As the Texas chapter of the American Solar Energy Society, TXSES has spent the last four decades working to educate and inspire every Texan to adopt solar energy as part of an equitable 100% clean energy future. But we don’t do it alone. Our five regional chapters in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio are doing extraordinary work, from hosting career fairs to spearheading an initiative to plant one million trees in El Paso in the next decade. Together, they’re helping protect our home planet.
As of June 2021, Texas has 29 million residents. And while our five chapters work hard and reach many, there are many more we haven’t reached. The more chapters we have, the more opportunities we have to spread timely, fact-based solar information – and the last six months have shown how essential this is. Check out the inspiring work our regional chapters do here.
Want to make a difference in your community? Join our TXSES family of regional chapters! Contact TXSES executive director Pete Parsons for more information today.
More Texans are going solar every day. Texas currently has enough solar energy capacity installed to power the equivalent of more than one million homes.
Yet we’re still not even close to reaching solar’s potential. Every year, enough sunlight shines on Texas to provide 100 times more power than we need. Unfortunately, we’re capturing only a tiny percentage of it. Harnessing more of this power would mean cleaner air and a more stable climate; less strain on natural resources and more resilient communities; and an energy source we can depend on to be virtually pollution-free for as long as we can imagine. And Texans prefer it over any other energy source.
So what’s slowing us down? What, if anything, can stop us?
Well, as the Velvet Underground pointed out “Who loves the sun? Not everyone.” Right now in Texas, we’re thinking too small, failing to update policies that would encourage even more Texans to go solar. We’re also thinking too narrowly, putting the short-term interests of old industries with outdated business models ahead of our health, environment and wellbeing.
Case in point: this past legislative session.
As Texans, including my young family, suffered from blackouts from Winter Storm Uri this February, Governor Abbott went on Fox News’ Hannity show andblamed wind and solar energy for the energy shortages. The Governor changed his tune the next day as state energy regulators made clear natural gas failures were primarily responsible, but the damage was done.
Fossil fuel proponents and their allies in the legislature pushed bills to make wind and solar farms pay potentially billions in fees to provide backup power and interconnect to the grid. The bills would have slammed the brakes on the enormous planned growth of clean energy and led some existing renewable companies to declare bankruptcy. The bills quickly passed the state Senate and we went to work stopping them in the House.
Stopping these attacks was Environment Texas’ top legislative priority. Working closely with the renewable energy industry and other allies, we worked to debunk myths about the blackouts. We alerted the media about the threat to wind and solar energy and were quoted in the Austin American-Statesman, the Dallas Morning News, Bloomberg, The Economist, and other prominent outlets. Our lobbyist, as well as dozens of student activists from across the state, made our case directly to lawmakers. Our call center and digital organizers generated thousands of phone calls and emails into the offices of key lawmakers. We produced a video that was seen more than 300,000 times on Facebook and via mobile phone ads in key districts.
Legislators, including state Reps. Donna Howard, Erin Zwiener, and many others lobbied their colleagues, identified points of order to slow, kill or modify bills, and stood up for wind and solar.
Ultimately, none of the bills became law! So while we were able to stop the bad – which is a big deal – we missed huge opportunities to take proactive steps to advance solar.
However, there were some modest steps forward for solar. SB 398 (Menendez/Deshotel), aka the Solar Customer Protection Act, preempts cities from adopting anti-solar policies (e.g., the city of Allen’s prohibition on street-facing solar should be preempted by state law). SB 1772 (Zaffirini/Zwiener/Cyrier) will help solar developers install pollinator-friendly landscaping at solar farms. And SB 415 (Hancock/Holland) allows electric utilities in the deregulated market to invest in battery storage.
With the 87th Legislature in the books, we’ll now return our focus to other forums to promote solar, including asking Congress to extend solar tax credits for the long-term and asking Texas cities to adopt solar-ready standards on new buildings.
To end on a more positive musical note, “Here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.”
