Sfgovtv, Charles Kremenak who make our meetings available online, as well as transcript. Madam clerk, any announcements. Please silence all cell phones. Thank you, madam clerk and can you please call the first item. Item no. 1 is ordinance amending the environment code to adjust the incentive in the Solar Energy Incentive program. The author of this item is president london breed, if you would like to make opening comments. Yes, thank you i know we have Laurie Mitchell here who will be making a presentation shortly, but i just wanted to make a few comments about your go Solar Program in the city. Were making a few technical amendments to this program today. Despite the fact that other utilities around the state are ramping down their incentive like the city of palo alto and silicon valley, for example, im happy to see the go Solar Program in the city is still going strong and that we as a city are continuing to invest in incentives like this particular program. We must continue to support Renewable Energy and energyefficient programs so its accessible to everyone. Since the program started in 2007, go solar has helped lowincome residents, Nonprofit Organizations and businesses install thousands of kilowatts of Solar Energy Units on their rooftops across San Francisco. This has helped not only reduce participants electricity bills, but our Carbon Footprint in the city. There will be a few amendments to this today, and i know that ms. Mitchell will talk about that in her presentation, and with that im happy to turn it over to ms. Mitchell to discuss the program, the changes, and the proposed amendments. Thank you. Thank you very much, supervisor breed. My name is Laurie Mitchell and i manage the Renewable Energy group at sfpuc and we have slidess on the ordinance here. Im not sure if you can see it. There is something there we go. Really what were trying to do with this ordinance is to look forward and to expand on the success of the gosolarsf program to include additional programs such as rebates for electric Vehicle Infrastructure, Energy Storage and to expand upon our energyefficiency programs. So the new programs, as well as the current gosolarsf program is funded by the cleanpowersf and hetch hetchy power ratepayers. The agenda of what well cover today. One of the many things does is to integrate the program with the go solar sf program and its important to know that they have both common policy goals. Both programs seek continue vest in local programs and projects such as energyefficiency, storage, ev charging and affordable, cleaner, climateresponsibility electricity and to invest in local jobs [sphfplt ] background on the go solar sf program was established in 2007. And it designates the puc as the program administrator. It states the objective eh providing an appropriation of 25 million annually over the ten years, which can commence in 2008. It also directs the puc to review solar and to adjust incentives and coordinate administration of the program with the implementation and administer of the cleanpowersf program. So here is the summary of what we have paid out over the years since 2008, when the program started. So you can see in total we paid just over 24 million. The majority of that has gone to residential installations with a large portion of that going to lowincome residential. Im sorry before you move on, could you explain what you mean by lowincome residential . We have several categories of incentives that people can apply for. They can apply for residential, so they dont need to make any type of income requirements for that incentive, but for the lowincome incentive they get an additional incentivelevel if they qualify to be low income. No, i understand that you provide additional incentives, but what qualifies . So we work with the Mayors Office of economic development, and we use the hud guidelines in San Francisco. So for a family of one, its about 60,000 a year, and for four, i think its about 80,000. You use the hud ami definition . Yes for San Francisco. And what amilevel and below did you select . So we get guidelines from the Mayors Office of economic and workforce development. So the numbers that were using today for household of one is 68,000. For a household of four, its 98,000 so roughly like 90 of area Median Income and below, is that the threshold maximum income . I can doublecheck and we can can get an answer. I know its ami, but what ami, 90 . 60 of ami and below . Im not sure. Its median. I can get you that answer and can definitely come back to you on that. Okay. So were talking about middleincome households. Right. Okay. So what is residential lowincome . Is the red stuff what is the difference between the dark blue stuff and the red stuff . The red is just a normal residential incentive and the darkblue is residential lowincome and those are applicants that quail hollowed qualified for the additional incentives. Im curious of the range of Household Incomes that apply to what you consider low residential income. It still seems with the Installation Cost going down and incentives its still really expensive for actual lowincome household to actually put on a solar panel. Do you have a range of households that have applied over the last couple of years. You mean the range of incomes for the holidays . Households. We dont have that today, but we can get back to you. Sure. Im sorry did you have any additional questions . No. This goes to your question on what the cost of solar is. So this table shows you first column is installed cost of solar. You can see in 2008 a 2. 