When the sun shines in San Diego County, more than 3,600 power systems quietly turn its light into electrons.
That’s more than any other county in the state.
“San Diego is No. 1,” said Andrew McAllister, who as director of programs at the California Center for Sustainable Energy has helped the state spend more than $143 million to install most of those solar power systems.
Last year was a banner one for local installations funded through the California Solar Initiative, he said, and that progress has continued this year.
“It’s really going great gangbusters,” he said. “Our lead is probably accelerating.”
The numbers are significant. The 32 megawatts produced typically get on the grid when they are needed the most, on hot, sunny days, and prevent the region from needing an extra power plant to deal with the peaks.
A megawatt is enough, roughly, for 650 homes. Usage is highest in the heat of summer, and while San Diego uses around 2,500 megawatts, the peak usage has topped 4,500.
And more solar is on the way.
As of April 7, property owners have applied for rebates for an additional 1,200 systems representing nearly 38 megawatts.
The rebates were designed to encourage the solar industry in the state by using money collected from all electricity users to subsidize solar installations.
The program was designed to last 10 years, with the rebates decreasing in value in 10 “steps” as systems were installed. And it’s been more successful than anticipated.
Six years into the program, San Diego is close to entering the second-to-last step. That means that subsidies are going down as well.
The program anticipated that the cost of systems would also decrease, and that’s happened, at least with the price of solar panels. Installation prices have not, McAllister said.
But the systems are still eligible for 30 percent federal tax credits, so people are still signing up.
“It’s a pretty robust marketplace,” he said.
Part of that comes from a surge in solar installers and innovative ways that solar is marketed.
Some companies, for instance, are signing contracts in which they build, own and operate the power systems and sell the power to their “host” — the company or institution on which they build.
Such deals, called power purchase agreements, take advantage of the fact that electric rates are set up to encourage conservation. Power becomes more expensive the more you use. So while the electricity from a solar system is still more expensive than the average cost for power off the grid, it’s cost-effective when it replaces the most expensive power.
Meanwhile, a host of installers are marketing their systems like never before, sometimes in innovative ways.
One Block Off the Grid, for instance, uses a political campaign-style model for group sales of solar systems. The company uses its website, 1bog.org, to get people’s interest, and connects them with installers and financiers.
In addition to the solar projects supported by California Solar Initiative, which is designed for systems that are 1 megawatt in size or smaller, San Diego Gas & Electric Co. is looking to spend up to $125 million for big systems on property it owns throughout the county.
The resulting power, about 26 megawatts, will be fed into the grid.
The idea is to get local solar systems that are big enough to get economies of scale, but are smaller than the giant installations in the desert owned by others that the company is buying power from, said SDG&E spokesman Art Larson.
“This gives us an opportunity to study those, to look at them in a real-world environment,” he said.
The proposal still needs approval from the California Public Utilities Commission.
SDG&E has been also been experimenting with another way to do solar for a while. It draws just over 1 megawatt of power from solar panels installed on roof space it rents from property owners scattered around the county.
One of those is the new High Tech High Chula Vista, which has a 101-kilowatt system that is nearly invisible from the ground.
The school was built with lots of energy-saving features, said Paul Dooley, who oversees the charter school system’s buildings. But when it came time for solar, the school looked for an alternative to buying its own system, and that’s where SDG&E stepped in.
“There’s no way we, as a school, could have made room in our budget to pay for it,” he said.