Fraser’s solar bill, SB 545, just passed out of the Senate floor with a vote of 26 to 4.
SB 545 will:
- Build our emerging renewable technologies
- Create jobs
- Lower electric costs in the long term
- Reduce pollution
- Assure fair prices for excess electricity generated by distributive renewable energy sources; and
- Allow new home buyers to have a solar option.
More specifically, the bill provides $500 million over the next 5 years in solar incentives. The PUC will also have an option of extending the program.
A few good amendments also got tacked on at the 11th hour, so now the bill also contains:
- net metering language, so that folks with solar panels on their homes will be able to sell power back into the grid at a fair rate
- an amendment so that Home Owner’s Associations won’t be able to prevent people from putting solar panels on their homes unless the HOA can prove it is dangerous
- a website requirement so that PUC will have to provide information to the public on solar incentives and subsidies available
- a requirement that electrical coops and munis have to adopt a similar solar program and report back to the lege in 3 years to prove they’ve done their homework
Now all we need to get solar panels on your house… is to get a companion bill through the House 
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[...] Citizen has posted a helpful guide to the bill as passed today on their excellent Texas blog Citizen Vox. Of particular interest are the [...]
Thanks for the great post, Texas Vox
[...] passed out of the Senate yesterday, so that’s good news. The biggest enemy of all these bills at this time is the [...]
Lucky you! The National Renewable Energy Lab has already crteaed an application to do pretty much what you’re looking for. It’s called pvwatts, and is linked below.What you do is click on the map for the city nearest you, then enter the size of your proposed array, it’s tilt, and orientation. You’ll get a month-by-month printout of the expected energy output. This is based on historical measurements over almost 40 years, so takes into account local climate, such as fog, rain, and altitude.If there is no reference city near you, you can still use another version of the program to do predictions for an arbitrary location.
[...] news from the big pink dome. Looks like two of our key bills to promote solar power this session, SB 545 (Fraser/Strama) and SB 541 (Watson/Farabee) are getting stuck in the gummy gears of the legislative [...]
[...] produce. As HB 1243 is a solar-related bill, it is can be deemed germane, or related, to solar SB 545, which “died” last night (as a reference, I’d also recommend this Houston [...]
[...] they produce. As HB 1243 is a solar-related bill, it can be deemed germane, or related, to solar SB 545, which “died” last night [...]