A Tale of Two States: The Power of a Consensus Based Approach
Abstract
On June 2, 2014 South Carolina (SC) Governor Nikki Haley signed the SC Distributed Energy Resources Act (Act 236) into law. This landmark legislation, which received unanimous passage in the House and Senate, was the result of cooperation between the state’s Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs), electric cooperatives, environmental groups, consumers, and SanteeCooper, the state owned utility. This legislation allows the IOUs to produce 2% of their five year peak power production from solar energy by 2021, half of which would be utility scale production and the other half distributed power generation. Of that, 0.25% is carved out for systems smaller than 10kW in size. Since Act 236 was enacted, residential and commercial interconnections in South Carolina have grown by 5X, while utility scale interconnections have grown by 3X. We will further analyze the growth of the solar industry in SC and compare it to another Southeastern state with similar demographics, Alabama. Discussion will include how the industry has change in a short time and provide lessons learned for an emerging solar economy.
Keywords
Solar, Photovoltaics, Alabama, South carolina, Southeast, Act 236, Soft cost