Towns & Counties

Solar Phoenix 1 & 2: Solar Rooftop Financing

Posted on May 24, 2013 by brbarker

(download full brief)

The essentials

  • Solar Phoenix 1 & 2 are a series of city-sponsored residential solar financing programs.
  • The Solar Phoenix program is a federally-recognized public-private partnership that allows Phoenix home owners to finance solar panels through leasing at low or no upfront costs.
  • The National Bank of Arizona funded both Solar Phoenix 1 & 2 with $25 million to initiate the program. The City of Phoenix partnered with Solar City for the first iteration and currently partners with Paramount Solar to provide panels, installation services, and maintenance.
  • The leased solar panels are expected to generate sixty to eighty percent of a residence’s power demand.

Overlay Zoning for Renewable Energy and Transmission Lines

Posted on March 24, 2012 by brbarker

(download full brief)

The essentials

  • Overlay zoning can ease policy issues facing renewable energy generation development and transmission line development, including issues such as: 1. The time required for the permitting process; 2. The conundrum of transmission line development that is critical to renewable energy development in isolated areas.
  • Gila Bend, Arizona has promoted its burgeoning solar industry through Solar Field Overlay Zones (SFOZs).  Other parts of the country have implemented similar overlay zoning plans to ease renewable energy development permitting processes. Imperial County, CA and Klickitat County, WA have successfully implemented this zoning strategy to encourage geothermal power plants and wind energy power plants, respectively.
  • SFOZs operate as a placeholder for both distributed generation and utility-scale solar generation projects while also decreasing the permitting process timeline from as much as one year to as little as four weeks.
  • In Texas, there was little to no transmission line capacity for optimal wind energy project sites. In 2005 they began planning Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZs) to address encourage transmission line development.
  • CREZs have led to the development of transmission line capacity for 6,000 MW of wind energy, with 18,500 MW planned, throughout the state of Texas.