looks like residential solar is pretty well dead in San Antonio.

[TDMVPDPOY]

CPS is killing all their subsidies at the end of this year and the Federal tax credits expire too. Looks like residential solar is pretty well dead in San Antonio.

i thought that only applies to new clients who got in late, those on grand plans still get to keep those credit plans?

[CosmicCowboy]

i thought that only applies to new clients who got in late, those on grand plans still get to keep those credit plans?

Yes.

Talking about subsidized installation.

[boutons_deux]

CPS pays $1.60 per watt of solar panel, very attractive installation subsidy, but it would be much better long run if CPS (also) had an equally aggressive feed-in tariff.

[Wild Cobra]

CPS pays $1.60 per watt of solar panel, very attractive installation subsidy, but it would be much better long run if CPS (also) had an equally aggressive feed-in tariff.

At what rate would you have this at?

[boutons_deux]

At what rate would you have this at?

The same rate CPS buys from OCI, which IIRC is $0.14/KwH.

At very least what CPS bills residential customers, $0.11/KwH

[Wild Cobra]

The same rate CPS buys from OCI, which IIRC is $0.14/KwH.

At very least what CPS bills residential customers, $0.11/KwH

LOL...

If CPS is already losing money, why should they lose more?

Maybe the customers should be charged that $0.14 plus distribution, transmission, maintenance, salaries, etc.

You know...

If you raise electricity to the true cost, then that would be incentive enough for people to install solar.

You live your subsidies, don't you?

[Wild Cobra]

Where did you get your rates?

MONTHLY BILL
Rate
$ 8.75 Service Availability Charge

Energy Charge
$ 0.0691 Per KWH for all KWH

Peak Capacity Charge*
$ 0.0198 Per KWH for all KWH in excess of 600 KWH

For customers to pay $0.0691/kWh means selling back should be under $0.05.

https://www.cpsenergy.com/content/da...alElectric.pdf

[boutons_deux]

CPS is announcing two huge solar initiatives

1. community solar, you buy panels, about $300 each, in a "community" solar farm (you won't or can't put solar on your roof)

2. CPS leasing your rooftop to put their panels. (same deal as Elon Musk's SolarCity, etc)

but they are absolutely refusing to pay for excess solar power from distributed business/residential solar.

[boutons_deux]

State of Texas: The Future’s So Bright You Gotta Wear Shades




http://www.texasobserver.org/solar-r...-fossil-fuels/

[boutons_deux]

Obama Just Picked The Customer’s Side Against The Nevada Utility That’s Trying To Kill Rooftop Solar

On Wednesday, Nevada’s public utility commission (PUC) will decide whether to agree with a proposal by the local utility and implement huge rate increases in solar customers that industry insiders say will completely devastate the residential market in the state.

“We see the trend lines. We see where technology is taking us. We see where consumers want to go,” Obama said Monday. “That, let’s be honest, has some fossil fuel interests pretty nervous, to the point where they are trying to fight renewable energy.”

Nevada is — so far — a solar success story.

The state is in first place in per capita solar jobs.

Investment in solar quadrupled last year to more than half a billion dollars.

There are more than 100 solar companies in Nevada, including six manufacturers.

And the only reason solar customers’ electricity rates are even up for debate is that the installation cap under the old rate was hit last week, six months earlier than the utility estimated.

We see the trend lines. We see where technology is taking us. We see where consumers want to go.Under an agreement hammered out earlier this year, public utility NV Energy’s net metering program — under which solar customers are paid market rate for the electricity they put back onto the grid — would be reconsidered by the end of the year, sometime before the 235-megawatt (MW) cap was hit. Now, solar installers are in limbo. The PUC could accept NV Energy’s proposal that would add fees and charges to solar customers’ bills.

“This proposal is a thousand pages. It’s incredibly complicated,” Chandler Sherman, a spokesperson for SolarCity, told Think Progress.

Sherman said the proposal includes nine new fees, taxes, and charges, which are often difficult for residential customers to understand. “They are really just designed to make it harder for people to go solar,” she said.

Among the additions is a nearly $14 per kilowatt hour (kWh) demand charge. That means that a customer’s peak demand during the month would be multiplied by $14 and added to the electricity bill, which currently just calculates a customer’s usage. The surcharge would only apply to solar customers. These types of charges are difficult to estimate and are incredibly rare for residential customers in the United States.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...te+Progress%29

This is how a Repug red state promote Rugged Individualism and The Free Market, but really viciously protecting BigUtility!

btw, red neck Nevadans: Hoover Dam! "You Didn't Build That"

[boutons_deux]

Next Texas Energy Boom: Solar

FORT STOCKTON, Texas—A new energy boom is taking shape in the oil fields of west Texas, but it’s not what you think. It’s solar.

