Increase local renewable energy

Description: The city of San Diego, CA was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to participate in a collaborative effort to explore new ways solar energy can improve the affordability, reliability, and resilience of the nation’s electric grid. The City of San Diego was one of nine teams selected to join the program, which is known as the Solar Energy Innovation Network (SEIN).

A key part of the process was to conduct a “Solar Siting Survey” to identify the potential for locally deployed solar infrastructure within the city. This survey, undertaken by the Clean Coalition, identified 500 megawatts (average power need of about 500,000 homes) of potential large, commercial scale sites within San Diego’s built environments, e.g., parking lots and parking structures, large roof tops. The survey included the interconnection potential of each energy source. Many of the sites identified would also be candidates for microgrids.

Goal: Increase local renewable energy production

Measurement: Progress towards the goal of 25% of energy consumed is produced by local renewable sources by 2035

Time to Implement:

Links:

Solar siting survey – San Diego
https://clean-coalition.org/solar-siting-survey-san-diego/

Clean Power Exchange 2018 Press Release on San Diego’s Solar Siting Survey
https://cleanpowerexchange.org/clean-coalitions-solar-siting-survey-identifies-about-500-mw-of-large-commercial-scale-solar-potential-on-built-environments-in-the-city-of-san-diego/

Additional Information:

The minimum project size was 1 megawatt. “If a smaller minimum project size of 500 kilowatts (kW) were considered, the Clean Coalition expects that the technical solar siting potential in San Diego would increase by a factor of two to about 1 GW; this would double again to 2 GW if considering projects as small as 100 kW.”

NREL’s Solar Energy Innovation Network
https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-energy-innovation-network.html

San Diego Department of Sustainability – Clean and Renewable Energy
https://www.sandiego.gov/sustainability/clean-and-renewable-energy

Contact Info:

Email: San Diego Department of Sustainability

Sectors(s) Energy
Region(s)
State(s)
Location(s)
Status
Date First Adopted 2018
Last Updated November 3, 2021
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