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Customer Spotlight Spotlight on California
| Solar in Sonoma County, CA: SSC, 1BOG |
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With so much sun and such great state incentives for solar energy, California seems like the perfect place to go solar. And Californians are taking advantage of it too, especially in California’s sunny Sonoma County. Santa Rosa, the largest city in Sonoma County, has been on numerous top 10 greenest cities list, and San Francisco, to the south of Sonoma County, always makes it onto such lists. A good reason for this is that in 2005 Santa Rosa and eight other Sonoma County cities decided to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2015, with a strong push for solar energy as a key method of reducing emissions. The cities formed an organization called Solar Sonoma County, whose goal, through the Solar Implementation Plan, was to add 25 MW of new solar generation by March 2011, and eventually replace 250 mW of peak demand with a combination of solar energy generation and energy efficiency. Santa Rosa is one of the 25 Solar America Cities, but decided to make their push for solar bigger than just the one city to include a total of 10 municipalities in Sonoma County.
Solar Sonoma County (SSC) grew from Solar Sebastopol, a company in the city of Sebastopol which was already trying to promote solar and was expanded to make it county-wide. The county still has a long way to go in this ambitious task. The goal to generate 25 mW by march 2011 only began in March 2008, giving the county only 3 years to achieve their goal. But the solar goal is by no means impossible. SSC has divided up the 25 mW between the ten cities to create individual goals for each one. The goal for the city of Sonoma, CA is 500 kW, and they are already generating over 600 kW. As of March 2010 the county had added 11.6 mW since 2008 (this of course is added to the existing 18mW that was already installed in Sonoma County). With the energy and enthusiasm they have, their goal does not seem so large anymore.
In June, Sonoma city completed work on the first system that powers a city building – a 52.4 kW solar electric system that is supposed to power around 70% of the building’s energy needs. The cost of the project was offset by a grant from the California Solar Initiative and will probably pay for itself in less than 25 years.
Now, with 1BOG (One Block Off the Grid) and groSolar’s partnership in the Bay Area, including Sonoma County, getting solar is more affordable than ever, making the Solar Implementation Plan more feasible than ever. Sonoma County residents can install solar at the discounted rate of $5.24 per watt. And meanwhile, 1BOG is also working in the Bay Area to use the influx of interest in solar to create many more jobs and train low-income youth to prepare them to fill the jobs in sales, marketing, and administration.
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