Of the 473 commissioners for whom Heern could find information on what they did after they left utility regulation, 50% of them went to work for one of the industries they regulated, or in an industry-adjacent role such as consulting. “That revolving door is definitely alive and well,” Heern told me.
California FIT
At its Voting Meeting today the Commission adopted a new standard offer contract available to any Qualifying Facility (QF) of 20 megawatts or less seeking to sell electricity to a Commission-jurisdictional utility pursuant to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA). Under PURPA, Commission-jurisdictional utilities must provide QFs the option of executing any existing PURPA contract for which they qualify.
Community-scale renewable energy projects in California could get a much needed boost as the state’s energy regulator updates its compliance with the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) and considers restarting a long-stalled feed-in tariff program.
Under programs known as “Feed-in Tariff,” solar power companies would pay LAUSD to use that space.
The FiT scheme was introduced in 2013 and originally aimed at backing the installation of 150 MW of photovoltaic (PV) capacity. This target was achieved earlier this year, the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC) said on Thursday when announcing the vote of LADWP’s board of commissioners.
Los Angeles’ municipal utility has tripled the size of its rooftop solar feed-in programme (FiT), growing it from 150MW to 450MW.
The Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners today recommended expanding the Feed-in Tariff program, which pays people for feeding renewable energy to the department’s grid.
A broad coalition of business, environmental and civic leaders today called on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to increase and accelerate its goals for generating local renewable energy, urging the utility to immediately expand a successful pilot program allowing hundreds of building owners to install rooftop solar panels and then sell the electricity generated into the utility’s power grid.
The U.S. District Court for Northern California sided with Winding Creek Solar, finding that California’s Re-MAT program did not align with PURPA or federal regulations, but stopped short of offering the developer all it had asked for.
The Renewable Market Adjusting Tariff (ReMAT) is a feed-in tariff program for small renewable generators less than 3 MW in size. (Small bioenergy generators are procured through the Bioenergy Market Adjusting Tariff). Through the ReMAT program up to 493.6 MW of capacity are available to eligible projects through a fixed-price standard contract to export electricity to California’s three large investor owned utilities (IOUs).