On April 14, California State Congressman Jimmy Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) introduced the Making Imperiled Communities Resistant to Outages with Generation that is Resilient, Islandable, and Distributed (MICROGRID) Act. The legislation incentivizes the expansion and deployment of microgrids to provide backup power during emergencies.
The bill would create a 30% tax credit for a qualifying microgrid property through 2025, phasing down to 10% by 2028 and sunsetting in 2029 to incentivize the expansion and deployment of microgrids at the local level. The credit can be taken by governments and nonprofits as a direct payment, helping communities take advantage of the credit.
“Many California communities, including those on the Central Coast, are frequently experiencing power failures and shutoffs due to wildfires, public safety power shutdowns, and other emergencies driven by extreme weather events,” said Congressman Panetta. “My MICROGRID Act would provide accessible tax credits for local governments to build and deploy microgrids, offering a cleaner energy alternative to fossil fuel generators that are independent from our energy grid. Expanding and deploying microgrids can harness clean energy sources, keep our homes and critical infrastructure connected when the larger grid fails, and lead to reliable and consistent electricity for our homes and safety for our communities.”
News item from the Office of Congressman Panetta
Rooftop Solar
Why doesn’t the State of California put policy in place to decentralize solar as much as possible over the next three years? It seems to me that the Net Metering 3.0 proposal will primarily benefit investor-owned utilities like Sempra, SCE, and PG&E, while discouraging owners of existing residential housing from adopting solar and leaving us all dependent on a grid infrastructure that is past its prime and very expensive to maintain. The vast majority of California homeowners would be better served by being able to invest in enough rooftop solar to go off the grid entirely. Again, the vast majority of homeowners could afford solar if the State of California would institute a low-cost loan program and make it available to those who could not otherwise make the up-front investment. Investor-owned utilities would then have to figure out what to do with an electrical grid that has mostly outlived its usefulness anyway. Maybe they could revamp it to serve corporations who use too much energy to get it all from solar; but then, those corporations should be the ones to pay for the revamped grid–and its upkeep–entirely on their own. The ultimate goal for the state should be to get all homeowners to install rooftop solar panels and back them up with batteries. The batteries would store excess power generated during sunny hours for use during gray days or nighttime hours when the sun is not available. This is possible already, but batteries are too expensive for most homeowners to consider right now (~$12,000-~$15,000 for a single battery capable of storing only ~10 kWh). In two or three years time, though, battery technology should improve dramatically, bringing the cost down enough to enable homeowners to afford enough battery backup to get them through at least two-three days without sunlight.
Yeah, I can see this only as a “feel good” proposition with a short lifespan. This thing is going to go to some committee and will be “chewed on” by special interests, one would be the local electric IOUs. When one says ‘Government’, it looks like local entities where the city council would get involved. With committee approval and rewrites, this project may not even look like the intended first write of Panetta’s vision. Then if a community takes up a microgrid project for whole city resiliency, then one is looking at finding property, getting permits, setting up a EDC for the project and finding a way to finance this project. You could very possibly be into the ITC ramp down and sliding into the sunset of the Legislation, before the project is ready to start.
It would probably be a better result if one would concentrate on new construction like apartments, condos, townhomes, residential and small business entities. These are microgrids that can be done by the owner, for the owner, without more local government approvals and additions.
Definitely a step in the right direction by offering a higher tax credit percentage. It would be amazing to see microgrid properties take advantage of this, but the bigger hopeful is the ability to offer more to home owners.
Either way, this is a step in the right direction especially since the future goals are to harness more from clean energy sources especially in California.