Luke Metzger is Executive Director, Environment Texas
San Antonio-based CAM Solar is a solar sales and installation company serving customers in San Antonio, Austin, the Rio Grande Valley and parts of Colorado. They’re also a TXSES Platinum business member. Industry conversations are one of the benefits of a TXSES Platinum membership.
We recently sat down with Carl Ramsbey, regional sales manager with CAM Solar, to talk about CAM Solar, COVID, winter storm Uri and live music. Here’s our conversation.
TXSES: How did you find yourself/make your way to CAM Solar? According to your LinkedIn profile, you started your career in audio engineering. Makes perfect sense, especially living in Austin. How did you get from audio engineering to solar?
CR: Good timing and good luck. As an audio engineer, I focused on room acoustics, designing custom home theatres and sound systems for bars and restaurants. By accident or providence, I met a former Solar City employee who was moving to Austin and wanted a sound system for her house. She ended up becoming my mentor, and through a series of connections, I found my way to CAM Solar in 2017 without any solar experience but a strong desire to become part of the solar community. I started in sales to learn and understand the business, making my way from sales and business development to regional sales manager. Gotta say it’s a breath of fresh air to work with a like-minded group of people like those at CAM Solar who are deeply committed to helping people understand the benefits of going solar.
TXSES: All that in just four years. It’s obviously a good fit.
CR: Definitely! But it was Daniel Moyer and Brian Cullen who saw market opportunities for solar about twelve years ago and started the company in San Antonio. Brian was a trader in Chicago and was feeling the stress and chaos of that fast-paced lifestyle. He and his wife moved to Telluride and built an off-grid cabin in the mountains. His continued interest in solar took him to Farmington, New Mexico at San Juan College that had, at the time, the only renewable energy program in the country. That’s where Brian met Daniel, and the rest, as they say, is history.
TXSES: Besides being San Antonio-based, CAM Solar is in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), Laredo, Austin and has a large presence in Colorado. Why did you target RGV and Laredo?
CR: They were easy choices for us. It’s a very productive market with lots of sun and wide-open spaces; few trees to obstruct rooftop access and it’s a deregulated environment. Our presence in Laredo is interesting compared to other Texas cities we’re in. For example, residential rooftop installations are large, averaging from 12-15kW. In San Antonio, systems tend to average 7kW, and they’re even smaller-sized systems in Colorado, primarily because it’s a less-heavy air conditioning climate in the summer.
TXSES: How much are you engineering systems to offset load?
CR: We like to engineer for 100% offset. While we don’t want to oversize systems, we do want to make sure we’re offsetting as much energy as possible. We help homeowners understand net metering. And we’re having more and more conversations about battery storage.
TXSES: Thanks, Uri. What’s the breakdown of residential v. commercial work that CAM Solar installs?
CR: We’re about 85% residential. We do commercial installations. In fact, our largest commercial project is 2 MW. We’ve always focused on the residential market, but we are installing more commercial projects these days.
TXSES: One of the most frequent issues we hear about is the lack of a highly trained, well-qualified solar workforce. The workforce was just keeping up with demand before events like Uri and a greater urgency to address climate change. With the demand for solar and (now) storage systems, are you finding it difficult to find qualified workers? What’s your greatest need for workers?
CR: That’s always a challenging factor but especially more so now with greater consumer demand for information. We have four master electricians, and every crew lead is a journeyman electrician. All lead installers are NABCEP-certified. We’ve found that Colorado’s e-permitting process is especially painstaking; lots of bureaucratic procedures and while designed to protect the consumer, we find that bureaucracies and utilities don’t work as fast as we do. Our installations only take a couple of days. Our project managers (PM) are a combination of traffic cop and clinician, someone who can keep the bureaucracy moving while keeping the homeowner apprised of the process and progress. Our sales reps are the point of contact with the homeowner. We also have a robust customer support team.
Our biggest needs right now: 1) Colorado installers; 2) site technicians; and 3) project managers. Finding the right PM is extremely difficult. It takes a special kind of person to do this job, someone who can balance the homeowner and utilities, who has excellent communications skills, is uber-organized and has the honed people skills to problem solve and keep customers happy.
