PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

San Francisco solar funds up, but $100 million bond still pie in the sky

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), the department of the city and surrounding areas of San Francisco that provides water, sewage, and power to over 700,000 residents, has a modest increase in store for PV installations its FY 2005-06 budget.

	© Michael Hughes für photon-pictures.com
Solar preacher: While San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, pictured here at the Solar Power Conference 2004, is expected to sign a slightly increased PV budget for the city, he can't make use of a $100 million solar bond.

Expected to be signed by Mayor Gavin Newsom in August, SFPUC will have a budget of $12.5 million for solar projects in the next fiscal year, according to Barbara Hale, the commission's assistant general manager for power. By comparison, the budget for FY 2004-05 was $11 million, used to install 1.5 MW at five locations. Solar funding is boosted in the FY 2005-06 budget by the introduction of certificates of participation, says Hale. Such certificates are similar to general obligation bonds. The traditional source of funding is the Mayor's Energy Conservation Account, derived from revenues from the municipally owned Hetch Hetchy Water and Power system that provides about 20 percent of the city's power.

In spite of the modest increase in the solar budget, San Francisco residents might have expected more after overwhelmingly passing Propositions H and B almost four years ago, which authorized the city to issue some $100 million in revenue bonds for energy conservation and renewable energy projects on city-owned properties (see PI 12/2001, p. 36). At the time it was passed, the revenue bond was expected to fuel at least 10 MW of PV. But to date not a single watt has resulted. »No city department has taken advantage of the revenue bond authority,« says Hale. In the absence of a transparent business plan for Hetch Hetchy, San Francisco cannot prove itself credit-worthy to bond-rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's. It is not clear when a business plan for Hetch Hetchy might surface.