Marcus,
Our project is a campus which is pursuing a PPA. The power would be generated on the campus and net-metered so that the building owner will not pay for electricity generated by the PV system. The campus will also retain or replace the REC. However, our local utility requires that net-metering occur through a separate metered service. the net metered energy provided to the grid is paid a premium per kWh (hence the PPA) as the utility company is essentially purchasing a distributed PV power plant rather than spending the equivalent on a point source energy generation facility.
I have seen you state a few times that you don't believe a grid connect PV system is allowed, but if the two systems connect to the grid at the same location and there is one to one credit between generated energy and offset energy, I'm not clear on why not? Is there any further guidance or experience where this has been a problem. Up until seeing this comment in more recent posts the team has thought we were fine as we think we comply with everything that came up in the January 10 "Campus PV PPA" discussion.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5909 thumbs up
August 1, 2014 - 2:50 pm
There are some buildings which simply serve as a solar rack where the utility gets the power and the RECs and the building owner basically rents out its roof. This would not be allowed.
If you have a PPA that sells you the power and the RECs then it may count. If they do not own the RECs they can be replaced and still count. It is the agreement which determines whether they count, not just where the wires tie into.
So in your case the PV power feeds directly into the utility grid and not the campus grid? If so then I am not clear on how it is "net" metered. What you seem to be describing is a PV power plant that feeds into the grid so there is not "net" metering associated with it, just plain old metering.
Net metering is typically the difference between what the facility consumes and what the PV produces. If the PV produces more than consumption the "extra" feeds into the grid through the facility (or campus) meter. This is often accomplished with two meters measuring ingoing and outgoing power. I probably do not know enough about the system to comment further.
My recent post about where the PV power feeds was more related to that situation where the PV system was off-site and not on-site.
Brian Leet
Freeman French FreemanAugust 1, 2014 - 3:24 pm
It is "net" metered in that the gross Power Consumed by Campus - Power Produced by Panels is the "net" metered power that the campus will be purchasing. The power produced by the panels is a direct offset to the power consumption.
We initially configured the project for the power to feed into the campus grid but the utility and solar panel supplier informed us that state regulations require this parallel instead of serial meter configuration. But, other than that one configuration requires subtraction of the generated value and the other provides a site meter that directly reads the net value I can't tell that there is a substantive difference in approaches, nor why it would affect compliance.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5909 thumbs up
August 1, 2014 - 3:31 pm
Sounds like you would comply.