With a focus on the San Diego region’s job growth, smarter technology development, solar energy storage integration and increased electric vehicle infrastructure and deployment, Smart City San Diego is delivering results. The collaborative is made up of City of San Diego, GE, UC San Diego, CleanTECH San Diego and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).  It formed to leverage each entity’s strengths to create and implement initiatives to improve the region’s energy independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and assert San Diego as a clean energy leader.

“Over the past year, Smart City San Diego has been forward-thinking about creating opportunities for a more sustainable region,” said San Diego Mayor Sanders. “Moving into 2012, our collaborative will continue to build on those results and develop and launch even more initiatives to drive economic growth for our region.”

These results include:

Car2Go: The City of San Diego and SDG&E worked with Daimler’s Car2Go to make San Diego’s launch of its plug-in electric vehicle car sharing pilot a big success. The City continues to work with SDG&E to increase the number of public-access charging stations throughout the Car2Go targeted region. The team is working collectively to educate the community about the benefits of the pilot program and expects to increase public interest in electric vehicles and encourage the growth of the plug-in electric vehicle industry in San Diego. Data gained from Car2Go will provide information on where charging stations are most needed. Smart City San Diego also continues to work to streamline the permitting process for deploying charging stations.

Smart Appliances: SDG&E and GE are working together to test the communication links between GE’s smart appliances and SDG&E’s smart meters to ensure consumers are empowered with the best technologies to manage energy use and costs. GE’s Appliances business is supplying SDG&E with a smart dishwasher, washer and dryer along with a GE Nucleus energy manager and Programmable Control Thermostat to expedite the testing process. SDG&E’s team is currently testing the communication between these assets prior to consumer deployment.

Economic Development and Job Growth: CleanTECH San Diego – working with the City of San Diego, SDG&E, UC San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and its private sector member companies – is quantifying and categorizing regional clean tech companies that touch smart grid technology development. Categories include solar energy, energy storage, energy efficiency, clean transportation and other technology companies. CleanTECH San Diego has also created a baseline analysis of the direct and indirect economic impacts of the named clusters. This baseline analysis can help quantify year-over-year job growth and other economic impacts of the regional smart grid sector. This will be particularly helpful in measuring the economic impact of the over 180 solar companies and over 20 storage companies that call San Diego home.

Solar Integrated Energy Storage: UC San Diego and SDG&E have submitted a grant application to test, demonstrate and evaluate a variety of solar integrated energy storage projects over a 12 to 24 month period. If funded, this initiative will test multiple applications at multiple sites and provide analysis for the benefit of utilities, grid planners, regulators, solar inverter manufacturers, system integrators, business modelers, energy storage manufacturers and other early adopters. CleanTECH San Diego supports this initiative as part of efforts to advance the region as an Innovation Hub (IHub).  In August 2010, the California Governor’s Office of Economic Development designated the greater San Diego region as an IHub for solar energy storage.  The purpose of the IHub is to build on the region’s existing innovation infrastructure and strong culture of collaboration to accelerate the convergence of solar energy and energy storage.

Policy Leadership: In July 2010, Smart City San Diego hosted California Public Utilities Commissioner Mark Ferron for a day long briefing on San Diego’s smart grid initiatives.  The Commissioner met with industry representatives from the solar, energy efficiency, smart grid and technology sectors and toured UC San Diego’s world renowned microgrid.  The collaborative held a roundtable with the Commissioner to brief him on the vision and work of Smart City San Diego.

Solar Decathlon 2013 Finalist: The City of San Diego and UC San Diego worked with the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon Committee to make San Diego one of two finalists for the location of the 2013 Solar Decathlon. The event promotes the outreach, education, and economic benefits of energy security, renewable energy and energy efficiency.  If early projections bear out, attendance at the event has the potential to be larger than the San Diego Convention Center’s highest attended conference and create a positive economic impact for the region.

Economic Development and Job Growth: GE worked with CleanTech San Diego and SDG&E to host a GE Sourcing Supplier Diversity event for the first time in San Diego.  Over 50 diverse local suppliers participated in one-on-one sessions with GE buyers to learn how best to work with GE and be considered for future projects.

“GE is proud to bring our grid modernization technology and expertise to Smart City San Diego,” said Mark Hura, global smart grid commercial Leader for GE’s Digital Energy business.  ”An efficient, reliable and sustainable electric infrastructure is essential to powering economic growth and supporting business, industry and the dynamic lifestyles of a skilled workforce.  We applaud all the successes over the past year and look forward to many more to come.”

Formed in January 2011, Smart City San Diego was charged with bringing together leading organizations from government, business, education and non-profit to maximize synergies to drive sustainability programs forward, identify new opportunities, embrace additional collaborators, and move the San Diego region beyond today’s boundaries of sustainability.  This model will be able to be duplicated in other regions.

The collaborative leverages its strengths and resources as a partnership to develop and implement local initiatives that will empower consumers, improve environmental quality, drive economic growth, and reduce the San Diego region’s reliance on oil.  The collaborative is working toward a more consumer-focused, environmentally conscious energy future by addressing San Diegan’s 21st century energy needs.