5 kilowatt project is typical in San Francisco for residential project costs about 25,000. At that time, we offered an additional im sorry, at that time the regular go solar incentive was 3,000 and they would are have qualified for the california solar incentive, about 3400 and the net cost of solar would be 17,000. You can say today the solar cost have dropped pretty dramatically and that same system today costs 14,000 and qualified for 17,000 from the go solar sf program that make their net cost over 12,000. Today we have some of the lowest net costs in the programs history. And this is just a review of some of the changes in the market and what other california utilities are doing with their solar incentive programs. So most programs have ramped down their incentives and many are fully subscribed. So the California Solar Initiative was fully reserved in 2014, although lowincome program does continue. The city of palo alto is fully reserved. Alameda is reserved. Silicon valley and smud is fully reserved in 2016. So we knew we wanted to look forward with the go solar sf program and engage stakeholder as round make the good solar more efficient and work better and also to get feedback on new programs that they would like to see us develop. So we met in april of last year and gathered fee bac and came back in june with recommended changes that you will see today and we continue to followup with them and brought the changes to the commission in oct. One is to require go solar sf recipients to be a customer. So they would either need to be A Hetch Hetchy customer or sign up as cleanpowersf customer available to all residents and businesss in the city now. We are also recommending that we market and outreach the programs together. So providing assistance and outreach to demonstrate the benefits of installing on the rooftop and becoming a super green sf customer and attractive net metering. Another one of the changes that this ordinance will do will allow us to simplify the go solar sf incentives to dollars per kilowatt, which is how most solar incentive programs are run. Currently we have a pretty complex table and that will make the program more efficient. Were also proposing to stepdown all incentives to reflect the lower cost of solar and stretch the program budget. The last time we adjusted incentive was in 2013. And we are proposing to step down incentives to make sure we grow here in San Francisco. Another of the proposed changes is that we i believe its really important to continue to support nonprofits and lowincome residents and were recommending to continue to offer higher incentives for lowincome and nonprofit customers. And were also recommending that we develop an invertore replacement incentive for previous lowincome and nonprofit customers. So the inverter allows it to connect to the grid and many of those components will be at the end of their useful life. This is when the new incentives will look like. You can see residential customer gets about 500 a kilowatt today. If this ordinance isa approved, in april, reduced to 400 and still would qualify for the additional lowincome incentives of 2,000 and the Environmental Justice inverter in staller is applicable. And then the last thing this ordinance would do would allow us to develop complimentary distributive energy programs. So we know its important to not only install solar, but to be complimentary programs like electric Vehicle Infrastructure and Energy Storage. So there is a couple of cleanup items in the ordinance i wanted to mention. No. 1 we wanted to clarify that we want to continue our support for go solar sf and our commitment to develop these new programs. Then we just needed to fix some typos and no. 3 is inserting the correct fund balance of the program. So should read 7. 275 million instead of 11 million. That is the end of my program. I had a couple of followup questions on the lowincome and nonprofit programs. Do you require them to be a cleanpowersf or puc customer . Today . Today we do not. This ordinance Going Forward they would be required to sign ups a cleanpowersf customer, but today they are not required. I just remember by the way, im a big supporter of cleanpowersf, but i remember one of concerns about the program was because there were its a slightly more expensive program. That we had concerns about lowincome residents, you know being a part of the program. For budgetary reasons. So it seems to me counterintuitive to require lowincome residents to be a cleanpowersf customer when its a more expensive power in order to qualify for stay deeper subsidy for a solar panel. Shouldnt we provide an exception for lowincome . That is a good comment and we can definitely consider that. We have made a commitment to not enroll customers if the clean foyer sf program is more expensive. What they would otherwise pay pg e. So the requirement is that had he sign up for a cleanpowersf customer, but they would not be automatically enrolled unless the rates are at or below parge. I dont think i really understood that. Sure. If i qualified to your lowincome program, and i did not want to optin into the cleanpowersf program, would i qualify for the deeper subsidy . Not under the new ordinance, if this ordinance goes forward. You wouldnt qualify. I just feel like how are you going to get lowincome customers if they are not willing to pay more on a monthly basis . It just its a good point. So right now about we want we had a commitment to clean power affordability and our rates where below pg e. Today due to some of the pcia changes, our costs are slightingly higher. But its very slight. And were currently researching whether we need to do a Rate Adjustment to catch up with that . But we had made the commitment to our commission not to preenroll additional customers until at or below the pg e rates. I appreciate your work to protect our customers and i want as many of our residents to sign up as possible. Im