PG&E Creates a $100 Million Fund for Solar Financing

P.G.&E. Corporation, the California utility holding company, has created a $100 million tax-equity fund to finance residential solar installations by SunRun, a San Francisco start-up that leases photovoltaic arrays to homeowners. The fund, managed by a P.G.&E. subsidiary, Pacific Energy Capital II, is the largest single solar leasing pool to date, according to the company, and marks the growing interest of utilities in the renewable energy financing business.

“We’re in somewhat of a unique position in that roughly half of the nation’s rooftop solar installations are in our service territory,” Brian Steel, P.G.&E.’s senior director of corporate strategy, said in an interview. “We’re at the proverbial ground zero of these new technologies and so perhaps more than any utility holding company in the country we have a strategic imperative to get ahead of the curve through having a propriety seat at the table with a partner like SunRun.”

The financing, announced Monday, follows P.G.&E.’s creation of a $60 million tax-equity vehicle in January for SolarCity, a Silicon Valley company that also leases solar arrays to homeowners. The $100 million in financing is expected to fund solar installations for 3,500 homes in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

“That a major energy company like P.G.&E. is coming to the table illustrates that distributed solar is becoming part of the mainstream energy business,” said Edward Fenster, SunRun’s chief executive.

Homeowners do not pay for solar arrays – which can cost more than $30,000 — but sign a power purchase agreement with SunRun that fixes the cost of their monthly electricity payments for as many as 18 years. In exchange, SunRun installs, owns and maintains the solar systems. SunRun and other companies that lease solar energy systems qualify for a 30 percent tax credit against the cost of the arrays. Since most start-ups have no use for such tax credits, they give them to investors in exchange for financing installations.


http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/a-100-million-pool-for-solar-financing/#more-57191

At the vanguard on stuff like this, but still willing to piss away tens of millions of its ratepayers' money on crap voter initiatives. It was the subject of an SF Chronicle story earlier this month:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/04/MNPC1DPIJ5.DTL

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has two radically different reputations, one national, one local. And they're growing further apart.

There's the national image of PG&E, California's largest utility, a strong advocate for renewable power, a company willing to fight for climate change legislation on Capitol Hill.

Then there's the local image of PG&E as a monopoly spending $46 million on a California ballot measure that, critics say, was written to shield PG&E from competition. A company that tried to stop Marin County from forming its own public power agency. A company determined to install new electricity and gas meters that many of its customers don't trust.

Any large corporation has its foes and fans. But the gap between how San Francisco's PG&E is seen on the national and local stages is unusually wide. And with controversies simmering around PG&E's SmartMeters, its ballot measure and its opposition to the Marin Energy Authority, the gap is growing wider.