To: Executive Committee, Ava Community Energy
From: Audrey Ichinose
East Bay Clean Power Alliance
California Alliance for Community Energy
Re: Public Comment to Item # 6, ExCom Meeting, March 6, 2024 I failed to note the new 9am start time for the meeting, but hope that you will still accept this public comment to Item #6.
I appreciate very much all the hard work that goes into the effective operation of this public agency.
I want to raise two points:
1. In Staff’s estimation, do these Resilence Hubs fall into the category of “community solar” or “medium-size Utility-scale projects?” If they do, I want to call Staff’s attention to today’s article in Canary Media (formerly Green Tech Media) by Jeff St. John. It warns that a CPUC Proposed
Decision. issued just a few days ago,
threatens “midsized solar projects that provide shares of their power to households, businesses and organizations that subscribe to them.” The Proposed Decision
threatens a three-year effort to “revamp CA’s moribund
community solar market,” an effort “backed by solar
industry groups, consumer advocates, environmental-justice organizations, labor unions and the state’s homebuilding industry.”
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/new-policy-proposal-dims-hopes-of-reviving-community-solar-in-california?utm_campaign=canary&utm_medium=email&_ hsmi=296995128&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9-eoh-dPz1sPqA03-
JrbL5ASQFVYf950K7n5BY3JYcGYxaRLma2Ooa0BTXS
3DwpS4sUP2HbIn5ZjIqozSXTPAOh2QMsA
2. Secondly, may I ask: Can Staff somehow—whether by
newsletter, public workshops or other public forums—list and describe the various forms of community solar
projects that have been proposed or tried—locally as
well as nationally. It would be extremely helpful to
everyone, especially potential applicants, to fully
describe such projects, conceptually as well as
technically. In the latter I include software like DERMS programs as well as hardware like inverters and related technology. The Powerpoint presentation cites some of
these points—e.g. “case studies”, “Resilience Hub
definition”. But I think we need a much more robust
discussion about where these facilities would fit in our local clean energy infrastructure. I think one of the first questions to answer is this: Should we regard
Resilience Hubs as long-lived community solar
infrastructure? If we do, we then need to ask “are
Community Grants enough?”
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.