Press release: Clean Coalition identifies existing solar technical potential on large built environments within Orange County
The Clean Coalition has released a Solar Siting Survey that identifies over 160 megawatts of potential solar capacity and provides key tools to assess specific siting opportunities.
April 17, 2015
NEWS RELEASE:Clean Coalition identifies existing solar technical potential on large built-environments within Orange County
The Clean Coalition has released a Solar Siting Survey that identifies over 160 megawatts of potential solar capacity and provides key tools to assess specific siting opportunities
Today, the Clean Coalition released a Solar Siting Survey that highlights the significant technical level of local solar photovoltaic (PV) energy that may be generated within an area in southern and central Orange County. The grid area assessed by the survey comprises the Preferred Resources Pilot (PRP), an effort by Southern California Edison (SCE) to study and demonstrate how distributed energy resources, including local solar PV, may support local reliability needs.
The PRP Solar Siting Survey includes a comprehensive spreadsheet and a sophisticated mapping tool for supporting solar project developers in identifying specific siting opportunities. Importantly, this Survey is expected to help inform solar project developers as they participate in the ongoing PRP Renewable Distributed GenerationRFO.
The PRP Solar Siting Survey identified over 160 megawatts (MW) of technical potential for large commercial solar installations within the PRP grid area. These built-environment sites are comprised of very large rooftops, parking lots, and parking structures – most of which are large enough to host at least 500 kilowatts (kW) of solar PV. More specifically, the PRP Solar Siting Survey identified about 90 MW of siting potential on large rooftops, 50 MW over large parking lots, and 23 MW atop multi-story parking structures.
“We believe that a Solar Siting Survey, paired with streamlined procurement and interconnection procedures, will substantially reduce transaction costs associated with solar project development and provide value to any utility wanting to harness cost-effective local solar production,” said Craig Lewis, Executive Director of the Clean Coalition. “It is a pleasure working with SCE on the Preferred Resources Pilot, which is a model for investigating and demonstrating distributed energy resources; and the Clean Coalition looks forward to facilitating similar efforts across the country.”
Although the initial PRP Solar Siting Survey focused on siting opportunities of at least 500 kW, the siting potential for projects between 50 kW and 500 kW is estimated to be two to three times greater.
SCE contracted with the Clean Coalition to develop the Survey with the objective of making local solar a viable component of the Preferred Resources Pilot. The PRP Solar Siting Survey provides the public and the solar development community with information that is designed to facilitate identification and assessment of the largest solar siting opportunities in the project area.
The Clean Coalition’s PRP Solar Siting Survey and associated materials are available on the Clean Coalition website at www.clean-coalition.org/resource/solar-siting-surveys/. On May 13, the Clean Coalition will conduct a webinar about its work siting solar in distribution grids.
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Contact:
John Bernhardt, Outreach & Communications Director
Clean Coalition
john@clean-coalition.org
(703) 963-8750
About the Clean Coalition
The Clean Coalition is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and a modern grid through technical, policy, and project development expertise. For further information on the Clean Coalition, please visit www.clean-coalition.org.
