California Solar & Storage Association hands Governor-elect Becerra energy affordability roadmap

The California Solar & Storage Association has released a policy roadmap aimed at addressing the state’s energy affordability crisis. The document, handed to Governor-elect Xavier Becerra, outlines strategies to expand distributed energy deployment and integrate virtual power plants into the grid.

Core Strategy

The plan outlines executive and regulatory measures aimed at delivering on campaign energy pledges. California’s trade group contends that residential and commercial solar paired with battery storage offers the quickest path to enhancing grid stability. Homeowners and businesses are presently establishing a network of distributed energy resources, which includes solar-powered batteries located on their premises. By curbing electricity consumption at peak times, these storage units help decrease utility bills.

A primary focus of the approach is the rapid expansion of virtual power plants. These systems comprise synchronized collections of consumer-held batteries, electric vehicles, and adaptable energy technologies. Leveraging this pooled capacity assists in lessening the requirement for utilities to build expensive transmission infrastructure and substations.

Legislative and Regulatory Actions

The plan directs state energy authorities to utilize current statutes, namely SB 913 and SB 905, to launch fully functional statewide virtual power plant initiatives by 2028. To mitigate specific circuit overloads, CALSSA introduced a community storage scheme involving local battery systems sized between 1 MW and 5 MW. This structure satisfies the campaign commitment to grant working households a daily Power Hour, offering up to two hours of complimentary electricity. The strategy combines automated residential energy controls with refined time-of-use pricing and consistent year-round super-off-peak windows, enabling the government to encourage users to move their usage into periods of solar abundance.

Grid Accountability and Consumer Protection

• Halt additional hikes in flat-rate residential utility fees, which place an uneven strain on low-income residents, tenants, and older adults while weakening the push for energy conservation.
• Enact structural changes to ensure incumbent utility companies are held responsible for project postponements.
• Create a specialized energy rollout oversight unit within the government to resolve grid connection stalls by strictly applying legal interconnection timelines that include monetary fines.
• Waive extensive utility assessments for systems that do not export power.
• Provide funding for independent engineering personnel at the California Energy Commission to scrutinize utility demand projections.
• Select agency heads for state commissions who possess direct, practical experience in clean energy sectors.
• Initiate battery initiatives for low-income households, specifically targeting multi-unit residential buildings, operated separately from electric utility providers.

Market Context and Challenges

California’s distributed energy sector is expanding quickly, with more than 350,000 customer-sited batteries delivering close to 4 GW of aggregate capacity. The state incorporates roughly 7,000 additional units each month. The property tax exemption for customer-sited solar ends on December 31. Stringent local permitting regulations risk raising consumer expenses and impeding job growth in the industry.

[BACKGROUND] Virtual power plant state mandates have already been enacted in Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia, as outlined in an earlier Luminity report.

What to watch

Brad Heavner, the Executive Director of CALSSA, indicated that the organization is keen to collaborate constructively with the new Becerra administration. Their goal is to formulate actionable, concrete measures that will help realize the Governor’s energy objectives.