Click here for the Smart City San Diego website

Soitec, a world leader in generating and manufacturing revolutionary semiconductor materials for the electronics and energy industries, dedicated its new North American solar headquarters and manufacturing plant in San Diego at a ceremony held on Friday, December 16.  Governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr, provided remarks at the event.  Also participating in the factory dedication were San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, Jessie J. Knight, chairman and CEO of San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E), California Public Utilities Commissioner (CPUC), Timothy Simon and Jim Waring, CEO of CleanTECH San Diego.  They were joined by governmental officials and over 300 community and business leaders that attended the dedication event.  The factory is located in San Diego to supply more than 300 megawatts (MW) in solar projects to provide electricity to SDG&E.  All Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) have been approved by the CPUC.  The new factory will enable a manufacturing capacity of 200 MW of Soitec’s fifth generation of Concentrix concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules, with the opportunity for future expansion to double the capacity to 400 MW per year.

Soitec’s highly efficient, durable CPV systems have enabled the company to plan for more than 300 MW in utility-scale solar power plant projects throughout the Southwest U.S., including 155 MW in PPAs with San Diego Gas & Electric, approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last month. Additionally, a power purchase agreement for up to 150 MW for the Imperial Solar Energy Center West project, another project that currently proposes to use Soitec’s CPV technology, was approved by the CPUC on December 15.  Tenaska Solar Ventures, LLC, an affiliate of independent energy company Tenaska, is developing that project.  

Click here for a brochure of the Concentrix concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) module.

“SDG&E has signed more contracts using CPV technology than any other utility in the world – a distinction we’re proud of,” said Jessie J. Knight, Jr., chairman and CEO of SDG&E.  ”At the time we began our talks with Soitec, we realized we had a unique opportunity to negotiate not only a good contract for solar energy at prices that competed head-to-head with other technologies, but also to solidify an agreement that would bear fruit for years to come in new local jobs and overall economic benefits.  From a reliability and grid stability perspective, this technology is far superior to other typical ground-mounted arrays.”

Soitec employs a distributed manufacturing model which locates CPV module factories close to its customers to provide the most efficient and environmentally beneficial green power.  The distribution model also calls for a large percentage of local content and local job generation.

“Soitec’s new facility will create hundreds of well-paying jobs and build on San Diego’s growing reputation as one of the world’s leading clean-technology clusters,” commented San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders.  ”We are so honored and proud to welcome Soitec to the San Diego community, and I know that San Diego’s collaborative business community will continue to work with Soitec to ensure the company’s success and prosperity.”

Governor Brown noted, “I’m glad to be here for the dedication of Soitec’s manufacturing plant. The expansion of clean energy businesses is a direct result of legislation mandating that one-third of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.  That’s a goal and we’re going to meet it. In fact, we are going to do better.”

SIERRA MARTINEZ is an energy attorney and analyst in the San Francisco office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Clean Energy Efficiency Continues To Displace Expensive Dirty Power Plants

Some skeptics of energy efficiency claim that energy efficiency never really avoids the need for new power plants.  They claim that energy efficiency might reduce our energy consumption in theory, but not in practice.  Well, the good news is that there’s new evidence from the California Public Utilities Commission showing that energy efficiency is actually displacing the need to build power plants.  So much power is being saved, in fact, that California is embarking on a historic path: Instead of increasing the total amount of electricity we use, which has been the general trend since Edison’s time, energy efficiency will reduce the total demand for electricity.  (This efficiency will also provide a significant boost to economic growth, I might add.)  In the graphic below, you can see that energy efficiency is actually bending the demand curve downward. 
              Electricity Demand in California ISO From 2008 to 2020[1]

California is in the process of determining how many power plants it should allow private utilities to build over the next decade.  The Public Utilities Commission analyzes how much energy California is expected to consume over the next decade, and (more…)

By Guest Author Lee Barken, CPA, LEED-AP

In March 2007, Community Housing Works, a non-profit developer/owner of low income housing projects, unveiled a 56-unit multi-tenant unit (MTU) apartment complex called Solara in Poway, California, in San Diego County.  Solara was designed from the ground up to incorporate green and sustainability features, including a net-zero energy footprint goal.  To generate 100% of its own electricity, the project included a series of 836 solar photo voltaic (PV) panels with a total nameplate capacity of 142 kilowatts (kW) installed on rooftops and carports throughout the complex.  At the time of Solara’s construction, most projects only attempted to incorporate solar PV to serve the energy load from common areas, such as laundry facilities or community rooms.  These installations were limited because of outdated regulatory policies that required each individual unit to have its own physically isolated solar system.  

Photo courtesy Solar Power, Inc.

Solara sought to bring solar power to all of its tenants and was forced in install separate arrays of panels for each and every unit.  This meant taking a dozen panels at a time, wiring them to individual solar inverters (to convert energy from DC to AC), and running separate cabling from each cluster of solar panels directly into each tenant’s separate electricity meter.  Clearly, this was not the most efficient way to deliver power in an MTU property.

A Better Way?

In 2008, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) created a program called “Virtual Net Metering”, or “VNM” specifically for Multifamily Affordable Solar Housing (MASH) projects like Solara.  (CPUC decision 08-10-036.)  

Using VNM, a property could install solar panels and feed all of the energy into a single meter with a single inverter, and virtually divide the credit for energy production across a series of meter numbers (more…)

By GUEST AUTHOR Lee Barken, CPA, LEED-AP

Nearly a year ago, I wrote about the unanimous decision of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to allow Tradable Renewable Energy Credits (T-RECs) in California.  If you’re not familiar with a T-REC, it is, quite simply, an environmental commodity representing the environmental attributes associated with one MegaWatt hour of renewable energy generation.

According to the CPUC, under the new rules, T-RECs “can be purchased by a utility and traded separately from the underlying energy produced by a renewable generating facility.  These energy credits can then be applied, by the utility, toward their renewable energy compliance goals.”

Within days of last year’s March 11 decision, a flurry of (more…)