Local representative takes lead on project
The solar industry in Charlotte area and the state is growing, but industry representatives say it could grow even faster if private entrepreneurs had a greater share of the state-regulated electric power business.
Local solar industry advocates, like Joel Olsen, managing director of Cornelius-based O2energies Inc., are lobbying state lawmakers to do just that.
Olsen organized a one-day conference in late March in Charlotte where more than 50 solar-business leaders met with state and county representatives, including Speaker of the N.C. House Thom Tillis, a Cornelius Republican.
Others attending were Reps. Ruth Samuelson, a south Charlotte Republican and majority whip; Bill Brawley, a freshman Republican from Matthews; John Torbett, a Gastonia Republican; and Kelly Alexander, a Mecklenburg Democrat.
“Against a backdrop of the worst economic recession since before World War II, the solar industry has grown more than 20 percent each year since 2007,” Olsen wrote in an email to the Herald. “With a 50 percent decline in the installed cost of solar, the N.C. solar industry has outpaced even the most optimistic growth projections back in 2007.”
Samuelson, one of the top leaders in the N.C. House, is co-sponsoring a bill that would double the amount of electricity N.C. utilities would have to buy from solar-power generators annually. But candidly, she said doesn’t expect the bill to go far in this session.
Tillis did not return calls or emails from the Herald to comment on the legislation or the meeting in Charlotte.
According to Samuelson and Rep. Bill Brawley, lawmakers are largely consumed with a huge budget deficit and redrawing election districts throughout the state, using data from the 2010 Census.
But Brawley said the effort to give a larger share of the electric pie to solar power also faces opposition from some lawmakers, who say solar power advocates are “distorting the marketplace.”
In short, opponents of the solar set-asides say solar power is still too expensive to produce, Brawley said.
Rep. George Cleveland, a Republican from Jacksonville, has filed a bill to revoke the special treatment for the renewable energy industry, and Brawley said lawmakers don’t want to take up another divisive issue in this session.
Olsen acknowledges that generating solar power is still more expensive than the average kilowatt hour generated by existing power plants. But he points out that the cost of existing electric-power technology is going up, while innovation is driving the cost of solar power steadily down.
The state’s growing solar industry employs more than 2,000 people and represents more than $1 billion of private sector investment in the state economy in the past two years alone, according to the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association. The industry has grown because the legislature has required that solar power represent at least 0.2 percent of the state’s retail electricity sales by 2018, Olsen said.
The bill sponsored by Samuelson and Reps. Tom Murry, of Wake County, and Tim Moffitt, of Buncombe County, would increase that percentage to .4 percent. The Sustainable Energy Association projects “this small change alone” would create more than 10,000 jobs in the state’s solar industry.
Olsen pointed to several companies in the area that manufacture components of solar technology like ABB, the giant Swiss company moving to Huntersville that will produce cabling and transformers used by the solar industry.
The problem for North Carolina solar entrepreneurs is they are trying to “operate within an older regulatory framework,” Olsen said.
Essentially, the rules forbid utilities from earning a profit on electricity they purchase from power plants they do not own. The rule was designed to prevent utilities from charging more for power they buy from other utilities. But because they can’t recover a profit on power they buy from private solar-power generators, the utilities have no reason to buy it.
Brawley, the Matthews Republican, said the solar industry still needs a final technological break-through – “a game changer” – that will make the cost of solar power truly competitive with traditional power plants.
But solar industry advocates, like Olsen, say the industry will produce cheaper energy and more jobs if the state gives it more access to the market. “The only opportunity for private-sector ownership is through these bills that create a window” in the state-regulated utility market, he said.
The solar industry says it has cut the cost of producing solar power by 50 percent from just a few years ago, and power from new solar plants costs roughly 15 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s less than utilities spend on their peak-power plants – more than 20 cents per kilowatt hour – the most expensive power that’s needed only with peak demand, especially in the summer for air conditioning.
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