SEPA Announces Winners: 2009 Solar Business Achievement Awards

“The utility industry requires leadership as they balance the traditional interests of reliability and costs with the emerging need to adapt to changing market conditions,” said Julia Hamm, SEPA’s executive director.  “Don Brandt has begun the critical task of moving APS in a new, renewable direction with innovative initiatives ranging from distributed to centralized solar project and program developments.  While the APS staff deserves credit for the ground-level implementation, having Don Brandt’s top-level solar vision and commitment is a key piece of their strategic change.”

Winners of the 2009 SEPA Solar Business Achievement Awards are:

• Utility CEO of the Year: Don Brandt, Arizona Public Service. Less than 6 months after being named CEO of Arizona Public Service, Don Brandt was quoted as stating Arizona will “become the solar capital of the world.” During the next 18 months, under Brandt’s leadership, APS has taken bold steps to make this vision a reality. APS commissioned the 280 megawatt Solana Generating Station, which includes first-in-the-US thermal energy storage capabilities, a distributed generation study to look at long-term planning impacts from increased penetration, and the development of an innovative distributed, photovoltaic program that integrates smart grid capabilities. APS projects adding 600,000 new customers by 2025, and the company plans to meet half of the needs of these new customers with solar and other renewable energy technologies 

• Innovation in Solar Program Design: Public Service Electric and Gas. PSE&G has shown that significant and strategic investments in solar energy can occur outside of the sunbelt. The Solar4All program represents a measured, yet innovative approach to deploying utility-owned photovoltaics in sizes ranging from micro- to macro- applications, and will nearly double the size of New Jersey’s installed solar capacity.  In what many observers find surprising, New Jersey currently has the second highest number of solar installations in the country – second only to California – and this continues there strong development plans. The company will own and operate 80 megawatts of solar by 2013 – enough energy to power about 12,000 homes. The 80 megawatts of solar capacity will eliminate 1.7 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent of removing nearly 310,000 cars from the road for one year. Nearly half of the solar generation will be derived from individual solar panels installed on 200,000 PSE&G utility poles.  This installation is the largest pole-attached solar installation in the world.

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• Community Outreach and Public Awareness: Gainesville Regional Utilities. Gainesville Regional Utilities has moved itself to the forefront of PV development in the southeast with the development of its new feed-in tariff program, which required both customer and solar industry involvement and ‘learning while doing’ as part of the adjustment process in finalizing the details.  Today, Gainesville is well known for its FIT program, having worked tirelessly to promote it not just within their community but to the utility and solar industries across the country as a better business model to their existing rebate program.

• Solar Portfolio Leadership: Southern California Edison. California is at the epicenter of U.S. solar developments and SCE’s solar portfolio represents a significant part of that deployment.  Ranging from customer programs to ‘distributed PV power plants’ to centralized PV and CSP projects, their balanced and scaled approach will help change the landscape of the solar markets today and over the next five years. As California’s largest electric utility serving a population of more than 13 million via 4.8 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area, SCE is doing its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing its customers clean, green energy from renewable resources. Currently 17 percent of SCE’s energy mix comes from wind, solar, biomass, small hydropower and geothermal sources, and SCE is on-track to have 20% of it’s generation under contract by the end of 2010. SCE is the nation’s leading purchaser of solar power, buying approximately 65 percent of all U.S. solar generation for its customers through long-term commitments to centralized solar thermal plants.

• Partnering for Success: Portland General Electric partnering with U.S. Bank, Oregon Department of Transportation, and ProLogis.  Portland General Electric has developed an innovative utility solar partnership program that has worked through the challenges inherent in project financing and siting, while leveraging the business needs of the utility and the interests of customers.  The business model is both replicable and applicable to other utilities across the country. With the installation of the 104 kW Oregon Department of Transportation Solar Highway project and the 1.1 MW ProLogis thin film rooftop project, Portland General Electric became the first utility in the country to use a third-party solar ownership model. The ODOT project is also the nation’s first solar project along highway rights-of-way. To overcome customer funding constraints and capture the value of tax benefits neither customers nor PGE could use, PGE pioneered a utility solar business model using a partnership flip structure with U.S. Bank, more common for centralized wind projects, and now applicable to PGE’s distributed solar program.

About the Solar Electric Power Association: SEPA is comprised of over 700 utilities and solar industry members. From national events to one-on-one counseling, SEPA is the go-to resource for unbiased and actionable solar intelligence. Breaking down information overload into business reality, SEPA takes the time and risk out of implementing solar business plans and helps turn new technologies into new opportunities. www.solarelectricpower.org

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