Our biggest impact ever?
April 20th, 2009 | Published in News
Last Thursday, in a meeting room in Carson City, Nevada, Black Rock Solar had what is likely to be our biggest impact ever. By a unanimous vote, the Nevada Public Utility Commission voted to approve adding 6.5 MEGAwatts of expired and unused solar rebates, worth $26 million, back into the pool of those available to Nevada homeowners, businesses, and public buildings.
When combined with the stimulus money now available, the result will be a huge boost to the solar and construction industry in Nevada, and is just the latest of our ongoing efforts to bring and keep green jobs in Nevada.
This decision was the result of months of effort, stemming from our interest in helping build a solar array to help offset the cost of elecricity at the Food Bank of Northern Nevada. They just finished building a brand-new facility last sumer, and were surprised to get their first power bill and see it was over $7,000. They contacted us to help, but unfortunately their application for a rebate came after they had all already been given out for the year.
Then again, maybe not so unfortunate. We knew of other rebate holders who weren’t planning on using their allocations, and realized there wasn’t a way to pass them from someone who actually needed them to someone who had gotten one but couldn’t use it. And that’s when we also realized just how many of these rebates had expired over the last couple years–money that was approved for renewables, but never used. It just seemed like something had to be done, and this hang up on helping the Food Bank was just the nudge needed to get some action taken.
Working with the State Rewewable Energy and Energy Conservation Task Force, we helped craft an appeal to the Public Utility Commission to bring forward all that unused capacity, so it could be given out to people who really wanted and needed it. The decision last Thursday then was a culmination of a months-long effort by members of the renewable energy community, and a huge victory for the fight against climate change.
We’d like to offer special thanks to Task Force Chairman Jason Geddes, and the law firm of Holland and Hart, for their leadership and hard work that made this decision possible, and the Public Utility Commission for the vision to realize the intent of the Nevada Assembly when it authorized this program.
In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll keep you posted on how and where all this new capacity is getting turned into solar power. In the meantime, here’s an article from the Carson City Nevada Appeal about the ruling (click the image to see the full story):
