Overcoming Regulatory Hurdles is Core to Our Customer Service Ethic

VISALIA, California—CalCom Solar, a market leader in providing solar to agriculture and water districts, is thrilled to share some terrific news about a new regulatory win that we achieved in January 2016. Thanks to our initiative, a new decision made by PG&E will further cut solar deployment costs throughout the Golden State. This policy revision advances the efforts of California’s distribution generation (DG) solar customers – and PV providers throughout the state.

Working closely with PG&E, CalCom Solar recently negotiated a mechanism for lowering interconnection costs on commercial and industrial DG systems between 40kW and 1MW.

CalCom Solar CEO, Nic Stover, explains: “Prior to this regulatory change, PG&E had expensive and outdated recloser requirements that were being implemented throughout their service territory. These expensive recloser add-ons to the utility’s interconnection service have been costing PG&E customers through California millions of dollars over the last several years. Solar customers with systems between 40kW and 1MW bore the burden of these excessive costs. CalCom Solar was keen to alleviate this costly burden to our customers – as well as to other solar users throughout the state.”

After extensive research, CalCom Solar devised and presented a powerful case to PG&E to eliminate these excessive costs.

Stover continues: “As a result of our efforts, PG&E has revised its DG protection requirements. With the additional criteria of ‘other machine or uncertified DG (on the distribution line) >10% of project’, the likelihood of SCADA reclosers on all future and current projects is reduced to almost zero. Going forward, PG&E will now only require reclosers in special circumstances. Several existing projects will benefit from this modification retroactively.”

CalCom Solar is deeply committed to ensuring that electricity customers throughout California – especially water districts, farmers / growers and the agricultural sector – have the opportunity to benefit from the clean, safe and reliable power generation that solar provides. We’re extremely dedicated to the overall success of our entire industry. Thanks to CalCom Solar’s advocacy on behalf our customers, prospective customers and DG solar users throughout the state, commercial PV system deployers will realize [and reap the benefits of] lower interconnection costs.

Stover sums up CalCom Solar’s efforts: “This improvement would not have made without CalCom Solar’s resourcefulness and commitment to excellence. We’re very proud that our recent efforts will help lower costs and speed interconnection of solar projects throughout California.”

Marketing Manager
CalCom Solar
635 S Atwood St.
Visalia, CA 93277