just worried about requiring lowincome residents to be a cleanpowersf customer in order to qualify for the deeper subsidy for go solar sf. But to move on to my second question and maybe i can understand that in the course before this comes to the full board. So im looking at the cost today, and its amazing how much its gone down. Over such a short period of time, but even with the subsidy it takes you down to about 10,000 or well, the incentive, im curious how lowincome residents can consider that and i dont consider myself lowincome and dont qualify under the ami that it seems that you work with. But i dont feel like i could afford 12,000 for solar panel. Its a great comment. Just a couple of things to clarify that 12,000 does not take into account the additional 2,000 a lowincome customer would get. You said its 14,000 today. So i did take the 2000 into account. 14 minus 2 is 12,000. They qualify for the 1700 on top of that. I thought it was 400 plus an additional 2,000. So its 500 kilowatt. Oh, i see. By kilowatt. 2. 5 kilowatt system and would qualify for the basic incentive, which would give them about 1200 on top of that they would get the additional 2,000 for being lowincome applicant and on top of that, if they lived in an Environmental Justice district, and use a city installer, getting additional incentives. That takes them down to roughly 10,000 how do lowincome residents afford . Its a great point and one nice thing about the solar market right now there are Financing Options available. So there are Many Companies now that will allow them to enter into a power Purchase Agreement or a lease. So they can spread that cost over the life of the system and they can still reduce their bill from what their paying on their pg e rates. So there is a lot of additional options that are available to people that are considering solar in general right now, which is nice. But yeah, we understand the other important point is the California Solar Initiative still runss a program called sash and they provide additional incentives to lowincome applicants that they could also qualify for if they are in the right locations for that. So we are really trying to incentivize lowincome residents to be able to afford solar, as much as we can. I would love between now and the full board meet ig would love to understand how that actually works for a real person . Sure. We can get you some specificks. And also the area Median Incomelevels that are eligible for the lowincome program. Sure. Thank you your work and i appreciate supervisor breeds leadership on it to incentivize our residents to go solar. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from Committee Members . I would like to move the amendments. I think you received a copy of the amendments sfpuc language clarification. Fixing the typo, and changing the amount which were explained by ms. Mitchell. So i would make a motion to move those amendments. Subject to Public Comment, im happy to vote in favor of them. So we have a motion and we can move those amendments without opposition [ gavel ] so if there are no further comments from Committee Members . Well now move into Public Comment on this item. Hi jason fried executive director of lafcko and wanted to speak to some of the items supervisor kim you brought up about the lowincome and a couple of things to keep in mine on the rate structure, the sfpuc set up a once a rate structure rather than changing the rates quarterly as pg e does. So right now while the rate is slightly different, you will see in the summertime, hopefully, if everything is worked out correctly, youll actually see cleanpowersf customers paying less than what pg e pays. Over the course of the year, you need to average it out over the course of year and while i get your comments about lowincome not being able to pay more and being profocus of tective of that, which is extremely important, in theory, it should be the same they should be paying the same. You might pay more in one month, but less in another month. To keep in mind a lot of other ent or incentives and programs, doing lowincome installation. Taking gosolarsf funds and money from other organizations and groups and are able to put it able to be much more Cost Effective for lowincome customers. The final thing i would put in on the lowincome side, were lowering their bills. So while even if there is a is a slight price differential, their overall bill will go down. Were not just talking about generation, but transmission, distribution and the other line items. So they are able to save a lot of money in the program. I appreciate supervisor breeds legislation and would encourage to you move it forward to the full board. Thank you. Thank you. If there is no further Public Comment on this item, Public Comment is now closed on item no. 1 [ gavel ] can we take a motion to rescind on the amendments and take it again after Public Comment . We have a motion to rescind and do that without opposition. [ gavel ] , well take a motion to move the amendments as proffered by president breed and que do that without opposition. [ gavel ] is there a motion on item no. 1 . I just want to say thank you to mr. Fry for pointing out specifically the balance of what we are trying to accomplish with our clean power program, which i believe is definitely a Better Program than what pg e has to offer and i would encourage everyone who is interested in signing up for clean power, go to cleanpowersf. Org. Thank you, with that i would like to move this item as amended to the full board with positive recommendation. Thank you, president breed and we do have a motion to move this forward with positive recommendation and i see a second and we can do that again without opposition. [ gavel ] thank y