{"id":12027,"date":"2015-01-18T12:49:06","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T17:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=12027"},"modified":"2015-02-07T09:23:13","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T14:23:13","slug":"solar-financing-bill-hb-57","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/solar-financing-bill-hb-57.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar financing bill HB 57"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nYou won’t have to mortgage the farm to install solar power if this bill passes,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nbecause you’ll be able to get\r\n\r\nreasonable financing<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nUpdate 2015-02-07:<\/strong> HB 57 was favorably reported out of the\r\nHouse Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee<\/a> 28 January 2015,\r\nfirst time such a bill has ever cleared that hurdle.\r\n

\r\nThe actual solar leasing bill in the Georgia House as of 14 January 2015\r\nis\r\n\r\nHB 57<\/a> “…to provide for financing of solar technology by retail electric customers for the generation of electric energy to be used on and by property owned or occupied by such customers or to be fed back to the electric service provider”, aka the “Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015.”\r\nIt includes the same old generation limits from the 1973 Territorial\r\nElectric Service Act (10 Megawatts per individual and 100 MW per company),\r\nbut it blows a huge hole in the prohibition on power purchase agreements (PPAs).\r\n

\r\nGeorgia Power and the Electric Membership Corporations have reportedly\r\n\r\nalready agreed on this bill<\/a>.\r\nIf so, it should sail through the legislature.\r\nStill, it won’t hurt to call your Georgia House member and ask them to vote for it,\r\nand maybe become a co-sponsor.\r\n

\r\nHere’s PDF<\/a>\r\nof the bill, and\r\nhere’s the key provision:\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n46-3-65.(a) Provided that the solar technology does not exceed the\r\ncapacity limit, the leasing, financing, or installation of such\r\nsolar technology through a solar energy procurement agreement shall\r\nnot be considered the provision of electric service to the public,\r\nretail electric service, or retail supply of electricity by the\r\nsolar financing agent, and neither the retail electric customer nor\r\nthe solar financing agent shall be considered an electric supplier\r\nwithin the meaning of Part 1 of this article or in violation of\r\nexclusive electric service rights arising therein.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHere’s the longer rationale for that clause:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n46-3-61. The General Assembly hereby finds and declares that:\r\n

    \r\n
  1. \r\nIt is in the public interest to facilitate customers of electric service providers to invest\r\nin and install on their property solar technologies of their choice;\r\n
  2. \r\nFree-market financing of solar technologies may provide more customers with\r\nopportunities to install solar technology;\r\n
  3. \r\nSolar energy procurement agreements, and other similar financing arrangements,\r\nincluding those in which the payments are based on the performance and output of the\r\nsolar technology installed on the property of customers of electric service providers, are\r\nfinancing arrangements which may help reduce or eliminate upfront costs involved in\r\nsolar technology investments and installation by such customers; and\r\n
  4. \r\nIndividuals and entities which offer or receive such financing opportunities through\r\nsolar energy procurement agreements pursuant to this part should not be considered or\r\ntreated as electric service providers.\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nThis bill still doesn’t allow selling through the grid to a third party.\r\nMaybe next year.\r\nAnd yes, Georgia Power, you could take a percentage.\r\n

    \r\nThe bill does include quite a bit of verbiage about\r\n“applicable safety, power quality, and interconnection requirements”,\r\nbut those are actually already required by another Georgia law,\r\nthe same one that already requires electric utilities to buy\r\nyour excess solar power if you want to sell it to them:\r\n\r\nThe Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act of 2001<\/a>;\r\nsee 46-3-56.(c):\r\n

    \r\n

    \r\nA distributed generation facility used by a customer generator shall\r\ninclude, at the customer’s own expense, all equipment necessary to\r\nmeet applicable safety, power quality, and interconnection\r\nrequirements established by the National Electrical Code, National\r\nElectrical Safety Code, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics\r\nEngineers, and Underwriters Laboratories.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nBut if Georgia Power wants that language reiterated, hey, why not?\r\n

    \r\nThat 2001 law also limits the\r\naggregate capacity of systems selling back to the grid\r\n \r\nto 0.2% of a utility’s system peak demand from the previous year<\/a>.\r\nThat’s another thing to fix another year.\r\n

    \r\nFor now, legalizing any power purchase agreements is a huge step forward.\r\nA step that even might Georgia Power won’t be able to take back.\r\nInstead, it will have to start running to keep up.\r\nAnd the sun will rise on Georgia.\r\n

    \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You won’t have to mortgage the farm to install solar power if this bill passes, because you’ll be able to get reasonable financing. Update 2015-02-07: HB 57 was favorably reported out of the House Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Committee 28 January 2015, first time such a bill has ever cleared that hurdle. The actual solar […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,8,18,20,73,24],"tags":[585,8704,713,8701,8708,8702,8710,8177,12,7,1035,1036,8176,8731,8714,6],"class_list":["post-12027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-law","category-safety","category-solar","tag-cogeneration","tag-economy","tag-financing","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-leasing","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-power-purchase-agreement","tag-ppa","tag-procurement","tag-safety","tag-solar","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-37Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12027"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12181,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions\/12181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}