Local Energy Rules

When people pay their electric bill to an investor-owned utility such as Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, they are generating energy for themselves, but the profit and wealth accrues to the utility’s investors. But now, customers have an opportunity to buy in. Community solar programs are popping up rapidly across the country, offering electric customers an opportunity to own a slice of solar energy produ...

Electric cooperatives arose from New Deal legislation that provided government-backed low-interest loans to bring electricity to rural areas that for-profit companies wouldn’t serve in the 1930s. They were engines of the rural economy. But today they face unique challenges, including a disproportionate reliance on coal-fired power, often purchased on decades-long contracts. Additionally, even thou...

It’s not sexy. But it can make you warmer. It can even make you cooler. On-bill financing provides loans for energy efficiency improvements through the local utility company, paid back with energy savings on monthly electric (or gas) bills. And it’s a powerful tool for simplifying the financing for energy savings, and for making home comfort and lower bills available to those without the credit to...

Former CEO Dwight Brown did a number on the Cobb Electric Membership Corporation (EMC). Cobb EMC serves around 175,000 member-owners just outside of Atlanta, Ga., and is one of 900 member-owned electric cooperatives in the United States. From the late 1990s on, the co-op’s members lost nearly $400 million dollars to Brown’s for-profit Cobb Energy, a shell entity Brown engineered to drain money fro...

ILSR’s John Farrell was a plenary speaker at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s 2016 annual conference in Boston, MA. The conference was held from March 8th through the 10th and focused on advancing the adoption of sustainable energy practices by bringing over 3,500 renewable energy professionals together. John’s opening plenary pinpointed key challenges of our current centralized ener...

In 2014, Chris Villarreal helped write the white paper, Microgrids: A Regulatory Perspective. As a regulatory analyst with the California Public Utilities Commission, he outlined the regulatory questions of microgrid development at a time when the state was mulling over how to allow more distributed, renewable energy come onto the grid. The questions weren’t small or easy to answer. Microgrids nat...

Most microgrids today are single buildings that rely on diesel generators to run when the grid is out. They’re simple backup, redundant power. But some more advanced microgrids, such as the Clean Coalition’s planned community microgrids, are looking into the future, when multiple sources of generation can support a community of homes and businesses. https://ilsr.org/articles/clean-coalition-podcas...

In April 2014, Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power generator, made a $6.8 billion offer for Washington D.C.-based Pepco. Exelon – which already owns Illinois ComEd and Baltimore G&E – would become the largest electric utility in the country, with nearly 10 million customers. Shareholders, federal regulators, and many state utility commissions have approved the deal. But in August, the D...

The publicly-owned Sacramento Municipal Utility District, or SMUD, had already installed the first utility-scale PV array in the nation back in 1984. By the early 1990s, the utility saw a potential for rooftop solar and launched its PV Pioneer program, placing dozens of solar arrays on their customer’s rooftops, for a fee. https://ilsr.org/articles/two-decades-of-solar-pioneers-in-sacramento-episo...

Minnesota’s community solar garden program may be the envy of the nation — once the utility’s stall tactics have been stopped — but it needs a little help to fulfill the vision of bringing solar to all. That’s where Julia Nerbonne, executive director of Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light, comes in. In June 2015, John Farrell talked to Nerbonne about opening up community solar for everyone — no...

At the beginning of June 2015, ILSR released its Public Rooftop Revolution report, which described how cities across the nation put the shine on municipal rooftops with more than 5,000 MW of solar. That 5,000 MW is as much as one-quarter of all solar installed in the U.S. to date — and many cities could install solar little or no upfront cash. The energy savings would allow cities to redirect mill...

Kansas City, MO, has neither the abundant sunshine nor high cost of electricity that have driven solar installations in other cities. Despite this, the city has close to 1.5 MW of solar in 59 separate installations on municipal properties. Thanks to utility rebates, two department leaders, and a unique opportunity that allowed it to access the 30% federal tax credit, the city was able to make sola...

