State to require rooftop solar panels — for now
State officials declined Wednesday to approve a program that would allow new homes to be built in Sacramento without rooftop solar panels — handing at least a temporary victory to clean energy advocates, who said the program would cripple California’s first-in-the-nation home solar mandate.
The California Energy Commission postponed a decision on a controversial proposal from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District after hearing from dozens of solar industry representatives, environmental activists and utility ratepayers. Under SMUD’s proposal, home builders would be allowed to take credit for electricity produced at existing solar farms, rather than installing solar panels on new single-family homes and low-rise multifamily buildings.
Building industry officials urged approval of the program, saying it would help keep California’s already-high housing prices from rising even further.
But critics said it would undermine California’s home solar mandate, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020. They said approval of the program would set a precedent that could be followed by other utilities, such as Pacific Gas & Electric, which submitted a letter this week supporting SMUD’s proposal.
“Last year, California told the world it was requiring rooftop solar on new homes,” Don Osborne, president of the Elk Grove, Calif.based solar installer Spectrum
Energy, told the commission. “It would be an embarrassment to the state and a setback for clean energy if you let this through on technicalities.”
When the Energy Commission approved the requirement for solar panels on new homes, it also gave builders the option of supplying power from an off-site “community solar” facility. The alternate compliance option mollified critics who said rooftop solar would price some home buyers out of the market.
Clean energy advocates figured the exception would be utilized by multifamily developments without sufficient space for rooftop solar, and that community solar projects would be small facilities designed to serve nearby areas.
But the Energy Commission
chose not to define “community.”
That choice generated intense debate on Wednesday.
SMUD’s community solar proposal included 100 megawatts from small existing solar farms within its service territory, which spans most of Sacramento County and parts of Placer and Yolo counties. But it also included 160 megawatts from a 550-acre facility and 60 megawatts from faraway Fresno County.
Solar industry officials said SMUD’s proposal made a mockery of the term “community solar.”
They were joined in that argument by the nation’s largest home builder, Miami-based Lennar Corp., which broke ranks with the rest of the industry and urged the Energy Commission to reject the proposal.
SMUD’s program “exploits what was supposed to be an exception,” said Todd Farhat, utility relations manager for SunStreet, Lennar’s solar installation subsidiary.