Solar power has gotten so cheap to produce—and so compe ively priced in the electricity market—that it is taking hold even in a state that, unlike California, doesn’t offer incentives to utilities to buy or build sun-powered generation.

Pecos County, about halfway between San Antonio and El Paso and on the southern edge of the prolific Permian Basin oil field, could soon play host to several large solar-energy farms responsible for about $1 billion in investments, according to state tax records.

On a recent day, contractors for OCI Solar Power LLC erected posts for a solar farm that will be the size of more than 900 football fields.First Solar Inc. was negotiating to lease an adjacent property, its second project in the county. Last year, the Arizona company began capturing sunlight on 400,000 black solar panels in a separate project, converting the abundant sunlight into about 30 megawatts of power.

SunEdison Inc. has presented plans for its own utility-scale solar farm to county commissioners, and Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc., is readying another site nearby for construction.

State incentives in California, Nevada and North Carolina helped fund the construction of many large-scale solar farms designed to sell electricity into those local power grids.

But in Texas, while there is federal financial support for such projects, there are no state subsidies or mandates that encourage solar power.

Texas currently has only 193 megawatts of large-scale solar arrays, enough to power about 40,000 Texas homes on a summer afternoon. But the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the power grid that covers most of the state, expects between 10,000 megawatts and 12,500 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be installed by 2029. That is roughly equal to the size of all solar farms currently operating in the U.S.

Texas’ growth will be driven by falling prices, said Warren Lasher,ERCOT’s director of system planning. By the end of the decade, he said, “Solar is going to become one of the most cost-effective sources of electricity on the grid.”

In 15 years, ERCOT predicts between 3% and 9% of its electricity generation will come from the sun, though that could be slowed by low natural gas prices, according to the grid operator and energy company officials.

West Texas “is flat, the land is open, available and cheap and there is a lot of sun” said Raiford Smith, vice president of corporate planning for CPS Energy, a city-owned utility in San Antonio. “It is an ideal place for putting solar.”




Another reason for the boom: Texas recently wrapped up construction of $6.9 billion worth of new transmission lines, many connecting West Texas to the state’s large cities. These massive power lines enabled Texas to become, by far, the largest U.S. wind producer.

Solar developers plan to move electricity on the same lines, taking advantage of a lull in wind generation during the heat of the day when solar output is at its highest.

The cost of big-scale solar projects is also plummeting, making them compe ive in the state’s low-price power market. Last year, municipal utility Austin Energy signed a contract with Recurrent Energy to build a 150-megawatt solar facility in Pecos County, making it one of the largest solar farms in the country. On a sunny summer afternoon, the facility could provide more than 5% of the city’s power needs at a price—$50 per megawatt hour—considerably below other solar projects.

In July, Austin Energy announced bids for a new round of solar construction that were below $40 a megawatt hour. “We had a feeling the bids would be a little lower, but we were surprised,” saidKhalil Shalabi, vice president of energy markets operations and resource planning at the utility.

In the afternoon, the average wholesale power price in the Texas electric grid’s western zone for the past year has been $35.43 a megawatt hour, according to data from the grid operator. Over the coming years, these wholesale prices are expected to rise, creating more opportunity for solar farms to be profitable.

And in a heat wave, ERCOT rules allow wholesale prices to e up to $9,000 a megawatt hour, creating the potential for large windfalls for solar farms and other power generators.


Local officials have welcomed solar developers, offering 10-year tax abatements.

“It is good for the county because we get a decent addition to our tax base,” said Joe Shuster, Pecos County’s chief executive.

Construction is moving quickly at the OCI Solar facility that sits in a wide valley surrounded by mesas topped with hundreds of wind turbines. A hundred workers were hard at work drilling holes and anchoring posts in the dry ground that will support individual solar arrays on a recent visit.

“This is like a giant assembly line,” says Billy Chapman, the construction manager for OCI Solar, a subsidiary of Seoul, South Korea-based OCI Company Ltd.

‘It is an ideal place for putting solar. ’
—Raiford Smith, utility-company executive

A veteran of the U.S. Navy and construction giant Bechtel Corp., Mr. Chapman built natural-gas fired power plants around the world before taking a job constructing arrays of solar panels.

“I’m not one of those big tree-hugging people,” he said, guiding a pickup around the OCI Solar site. “In places like this where there is nothing going on, where there is lots of land, solar makes sense.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/next-tex...lar-1440149400

[boutons_deux]

Investment Bankers Think Solar and Wind Will Grow Way Faster Than the IEA Forecast


Citibank’s projections show these deployments will save $1.8 trillion by 2040.