There aren’t many solar success stories from the Southeast, making Raleigh, NC, stand out in a region with low-cost electricity and modest sunshine. With just over 2 megawatts of solar on public property––providing close to 7% of municipal building peak demand––Raleigh’s solar success comes despite state rules preventing the city from buying electricity from any non-utility entity. In April 2015,...

Jason Caudle, city manager with the City of Lancaster, talked with John Farrell in April 2015 about his city’s solar boom. With more than 118 MW of solar, both private and public, operating within city limits, Lancaster is well on its way to producing or procuring 530 MW of clean energy by 2020. Hitting that target would make Lancaster one of the world’s first net-zero towns, producing more energy...

“San Diego and its community choice energy district would be able to offer a diverse energy mix with all of the solar, biodiesel, biogas, and energy storage resources that we have in San Diego.  A product that is price competitive and yet at the same time would strive for and achieve a higher level of renewable content.” See how this southern California city is striving for more clean energy and m...

“Utility regulation and rates is a contact sport,” says Karl Rabago, and that makes the implementation of a new “value of solar” policy complex. Will distributed solar grow better with a transparent, value-based contract price? How does it differ from net metering? Is Minnesota’s law a precedent to follow? Prepare yourself for a deep dive in this extended interview with Karl Rabago, former Vice Pr...

It’s one thing to own your utility and have a commitment to renewable energy, but it’s another thing to deliver. The municipal utility in Palo Alto, CA, set an ambitious target of 33% renewable energy by 2015 and to ultimately deliver a carbon neutral electricity supply. They will reach 48% renewable power in 2017 and met the carbon neutral goal starting last year. Learn more about the strategies...

“We can’t do it as an individual, But four hundred communities aggregating and asking for local wind power and solar power – that’s really powerful.” Oak Park, IL, is one of hundreds of Illinois towns using their authority to buy electricity in bulk on behalf of its residential and small business customers. So far, most communities have used the policy – known as community choice aggregation – to...

Community choice aggregation describes a situation where a town can become the bulk buyer of electricity on behalf of its residential and small business customers. Such local aggregations serve about 5% of utility customers in Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and California, but it’s Marin Clean Energy in California that stands above the crowd for their commitment to renewable energy a...

“We have a perfect storm for renewables,” says Jan TenBruggencate, second-term board member of the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative. The Hawaiian utility, made local when the investor-owned utility left the business a decade ago, is surging toward 40% renewable energy in the next year, with a third of that total from customer-generated solar. Half its daytime energy will come from solar arrays by...

How can a community take control of its energy future from a 100-year monopoly electric utility?  Citizens of Boulder, CO, are testing answers to that question, trying to discover how a single city can do more for its economy and the environment with more power over its energy system. At the core of their efforts is a grassroots campaign to form a city-owned utility, an effort that faced an enormo...

For years, the only effective way to go solar was to have tens of thousands of dollars and a sunny roof.  Investing in solar was nearly impossible.  But a couple years ago, a new notion called crowdfunding got its start, and California-Based Mosaic was on the forefront.  Its crowdfunding program allows people to pool their resources, large or small, to build community-based solar installations.  I...

Laboring to keep more of its energy dollars at home, community members in Boulder, CO, decided that they needed some numbers behind their vision of a cleaner energy utility.  Listen in to the podcast to hear Ken Regelson describe how the remarkable results of Boulder’s citizen-driven energy model have given them power to stand up to the incumbent electric monopoly with a vision for a 21st century...

“It’s the most inspirational work that I’m doing…this is an inspirational and aspirational effort…at the heart of it is love of place and energy democracy.” Citizens of Santa Fe, NM, are exploring the economic and environmental benefits of more local and locally-controlled energy production.  Is their city ready to take the lead? Find out in this interview with Executive Director Mariel Nanasi of...

“We can avoid that $100 million investment in transmission lines, distribution lines, in capital infrastructure…” How can a utility like Long Island Power Authority avoid all that new capital expenditure?  Find out in this interview with Vice President of Environmental Affairs Michael Deering, recorded via Skype on November 25, 2013. https://ilsr.org/articles/solar-saves-grid-costs-episode-13-loca...