Most of our folks in PM roles may come from other management backgrounds. That’s really a plus for them and for us since they already have those inherent management skills. Then it’s industry onboarding. Some folks may come to project management with technical backgrounds which means they may lack the organizational, communication and people skills that are absolutely essential to keep things moving. It’s always a mix. We’ve been working with other groups, like Solar Austin and its clean energy internship program. Coco Wilson, who’s currently a student at Huston-Tillotson, has been working with us in inside sales for the past year. We’ve discovered that hiring someone out of college is a good fit for us. They’re eager, more malleable.
TXSES: Winter Storm Uri. Need we say more?
CR: It definitely impacted us. In fact, it’s still affecting us. People are a LOT more curious about solar than before Uri. Battery backup/storage conversations and consultations are serious sales drivers. Our battery inventory barely touches down in our shop before it’s gone. Solar’s return on investment (ROI) has always been easy to explain to consumers. They see the numbers. Batteries…not so much at this point in time, but I like to refer to battery/backup storage as ROE (return on experience). All you need is one experience like Uri to re-think security and realize that the best thing any of us can do, especially in the business world, is to be as nimble as possible, knowing when and how to adapt when changes arise. Riding the solar coaster is keeping all of us on our toes, knowing when and how to adapt as change appears, in some cases, out of nowhere!
TXSES: Uri is NOT a one-off. If anything, it’s the beginning of what we can expect from climate activity and how these technologies will scale as we rapidly and enthusiastically demand them. And back to the workforce issue…will we have a trained workforce to accommodate us as these technologies advance. As if Uri wasn’t disruptive enough, how was COVID for CAM Solar?
CR: Fortunately, we were building lead funnels and moving toward more remote selling ahead of COVID, but COVID inspired us to ramp up this approach. We had the infrastructure in place. Yes, things did slow down but I’m proud to say that we kept all our staff. And while we didn’t make the gains we’d planned for, neither did we fall behind. People were home 24/7 using lots of electricity. Folks had time to delve deeper into solar. Post-COVID, we’re appearing at more in-person events like farmer’s markets and flea markets. I’m a big music fan, so we’ve been taking our 2kW solar PV/19kWh storage Solar Roller to music venues across the state as they begin to re-open giving us the chance to interact with consumers and even to power some of the stages! The Roller was at the San Antonio flea market recently. That was our office for the day.
TXSES: Solar-powered live music. Let us know when and where we can catch the Roller. Final thoughts: what’s been the biggest surprise in your work with CAM Solar?
CR: I’d have never guessed that working in the solar industry would give you a front-row seat to work with this amazing resource and ever-advancing technologies. Even more rewarding is working with folks who share the solar’s values and battles. I love our common goals and deeply appreciate working with like-minded folks.
Potential anti-solar policies at the Pedernales Electric Coop (PEC) threaten to derail future distributed solar in PEC’s service territory, the rural electric cooperative that serves more meters than any other U.S. co-op.
With a little less than eight weeks until sine die, May 31, 2021, the Texas legislature is still debating the right policies to remedy February’s massive grid failure from Winter Storm Uri. Yet there is another battle raging below the watchful eyes of energy lobbyists.
The Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) is poised to implement behind-the-meter solar policies that will transform it from being inarguably one of Texas’s most supportive distributed solar proponents to perhaps the most punitive.
How could this have happened so quickly?
Just a few years ago, I wrote an article lauding the PEC’s policy and its positive effects on one of Texas’s fastest growing industries. But a few key leadership changes later, the current PEC team and board is on track to enact policies that degrade the distributed solar value proposition, not just for new solar owners but for homeowners who have already invested in solar to guard against rising electricity prices and to do their part for climate action.
Loaded language in recent policy (“this class [solar] is being heavily subsidized”) with little supporting data swung the PEC pendulum from proponent to adversary of distributed renewable energy. Not lost in this shift: the punitive charges and rate structure were put in place after it installed numerous community solar farms – on its side of the meter and pricing.
