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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (9613)	10/13/2009 3:52:57 AM
From: elpolvo	Respond to of 24213

i like the name...Tres Amigas

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (9613)	10/13/2009 10:59:04 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24213

Yee Haw!! A chance for me to some money? Plug in the creek? Governor signs bills that boost solar power David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, October 13, 2009 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed several bills Sunday that will tweak the way California's electricity market works, encouraging solar power and phasing out some rules created during the state's electricity crisis. One bill will require California utilities to buy surplus solar power from homeowners who generate more than they use. Another bill will expand the state's "feed-in tariff," a system that sets a price for renewable power that utilities buy from businesses with midsize solar arrays. Another piece of legislation will raise the electricity rates of customers who use relatively little power, ending a rate freeze put in place during the energy crisis of 2000-01. The same bill also will allow a limited number of large electricity customers - such as businesses or schools - to leave the utilities and buy power from other companies. Schwarzenegger has made expanding the use of renewable power one of his top priorities, although he and the Legislature haven't always agreed on how to do it. The governor this weekend carried out his threat to veto two related bills that would have forced the state's utilities to get 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Schwarzenegger argued that the bills placed too many restrictions on the utilities, and he decided to pursue the same 33 percent goal through an executive order instead. The energy-related bills Schwarzenegger signed Sunday weren't nearly as contentious. One of them, AB920, requires the utilities to compensate a homeowner whose solar array or small wind generator produces more electricity during the year than the customer uses. Until now, if a homeowner's panels produced more energy than the home used in an entire year, the utilities got the excess for free. "Instead of writing a check to your utility company, you'll be getting a check back," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, clean energy advocate for Environment California, which backed the bill. Another bill, SB32, will expand California's feed-in tariff for renewable power. Used widely in Europe, feed-in tariffs establish a price the utilities pay to buy electricity from businesses with solar arrays that are larger than a typical home system but smaller than the vast solar plants being planned in the California desert. California already has a feed-in tariff, but it only covers renewable power projects capable of generating 1.5 megawatts or less. Under SB32, the limit is increased to 3 megawatts. Finally, the Republican governor signed a bill that will end an 8-year-old freeze on electricity rates for some utility customers. During the electricity crisis, the state froze rates for customers in the first two tiers of electricity usage under the five-tier system used by California utilities. The new bill, SB695, allows rates to rise again in those first two tiers, to a limited degree. Bills can rise by the same amount as the rate of inflation - as tracked by the consumer price index - plus 1 percent. The total increase can not exceed 5 percent per year. "We felt that was manageable," said Mike Florio, senior staff attorney at The Utility Reform Network, who helped draft the bill. "It's not going to be too big a hit at any one time." The same bill also allows a limited return to a policy called direct access, which let power customers buy from companies other than the utilities. Direct access was part of California's disastrous experiment with electricity deregulation in the 1990s, but the state suspended it in the wake of the electricity crisis. Under SB695, Florio said, the state will now allow direct access to grow again, but only to the level it reached before the crisis, as measured by the total amount of electricity sold under direct access contracts. E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com. Read more: sfgate.com