Under an “Inaction” scenario, Citi analysts assumed that in 2040 the electricity sector would remain weighted toward fossil fuels -- roughly 40 percent coal, 22 percent natural gas and 6 percent renewables.

Under an “Action” scenario, the share of fossil fuels would decline from today’s 64 percent to 28 percent. At the same time, power consumption would grow at a slower rate thanks to efficiency measures, while solar and onshore wind grow to 22 percent of the electricity mix.

Renewables play a notably larger role in Citi’s view of a lower carbon future than in the International Energy Agency’s 450 Scenario, which sets out an energy pathway consistent with limiting the global increase in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius.


Analysts at Citibank predict global growth in solar could be at least 65 percent higher on average than what the International Energy Agency predicts through 2020. Citi's solar PV forecast shows an average global installation rate of 53 gigawatts per year between 2013 and 2020. The IEA, by comparison, forecasts an average global installation rate of 33 gigawatts to 34 gigawatts per year over the same period.

GTM Research's global PV forecast is significantly higher than both Citi's and the IEA’s, coming in at an average of 75.5 gigawatts per year between 2013 and 2020.



Citi and the IEA also differ in their wind installation projections. Citi estimates that installations between 2013 and 2020 will average roughly 54 gigawatts per year, versus the IEA’s annual average of 38 gigawatts to 42 gigawatts.



The IEA and the United States’ Energy Information Administration are notorious for low-balling renewable energy deployment figures. A recent EIA report projected that all non-hydro renewables will account for only 18 percent of the country’s electricity generation supply by 2040, up from 13 percent in 2013.

Experts at these organizations have been accused of relying upon ill-considered assumptions, and even of being biased toward fossil-fuel interests. This has troubling implications for policymaking, argue Eric Gimon and Sonia Aggarwal of America’s Power Plan. When deployment and cost assumptions are systematically underestimated, it undermines the ability to create smart laws and regulations for the future.

According to Citigroup, decarbonizing the world’s energy mix will involve not only creating new policies, but also innovation in financial markets. That includes new vehicles such as securitized energy-efficiency fixed interest instruments, as well as YieldCos and green bonds.

These innovations will help drive down the cost of capital for renewables, making them more compe ive. By Citi’s calculations, wind is expected to be fully compe ive with conventional fuels by 2020. Better financing conditions are expected to make the cost of solar electricity generation more compe ive by 2020; however, global solar prices are still expected to be above $80 per megawatt-hour, according to the report.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...paign=GTMDaily

[boutons_deux]

Texas Mulls the Market Power of Distributed Energy Resources

This summer, Texas grid operator ERCOT started working on ideas for opening the state’s energy markets to distributed energy resources, by allowing the grid-scale aggregation of rooftop customer-sited generators. It’s a move similar to those being taken in solar-rich states like California andHawaii, only with Texas’ unique deregulated market flavor.

One interesting question is how to build distributed energy resource (DER) portfolios with enough flexibility to optimize their value to the grid and their owners, but not so much flexibility that companies can game the system. It's a concern in the state that spawned Enron, and it’s part of the discussion around ERCOT’s new concept paper, released last week, that lays out a first official outline of what the state’s DER future might look like.

The white paper is for ERCOT’s Distributed Resource Energy & Ancillaries Market (DREAM) Task Force, or DREAMTF for acronym fans. The do ent largely hews to the three key classifications ERCOT is considering -- DER Minimal, DER Light, and DER Heavy -- and a description of just what will need to happen, and what future questions need to be answered, to make each version into a real-world grid product.

Roughly speaking, DER Minimal would set compensation like demand response today, at the regional market clearing price of one of Texas' four grid zones. DER Light and Heavy, by contrast, would allow payment at prices set at the more than 11,000 nodes across the state, where prices can shift and e more quickly to reflect local conditions, and are usually reserved to big generators. DER Heavy adds another layer: real-time dispatchability to meet fast-responding ancillary services markets.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...ntech+Media%29

DER talk by ERCOT is probably just a smoke screen. ERCOT will do everything it can to re DER to protect electric utilities.

[boutons_deux]

The Night They Drove the Price of Electricity Down

Wind power was so plentiful in Texas that producers sold it at a negative price. What?

In the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, the mighty state of Texas was asleep. The honky-tonks in Austin were shuttered, the air-conditioned office towers of Houston were powered down, and the wind whistled through the dogwood trees and live oaks on the gracious lawns of Preston Hollow. Out in the desolate flats of West Texas, the same wind was turning hundreds of wind turbines, producing tons of electricity at a time when comparatively little supply was needed.

And then a very strange thing happened:

The so-called spot price of electricity in Texas fell toward zero, hit zero, and then went negative for several hours.