Fixed-rate structures for non-interconnected customers are PEC’s answer for most homeowners. But for the small percentage of solar homeowners, PEC will impose the highest-in-state application fee ($650 for a now two-step application) and time-of-use (TOU) rate structures with commercial-like demand charges to approximate solar customer grid use.
As the rural electric cooperative that serves more meters than any other U.S. co-op, PEC’s potential impact is huge. Instead of implementing policies that threaten to derail future solar investments, PEC could be the example of how to build a safe, resilient grid with distributed energy resources in Texas.
We’re in a whole new world.
Whether reducing electric demand with solar, installing the highest-SEER-rated HVAC system, or charging an EV, the only common denominator is that every homeowner is only that – a homeowner. Everyone should be treated equally. If PEC proposed policies represent a better way to send price signals and measure homeowner use of the grid, then it should be just as smart for non-solar homeowners as it is for solar homeowners.
Let’s hope that PEC pauses these rushed policy changes that will sabotage the investment of so many who have already gone solar and those yet to go solar. Penalizing solar homeowners is not good public policy.
Howard ‘Scot’ Arey is the owner of Solar CenTex, a solar installation company that designs and installs residential, commercial, farm and ranch, and small municipal solar projects. He is also Chair of TXSES.
BREAKING: Build San Antonio Green, our San Antonio TXSES chapter, receives the 2021 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy!
Each year, EPA honors a group of businesses and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to protecting the environment through superior energy efficiency achievements. Whether a first-time Partner of the Year winner or a Sustained Excellence winner for many years, these ENERGY STAR award-winning partners from across the country demonstrate that delivering real climate solutions makes good business sense and strengthens our economy.
If it’s an odd-numbered year, the Texas legislature is in session. A confluence of clamor and mayhem with thousands of bills filed (more than 7,000 this session), each session has its own unique personality.
Back in July 2020, State Comptroller Glen Hegar projected a $4.6 billion deficit by August 2021. But in January, Hegar reduced this estimated deficit to $946 million, citing underestimated gains in tax receipts from online sales. And while better than the original $4.6 billion deficit prediction, a $946 million deficit is still painful, especially when pre-COVID, Hegar predicted an almost $3 billion surplus.
Then February happened.
The near-collapse of the state’s electric grid changed everything. A flurry of energy bills was filed.
We’re tracking a list of renewable energy bills, all of which will impact solar in Texas. We’ve included the companion versions and legislators so you can reach out and voice your opinion.
To keep up with bill status, click here. Under search legislation, select word/phrase or bill number.
For
HB 1607 (Darby) and SB 1325 (Hinojosa) to invest in additional transmission lines to bring wind and solar power to our cities.
HB 3795 (Button, Guillen) and SB 1029 (Huffman) relating to the exemption from ad valorem taxation for certain solar or wind-powered energy devices
HB 3978 (Crockett; enabling legislation to HJR 144) Relating to a credit against the ad valorem taxes imposed on property on which certain solar energy devices have been installed. HJR 144 Proposing a constitutional amendment to authorize the legislature to provide for a credit against the ad valorem taxes imposed on property on which a solar energy device has been installed based on the cost of acquiring and installing the device.
SB 398 (Menéndez) and HB 3696 (Deshotel) adopting a Solar Customer Protection Act to make it easier for Texans to go solar. Prevents municipalities from discriminating against street-facing solar installations.
SB 1303 (Blanco) and HB 4120 (Deshotel) to modify the Clean School Bus program to prioritize electric buses and directing the Public Utility Commission to adopt rules to remove barriers for schools to install charging infrastructure, solar and batteries.
Against
SB 1255 (Birdwell) to discriminate against wind and solar energy in Chapter 313 economic development program.
SB 1256 (Birdwell) to discriminate against wind and solar energy in Chapter 312 property tax abatements.
SB 1278 (Hancock) to discriminate against wind and solar in the ERCOT market.
