This month PG&E proposed a new tool to help customers facing wildfire-driven power disruptions. It’s called a “resiliency adder,” and it’s one of the first incentives aimed specifically at linking customers in the state’s most wildfire-prone areas with battery-backed solar systems.
That’s the concept behind the resiliency adder. In simple incentives for solar-storage systems for customers in de-energizations. The utility has warned that it could be forced to black out much larger swaths of its territory if wind and weather conditions demand it. This threat has galvanized California lawmakers, regulators, and energy Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) to help bolster SGIP is the country’s biggest program for behind-the-meter batteries and other on-site energy resources, and under a state law passed last year it has about $800 million budgeted over the next five years.
It specified that the adder “should be limited to the most impacted customers” – a designation that PG&E said should be left open to stakeholder suggestions and final CPUC approval, but could include “customer in higher fire risk areas,” or “other sensitive customer needs, communities, or critical services.”
PG&E proposed a resiliency adder of 15 cents per watt-hour, a “significant” 43 percent increase to the “Step 5” SGIP Residential incentive of 35 cents per watt-hour. It specified that the adder “should be limited to the most impacted customers” – a designation that PG&E said should be left open to stakeholder suggestions and final CPUC approval, but could include “customers in higher fire risk areas,” or “other sensitive customer needs, communities, or critical services.”
One big question for the resiliency adder concept is whether it’s more cost-effective for customers facing long and frequent fire-prevention power outages to install solar-storage systems or to simply buy a diesel-fueled backup generator.
“We understand that backup-only and mobile generators are available in the marketplace today at a fraction of the cost of permanently installed batteries designed to operate all year, that such generators may be better equipped to sustain power throughout the duration of a public safety power shutoff event and that these backup-only and mobile projects are not eligible for SGIP incentives,” PG&E noted in its filing. Source: Greentech Media