AEP Texas to add solar photovoltaic incentive program in January

A residential solar photovoltaic system can provide significant savings.

(Story by Omar G. Lopez)

CORPUS CHRISTI — AEP Texas will add a solar photovoltaic (PV) incentive program to its standard menu of energy efficiency programs beginning in January 2013.

The program has been administered as a pilot program since 2009.Frontier Associates and Clean Energy Associates, a third-party contractor, recently completed a year-long, baseline study to determine if the program benefitted customers.

“We commissioned the study to see if the solar PV program stimulated any interest in the industry and if the program proved beneficial to residential and non-residential customers,” said Jim Fowler, EE/DR coordinator, who served as the liaison for the program. “We wanted to see if the program was really helping or not.”

The study’s findings prove that the program works.

The pilot program to date has resulted in 87 distributed solar PV installations. In AEP Texas, the combined amount of electricity that these solar PV systems generate equals about 1 MW of electricity. That’s roughly 1,991,056 kilowatt hours of energy produced by these 87 systems each year.

The study also reported that the incentives offered in the program reflect trends in the industry. For example, incentives paid out to residential customers were $2.50/installed DC-watt in 2009, but have been reduced to $1.75/installed DC-watt in 2012. The costs associated with installing a solar PV system have also decreased over the past four years. The cost to install a solar PV system in Texas is lower than the national average.

Fowler said following an all-source solicitation of program implementers, the contract for the ongoing program would be awarded to Frontier Associates and Clean Energy Associates, the company that has been administering the pilot program.

“We are confident that this program implementer will maintain the high standards of customer service and ease of program participation for the program that has been the record so far,” he said. “We anticipate that in the next few years, the program will continue to make a larger, positive impact on the industry and on the electric grid in general.”