Palo Alto CLEAN, the New Solar Feed-in Tariff from the City of Palo Alto

The city of Palo Alto took a big step towards clean energy production by introducing a solar Feed-in tariff, called the Palo Alto CLEAN (Clean Local Energy Accessible Now). Feed-in Tariffs are programs though which utilities buy renewable energy from their customers.

City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) will purchase electricity generated by solar electric systems located within the city limits.   The power is separately metered and none of the power can be used to offset the host customer’s load, in contrast to a net metering program. The generating facility’s capacity rating must be larger than 100 kW and is designed for medium and large commercial customers. The city will pay as high as 14.003 c/kWh based on a 20 year contract. The CPAU will sign power purchase agreements totaling up to 4 MW of capacity for  2012, with the first contracts to be awarded on May 1, 2012. To put the rates into perspective, CPAU sells energy from renewable sources to their customers at approximately 15 c/kWh and the energy rates on their Small Commercial tariff  reaches 14.045 c/kWh.

Genability has made available the  Palo Alto CLEAN - Solar FIT tariff in Genability Explorer so you can quickly and easily calculate the feed-in tariff revenue to be made based on the generation capacity you plan to install. You can select your contract term and enter or upload your generation estimates over a period of time and get a clear idea on your revenue numbers.  The calculator takes into account utility charges such as metering and gives you a precise number on the net revenue.  In addition to viewing the tariff in Explorer, you can access it via our APIs using the tariff id 3153537.