07 Jun Shining a Light on Solar Where KEYE News Casts a Shadow

As the Austin City Council prepares to vote on the re-balancing of Austin Energy's rate structure, KEYE News in Austin ran a “Wa$te Watch Investigation” piece on Monday questioning the value and fairness of Austin Energy's (AE's) investments in rooftop solar energy. The KEYE reporting paints the picture that utility money, "coming from ever-dwindling reserve funds," is being unfairly used to generate energy on individual residential rooftops. They point out that many can’t afford solar panels, and ratepayers and taxpayers are paying for it, even if they are poor. They use innuendo to paint an incorrect picture of what is happening in Austin and the true impact that it has on the pocketbook of citizens.

The fact is that these homeowners, who co-invest their own money in the solar panel system with Austin Energy, are voluntarily subsidizing the electric utility by generating peak power for less than the utility could obtain it from anywhere else at the most crucial times.

The KEYE team would have been well served by taking a quick look at Austin Energy's (AE's) quarterly report first, before interviewing homeowners and assigning this to a  "waste watch investigation".

First, the context of scale: on p.5 of the report you'll find that AE spent $472,000,000 ($472m) on fossil fuels and uranium to make electricity. As KEYE reported, City Council just approved $1.6m for capped partial rebates to homeowners who choose to pay for a rooftop system on their home. So 295x more money goes to our out-of-state coal, gas, and uranium suppliers. Said in reverse: the money under discussion to produce electricity from the sun is 0.3% of the money that is burnt up for fuel to spin turbines each year. OK, but is it wasteful?

What are we getting for our investment? We have to spend to generate power somewhere, and in the case of the $472m spent on fossil and nuclear fuels (the alternative investment option– along with wind), we are buying one year's worth of fuel that we can inject into power plants that separately cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and again to maintain and upgrade. In the case of solar, what Austin gets for this $1.6m, one-time, co-investment along with the homeowner is a continuous flow of peak-load power for the next 25 years (the warranty period that AE requires on any panels that receive a rebate). Once the panels are installed AE will pay nothing towards the upkeep costs (which happily are negligible for solar). Output for 25 years without any further cost is unique to solar (indeed, like most equipment, panels may continue to put out power beyond their manufacturer warranty…for even 35 years).

But is that output valuable? You'll find on p.22 of AE's report that the value of power from solar extends deep into the community in the form of Energy it replaces (fossil fuel costs, etc.), the Time of Generation (peak load sunny days when grids are stressed), Capacity Installed (the cost of the power plant excluding fuel), T&D deferment (maintenance and depreciation costs avoided through less need for new power plants), Line Loss Savings (no line losses when generation is at- site-of-use — and note that as a matter of physics line losses unfortunately increase significantly when temp. increases), Environment (AE mainly limits its concern to the direct costs the city would pay if we hit non-compliance for air quality minimums), and ERCOT fees avoided. Not included, but of direct community value and should be included is: zero water consumption (power plants use billions of gallons of fresh water for cooling), significant local economic development benefits in both purchasing and jobs, and reduced healthcare costs from asthma, mercury, and cancers caused by burning coal locally. I'll not even try to put a value on climate change right now. AE estimates on p.21 that this value is $0.38/kWh (even with the omitted values) while they pay the homeowner on $0.128/kWh for that same electrical generation.

Net effect: AE is paying for additional generation capacity that they would have to have one way or another anyway, but with solar they do it via a rebate where the homeowner ponies up for half the cost of the installation. Then they pay 12.8 cents for output that is worth 38 cents to them (and more than that to the community). 

None of KEYE's reporting, none of the facts from the AE report shared above support the contention that robust, locally created clean power is built on the backs of the poor. Nor that it is wasteful. AE has a plan to continue their history of dropping the rebate rate over time until they reach zero and, importantly, have any amount allocated for such be line-item approved by the Council (the approval that stimulated this reporting). This is in stark contrast to the $472m for fuel we spend which does not require Council's line-item approval, nor is the pricing we pay for that fuel ever questioned by any third party reporting that I'm aware of. In addition, the support of a renewable energy industry has led to significant private investment in Austin in this high-growth global industry, specifically by such firms as Solar Power Technologies, Solar Bridge, SunPower, HelioVolt, The Butler Firm, RevolveSolar, Longhorn Solar, Meridian Solar, a Solar Power International bureau, Hill Coutry EcoPower, a near-miss by a Yingli Solar factory (who chose Phoenix over Austin), Midas Green Tech, ImagineSolar. The Sustain Center, the IEEE Solar PV National Conference happening in Austin this week, the launch of a SXSWEco conference, and many others. Hundreds of jobs, many of which are regional, national, or global in their market focus.

And since KEYE concluded their report by leaving us hanging on the fact that two of our neighboring utilities (BlueBonnett and Pedernales) do not pay any money for solar installations, it's odd that they failed to mention that our only neighboring utility which is also a municipal provider of similar size, San Antonio, has chosen to lead the nation in solar spending and development. Yes, lead. BlueBonnett and Pedernales on the other hand buy almost all their power from LCRA's genaration plants…they don't produce power at all. But this year San Antonio chose to approve a long term plan to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars towards solar and away from coal, and attracted $1 billion in local investment and 800 direct and manufacturing jobs in the process. Austin Energy, and indeed KEYE News, are adrift with clouded vision as to the road we are already travelling down. And make no mistake, we'll be left on the roadside if we let other's take the economic baton from us as they sprint foward.

Austin is spending a pittance on solar and getting massive community benefits for the investment. As citizens-owners of Austin Energy, we should be allocating significantly more into this high-yield, low risk investment.