We have been waiting for this signature for the last few weeks, and finally, Governor Brown signed SB 700 which extends the SGIP incentive 5 years. If you follow our social media accounts, you may have seen over the last month we have slowly been celebrating each step closer to the governor's desk. We hoped he would have signed the bill a few days earlier, so we could celebrate it more at Solar Power International in Anaheim, but it made for some great news on the last day of SPI.
SB 700 fixes the lottery by allocating an additional $830 million to the program. This makes the program like the California Solar Initiative which also lasted for about a decade with different steps. This program was reliable in that the difference between steps was not large so delays in the project would not be as costly. This is especially important for batteries because of the availability of batteries. At SPI last week in Anaheim, we spoke with many battery manufacturers and we had flashbacks of the early days of solar and the panel shortages. The issues, just like before, are that these companies are ramping up production as quickly as they can but everyone in the supply chain needs to help deliver. With some unnamed companies favoring their own projects first, it easily delays projects by 3-6 months or even a year for large batteries.
Therefore, SunGreen Systems has partnered with Stem. Stem is manufacturer agnostic because their secret sauce is their software. Their Athena AI manages the batteries charge and anticipates the building's load. We can use almost any battery with it, and Stem is keeping track of expected delivery times for us.
If you would like to learn more about the passage of the SB 700 bill, we recommend checking out SolarWakeUp’s post about this or the California Solar and Storage Association’s (calssa.org) 1-pager he posted. If you’d like to see what solar and storage or just storage alone can do for you, please fill out our consultation request form here.