{"id":37965,"date":"2014-07-18T09:56:30","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T14:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=37965"},"modified":"2014-07-18T09:56:30","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T14:56:30","slug":"despite-obstacles-solar-gains-ground-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/07\/18\/despite-obstacles-solar-gains-ground-in-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Obstacles, Solar Gains Ground in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Marfa Public Radio:\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n
\"photo-2-8-500x375\"<\/a>

(Travis Bubenik\/KRTS)<\/p>

<\/p><\/div>\n

This week we have examined the opportunity and\u00a0challenge<\/a>\u00a0for solar power in Texas. There are no\u00a0state mandates<\/a>\u00a0or incentives for solar.<\/p>\n

And the head of the Public Utilities Commission says Congress should end solar\u2019s 30 per cent\u00a0federal tax credit.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Despite that landscape solar is breaking through in parts of Texas, providing models that renewable energy advocates hope will resonate in the rest of the state, starting with the price of solar power.\u00a0
\nElectricity is sold by the\u00a0kilowatt hour<\/a>. It refers to the use of 1000 watts used over the course of an hour. A typical U.S. household uses 900 kilowatt hours a month.<\/p>\n

The average cost of a kilowatt hour in Texas is about ten cents, nationally it\u2019s about 12 cents. The City of\u00a0Austin is building solar<\/a>\u00a0farm that will deliver at less than five cents a kilowatt hour. Money talks. And that\u2019s a loud voice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThese technologies are disruptive,\u201d explained\u00a0Larry Perea<\/a>\u00a0as he drove his hybrid car in El Paso.<\/p>\n

Perea installs solar in New Mexico and Texas. And the data support him. In 2012, Congress killed a policy that allowed solar installers to get immediate cash back instead of a future tax credit.<\/p>\n

Yet solar installations rose by more than a hundred per cent last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be no different than the horse and carriage industry,\u201d Perea continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen new technology comes in it displaces other people that work. The coal industry for example; they\u2019re going to get displaced. Farmhands got displaced with mechanized agricultural equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Texas, solar is making inroads, albeit slowly. Several Texas counties have granted solar companies\u00a0tax breaks<\/a>\u00a0and good deals on the open spaces needed for industrial scale solar panel farms.<\/p>\n

Recurrent Energy of San Francisco is building a 150-megawatt solar farm in West Texas. It has signed a 20-year deal to\u00a0sell the power\u00a0<\/a>to Austin Energy.<\/p>\n

And First Solar of Arizona, one of the world\u2019s largest solar companies, has started construction on a\u00a022-megawatt farm near Fort Stockton.<\/a><\/p>\n

Varun Rai examines the intersection of policy and the energy markets at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. He says those companies are coming to Texas to make deals with utilities that want to offer solar.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Texas there are local utilities, for example CPS in San Antonio (and) Austin Energy in Austin that have provided local rebates that have helped the solar.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a major stumbling block in Texas.<\/p>\n

Although individual customers can install them, there is no state regulation that mandates a technology known as \u201cnet metering.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a0net meter<\/a>\u00a0spins both forward and backward\u2014showing power produced and power used. Electricity made by solar is taken off the customer\u2019s monthly bill. But utilities say net-metering pushes the cost of energy up for customers who don\u2019t have solar.<\/p>\n

Because when we buy power we pay for two things; the electricity itself and the maintenance of the wires that bring it us. Solar customers pay much less for electricity because they generate it. That means the utility has less money for maintenance.<\/p>\n

Brewster McCracken<\/a>\u00a0runs\u00a0Pecan Street<\/a>\u00a0in Austin. Among other projects, Pecan Street focuses on renewables like solar. Even he empathizes with the utilities on this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very fair concern,\u201d said McCracken of the utilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have no real way to monetize that electricity,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt becomes a situation where the utility is having to have the same costs virtually to serve a home with solar panels. But their revenue can go down 60 to 100 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again Larry Perea. He says utilities can embrace renewable energy and make money. But he says the examples of Austin and\u00a0San Antonio<\/a>\u00a0are few and far between.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the homeowner is able to pocket the money to produce their own electricity, well that\u2019s revenue that\u2019s not going to a regulated monopoly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I believe utilities recognize that there\u2019s a legitimate to their business model that they\u2019ve been using for the last hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n

That said, private power companies love Texas. The mix of geography, sun and a pro-business regulatory environment is highly attractive. One executive says oil and gas may boom and bust but solar is reliable.<\/p>\n

Varun Rai, from UT Austin\u2019s LBJ School of Public Affairs says the die has been cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncentives or not, we will over time and not just in Texas but throughout the U.S and increasingly across the world, we are seeing more and more solar diffusion because it is
\ngetting more competitive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Texas\u2019 rapid growth. It\u2019s a place with a mounting demand for electricity, making renewables increasingly cost effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Marfa Public Radio:\u00a0 This week we have examined the opportunity and\u00a0challenge\u00a0for solar power in Texas. There are no\u00a0state mandates\u00a0or incentives for solar. And the head of the Public Utilities Commission says Congress should end solar\u2019s 30 per cent\u00a0federal tax credit.\u00a0 Despite that landscape solar is breaking through in parts of Texas, providing models that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[14,41,32],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37965"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37972,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37965\/revisions\/37972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}