As the Lone Star State slumbered, power producers were paying the state’s electricity system to take electricity off their hands. At one point, the negative price was $8.52 per megawatt hour.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_ plentiful_one_night_that.html

[Wild Cobra]

The Night They Drove the Price of Electricity Down

Wind power was so plentiful in Texas that producers sold it at a negative price. What?

In the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, the mighty state of Texas was asleep. The honky-tonks in Austin were shuttered, the air-conditioned office towers of Houston were powered down, and the wind whistled through the dogwood trees and live oaks on the gracious lawns of Preston Hollow. Out in the desolate flats of West Texas, the same wind was turning hundreds of wind turbines, producing tons of electricity at a time when comparatively little supply was needed.

And then a very strange thing happened:

The so-called spot price of electricity in Texas fell toward zero, hit zero, and then went negative for several hours.

As the Lone Star State slumbered, power producers were paying the state’s electricity system to take electricity off their hands. At one point, the negative price was $8.52 per megawatt hour.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2015/09/texas_electricity_goes_negative_wind_power_was_so_ plentiful_one_night_that.html

And they are suppose to be profitable... how???

[Wild Cobra]

Here is a possible solution to excessive wind and solar power. Fuel cells can be storage solutions. All we need to do is on site reduction of water for excess power, and use fuel cells when needed.

http://www.nature.com/news/energy-re...-cells-1.18392

[boutons_deux]

Here is a possible solution to excessive wind and solar power. Fuel cells can be storage solutions. All we need to do is on site reduction of water for excess power, and use fuel cells when needed.

http://www.nature.com/news/energy-re...-cells-1.18392

complementing distributed energy generation, distributed energy storage will destroy centralized energy suppliers, is why they are paying $100Ms to Repugs to block, slow, kill distributed energy.

there is so much (promising) battery, fuel cell, energy storage research world-wide that one or more breakthroughs will shake the entire energy markets

[boutons_deux]

Arizona Public Service has offered to withdraw its request to increase the grid access charge for residential solar customers, claiming that opponents have turned the issue into “political theater.”

In a filing submitted on Friday, APS said it would drop its proposed fee increase if regulators move forward instead with hearings on the cost of providing electricity service, in order to determine future rates that are fair to all customers.

If the Arizona Corporation Commission accepts the APS recommendation, regulators would launch an investigation into the value-of-solar that would establish

1.) the actual costs for APS to serve rooftop solar customers and

2.) the amount those customers pay for continued reliance on the grid.

The utility asked for the ACC to reach a decision by March 2016 so the results could be incorporated in the next APS rate case.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...ntech+Media%29

energy storage breakthroughs will allow people to stop relying on the grid completely.

[boutons_deux]

Utilities seek to charge solar system owners more for connection to grid

The Inglewood resident signed in March with solar leasing giant SolarCity to fix his electric bills at $130 a month — down from the $250 to $300 he had been paying.

Those savings, however, would eventually evaporate if state regulators approve proposals from California utilities to charge solar users more for their connection to the grid.
"This thing would be worthless to me," Espinoza said.

Existing rooftop solar customers would receive some exemptions from the net-metering changes for 20 years after they installed their systems.

But their costs still could rise because of separate regulatory changes, already enacted, that allow higher rates for users who buy small amounts of electricity from the grid.

For new purchases of rooftop solar, the utility proposals could wipe out the potential savings on power — the main incentive for buying the systems.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...927-story.html

[boutons_deux]

Solar Customers Launch a Class Action Lawsuit Against NV Energy

Plaintiffs say the utility “conspired to unlawfully reduce incentives” in order to protect their monopoly.

Solar customers in Nevada are taking legal action against NV Energy in response to controversial changes to the state's net metering program.

Plaintiffs John Bamforth and Stanley Schone filed a class action lawsuit on January 12 seeking recompense for being mislead into purchasing solar systems “that do not provide the promised rebates, discounts and rates.”

The case stems from the Nevada Public Utility Commission’s recent decision to lower the net metering credit for rooftop solar customers from the retail rate to the wholesale rate over the next four years.

The decision also lowers solar customers’ monthly volumetric charge by about one cent over the same period, while

increasing the monthly fixed charge for the bulk of Nevada customers from $12.75 to $38.51.

The changes came into effect on January 1 and apply to all future rooftop solar customers in Nevada, as well as the 17,000 existing solar customers in the state.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...28GTM+Solar%29

We The People fighting back against Them The ing Repugs

Other red and slave Repug states probably planning to screw, or have screwed, their distributed solar customers like NV is doing, so winning this suit is fundamental to screwing electric monopolies and their screw-the-99% Repug enablers/protectors.

[Wild Cobra]

Conspired.

LOL...

If they use that argument, they will lose. Looks good in the headlines for eaters and regurgitaters like you though.