Dive Brief:
- California Governor Jerry Brown will reauthorize funding of the state’s Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP), providing $83 million per year through 2019 for customer-sited energy sources.
- SGIP, the predecessor incentive plan to the California Solar Initiative, was originally intended to grow peak load reduction capacity with small wind and rooftop solar but has more recently been used to grow energy storage.
- Administered by California IOUs PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, and SoCal Gas, the SGIP supported only 2 megawatts of storage in 2012 but had 25 megawatts of storage in its application queue by April 2013 and ended the year with more applications for storage than for any other technology.
Dive Insight:
California officials expect the SGIP to be essential in meeting the California PUC-mandated 1.3 gigawatts of storage and its 200 megawatt carve-out for customer-sited storage.
According to the SGIP Handbook, projects may receive an incentive of up to $5 million but are not limited in size as long as they match the on-site load. A quarter of SGIP funding is dedicated to the support of combined heat and power. Funded wind, fuel cell, and advanced energy storage systems must have a warranty of at least ten years. Supported storage systems can serve on-site generation or stand alone.
