SF Passes Largest City Solar Program in U.S. (Finally)
After six months of hard-fought politicking, the San Francisco board of supervisors has finally approved the Solar Energy Incentive Program, the country’s largest municipal solar program. The program has been greenlighted for 10 years and has an annual budget of $3 million dollars. The money will be doled out as rebates in the form of tax incentives for private solar installations. Now the ordinance just needs approval from Mayor Newsom, who has been pushing for this program; it’s expected that the solar energy incentive program will be operational in the coming weeks. Update: For our interview with Mayor Newsom this afternoon, read here. He’s expecting the solar program to be ready as early as July 1st.
The program is designed to reduce the cost of solar for city residents and leverage private dollars to get more solar on San Franciscans’ roofs. Local solar installers, including Sun Run, Akeena Solar and SolarCity all made appearances throughout the lengthy six-month proceedings to voice their approval of the program, explaining it would provide jobs and clean power for the foggy city. Now the installers can start including the large new rebates, which can cut the cost of going solar by 20 percent, in their promotional materials and cost estimates.
The program grants a $3,000 to $6,000 rebate to individuals and a $10,000 rebate to businesses on solar installations. The board also preliminarily passed a separate $1.5 million one-year pilot program aimed specifically at helping low-income San Franciscans and nonprofits. This proposal still needs to be approved on a final read by the board, but it could mean the city will be paying out $4.5 million for solar roofs by the year’s end.
The city hopes that the $3 million in public funding will leverage some $1.5 million in private investment to boost the city’s solar capacity to 55 megawatts on some 15,000 rooftops over the next 10 years. Currently there are fewer than 700 solar rooftops in the city generating less than 5 megawatts of power.
Map courtesy of the San Francisco Solar Map.
To read more stories on solar projects read:
11 Solar Thermal Companies Powering Up
SunPower CEO: No U.S. Solar Incentives? No Solar For You
Elon Musk: Solar Will Be the Largest Source of Power in 30 Years
Great idea. Well done SF, only issue… not very sunny
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[...] Written by Katie Fehrenbacher No Comments Posted June 11th, 2008 at 3:05 pm in Policy As we reported this morning, after over 5 months of haggling, the San Francisco board of supervisors have finally passed what [...]
What will they do on foggy days? They should find a way to use fog to power the city.
Wow, what a great idea. Good story!
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
A lot of you are misinformed. SF is actually much sunnier than most of the country.
http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html
See where the dots are high density? Those areas, in the eastern half of the city, get about 300 days of full sunshine per year.
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[...] Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.The San Francisco board of supervisors has approved the country’s largest municipal solar program. The program is designed to reduce the cost of solar for city residents and leverage private dollars to get more solar on San Franciscans’ roofs (earth2tech). [...]
[...] SF Passes Largest City Solar Program in U.S. (Finally): After months of politicking and numerous debates by the city board, the San Francisco board of supervisors has authorized the largest municipal solar incentive program in the country with an annual budget of $3 million over 10 years. [...]
[...] The San Francisco board of supervisors has approved the country’s largest municipal solar program. The program is designed to reduce the cost of solar for city residents and leverage private dollars to get more solar on San Franciscans’ roofs (earth2tech). [...]
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[...] The Week in Cleantech News (6/9-6/12) Amazon.com Widgets The San Francisco board of supervisors has approved the country’s largest municipal solar program. The program is designed to reduce the cost of solar for city residents and leverage private dollars to get more solar on San Franciscans’ roofs (earth2tech). [...]
Great! SF will have lights, hot water, and some electricity when the oil crunch comes (soon-$139.00 today) Do their famous street cars run on electricity? Can they use solar electricity or is it different somehow? Helping the little guy help himself is an alien, almost socialist concept to the Bush government, maybe Obama can change that!
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