New York
Current State of Affairs
With strong — and growing — state support for solar, New York is well-poised to be a solar leader. The state provides financial resources through two sources: a public goods fund charge (providing about $12 million a year), and through a renewable portfolio standard.
On February 25th, the Lt. Governor David Paterson introduced the first findings of his renewable energy task force. That task force made an excellent first crack at 100 MW of solar by 2011.
Well, it is now the Governor’s task force on renewable energy. With an elevation of status for the task force, we think there should be a corresponding elevation in the solar program. An elevation to the tune of 2000 MW of solar by 2020 (Read how to get there: here).
What's Needed
The weak link is the state's net metering standard, which provides for net metering for solar systems up to 10 kW in size, and caps overall state enrollment at 0.1% of 1996 demand. For several utilities, tariff structure remains a critical issue as well.
Additionally, the public fund run by the New York State Energy Research Development Authority is in desperate need of increased funding.
Next Steps
Let’s start with net metering. We’ve started and stopped on net metering the last two legislative sessions. It is time to put net metering behind us.
Vote Solar is working with a broad coalition for a legislative push on net metering during the 2008 session. Assembly Bill 9902 (sponsored by Assemblyman Engelbright) and Senate Bill 7171 (sponsored by Senator Owen Johnson) would increase net metering to 2 MW and make it available to all customer classes and renewable energy technologies.
Theses bills are good but two challenges remain. One, we have no time to waste tell the energy committees (Assembly and Senate) to pass these bills now. And two, lets keep these bills clean and streamlined. They’re looking pretty good right now, let’s not waste time and compromise the quality of these bills by making unnecessary changes.
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last updated 4/3/08