by Shane Henson — May 4, 2012—The rooftops of homes, businesses and multifamily buildings within the City of Los Angeles will soon be used to harness the sun’s energy through the city’s first Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) rooftop solar program, CLEAN LA Solar (Clean Local Energy Accessible Now), an effort led in part by the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC), with the support of a broad coalition of other groups.
According to the council, collectively, the roofs offer 12,000 acres of prime space for solar development and have the capacity to create as much as five gigawatts of clean, locally generated power. This massive amount of solar-ready rooftop space is equivalent to nearly 20 square miles.
The recent approval by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to move forward with CLEAN LA Solar provides the opportunity to create the first 150 megawatts of rooftop solar in the next three to four years, with a goal of reaching 600 megawatts by 2020. The program enables property owners to install rooftop solar and sell the power generated back to the LADWP, says LABC.
LABC staff say the rooftop solar program will be invaluable to the city.
“CLEAN LA Solar provides the opportunity to build the equivalent of hundreds, and potentially thousands, of local solar power plants in the heart of the city,” said LABC President Mary Leslie. “With the enormous economic and environmental benefits a strong rooftop solar program can bring to the city, we should do everything possible to scale this program and be a national leader.”
All of these benefits aside, the City of Los Angeles must meet a state mandate requiring local utilities to generate 33 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. The solar FiT is a proven program to help the utility meet that goal and help LA quickly see the economic and environmental benefits in the limited timeframe.
