Tag Archive for: rooftopsolar

CBD joined the legal challenge to a California rule banning solar contractors from installing or maintaining photovoltaic battery storage.

New ally joins fight to defend rooftop solar in California

A leading U.S. green group on Tuesday joined the legal challenge to a California rule banning solar contractors from installing or maintaining photovoltaic battery storage.

The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) joined an amended lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court against a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regulation enacted last year in accordance with the wishes of Pacific Gas & Electric and two other investor-owned utilities.

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Source: Common Dreams

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Watts-Willowbrook Church of Christ celebrated the commissioning of a new 12-kW rooftop solar and upcoming battery storage installation.

Compton church adds resiliency with rooftop solar + storage

Watts-Willowbrook Church of Christ, known as “The Brook,” in collaboration with RE-volv and California Interfaith Power & Light (CIPL), celebrated the commissioning of a new 12-kW rooftop solar and upcoming battery storage installation. The church’s move to adopt solar energy aims to alleviate financial strains, build community resilience and bolster local clean energy projects and advocacy efforts.

The celebration included a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a speaking program featuring remarks from the Compton Mayor Emma Sharif, and a resiliency workshop. The Mayor presented two awards, recognizing The Brook and Ms. Linda Cleveland, long-time community activist and church secretary, for their environmental leadership and contributions.

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Source: Solar Power World

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About 60% of customers have included battery energy storage with their rooftop solar installation, up from roughly 10% prior.

California is now a batteries-included rooftop solar market

California transitioned its rooftop solar policy on April 15, 2023, eliminated net energy metering (NEM) and moving toward a net billing tariff (NBT) structure. The change essentially cut the rate paid to customers for exporting their excess solar production to the grid by about 80%. On year later, Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has released a report evaluating changes in the state’s rooftop solar market.

LNBL found that rooftop solar installations in California were roughly equal in 2023 to 2022. However, 80% of the systems installed were NEM 2.0 installations rushing into interconnection queues before the April 15, 2023 deadline to secure the more lucrative rate structure. To date, about 50,000 systems have been interconnected under the new NBT structure, in addition to 200,000 NEM systems interconnected over the same period.

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Source: PV Magazine

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State regulators slashed solar programs that school districts rely on to cut energy bills and finance sustainability projects. A new bill could fix that.

California bill would undo rules making it hard for schools to go solar

California regulators’ hostility to rooftop solar may have hit its political limit, at least when it comes to the impact on public schools.

In the past few months, a host of bills seeking to reverse or amend California’s regulatory push against rooftop solar have faltered in the state Capitol. The exception, so far, is Senate Bill 1374. The bill would amend the November California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) decision that prevents schools, farms, apartment buildings, and other types of customers from using the solar power they generate to offset their power purchases from Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric, the state’s three major utilities.

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Source: Canary Media

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New grants for Solar for All programs aim to install solar panels and boost community solar access for over 900,000 low- and middle-income residents nationwide.

Making solar affordable: This $7B US investment expands solar for all

Widespread access to solar power is vital to transitioning the US away from climate-warming fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. There’s a problem: Rooftop solar panels are expensive, with prices in the tens of thousands of dollars putting them out of reach for many Americans.

Newly expanded government programs, backed by $7 billion in grants announced Monday by the Biden administration for Earth Day, aim to close that affordability gap. Called Solar for All, they’re intended to make clean energy accessible by offering free or low-cost rooftop solar panels or community solar access. Essentially, the programs provide a share in the power provided by a nearby solar facility.

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Source: CNET

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Rooftop solar energy is essential to helping California meet its goal of generating 100% clean electricity by 2045.

50 organizations support AB 2256 to keep rooftop solar growing in California

April 9, 2024

Re: Support for AB 2256 (Friedman): the true value of rooftop solar

We as the undersigned write in enthusiastic support of Assembly Bill 2256 (Friedman).

We have the power to harness abundant renewable energy from the sun by installing solar panels on California’s rooftops. While we lead the nation in rooftop solar capacity, we’ve only taken advantage of 10% of the state’s rooftop solar potential so far. Rooftop solar energy is essential to helping California meet its goal of generating 100% clean electricity by 2045.

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Source: Environmental America

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California’s highest court granted review to a lawsuit challenging a “regressive” rooftop solar policy called NEM 3.0.

California Supreme Court to review rooftop solar net metering

A controversial rooftop solar rulemaking decision has risen to the Supreme Court of California, with the state’s highest court granting review for a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity.

The case involves the state’s NEM 3.0 net metering scheme and the rate structure that went into effect in April 2023. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a request by the state’s largest investor-owned utilities to cut compensation to customers that export excess solar generation to the grid, a process called net energy metering.

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Source: PV Magazine

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California ranks as the “greenest” state in America according to a report released Wednesday by the WalletHub personal finance website.

California ranked ‘greenest’ US state thanks to water conservation, EVs and rooftop solar

California ranks as the “greenest” state in America thanks to rooftop solar, water conservation and electric vehicles, according to a report released Wednesday by the WalletHub personal finance website.

“Eco-friendliness and personal finance are related,” noted Miami-based WalletHub in its introduction to the ranking. “Our environmental and financial needs are the same in many areas.”

States were ranked on environmental quality, eco-friendly behavior and contribution to climate-change using 25 metrics ranging from water quality to LEED-certified buildings to greenhouse gas emissions.

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Source: Times of San Diego

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Elevated metro stations may highly benefit from rooftop solar power generation combined w/ battery storage, new research from China suggests.

Photovoltaics for elevated metro stations

Researchers from the Xi’an Jiaotong University in China have investigated how rooftop solar and battery storage may help cover energy demand in elevated metro stations and found this combination may achieve a self-sufficiency rate of up to 54% and a payback time of 10.2 years.

“Our work is the first study focusing on the PV potential of elevated subway stations based on real energy loads,” the research’s lead author, Haobo Yang, told pv magazine. “Our findings are based on measured hourly load demands and include the impact of battery energy storage on PV system performance.”

In the study “Technoeconomic analysis of rooftop PV system in elevated metro station for cost-effective operation and clean electrification,” published in Renewable Energy, Yang and his colleagues said their work is intended to provide a benchmark for cost-effective operation and clean electrification in urban metro networks.

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Source: PV Magazine

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India is renewing its push to add rooftop solar to meet the needs of a fast-growing nation that's hungry for energy.

India wants to hook its population onto clean energy by boosting rooftop solar

Just a few years ago, someone who wanted to install a rooftop solar connection in India faced getting multiple approvals, finding a reliable company to install the panels and spending heavily before seeing the first surge of clean energy.

But that’s changing. The government has streamlined the approvals process, made it easier for people to claim subsidies and pushed mountains of cash — including $9 billion announced this month — to encourage faster adoption of technology that’s seen as critical for India to reach its clean-energy goals.

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Source: ABC News

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