LADWP - Solar Feed-in Tariff Demonstration Program

Summary

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is providing Standard Offer Power Purchase Agreements (SOPPA) for a total of 10 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic installations through their Solar Feed-in Tariff Demonstration Program. Applications were accepted from May 17, 2012 through June 29, 2012, and contracts are expected to be awarded in October or November 2012.

Unlike other feed-in tariffs, in which there is a fixed published price for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity produced by participating systems, the LADWP feed-in tariff operates more like a reverse auction mechanism. Applicants are asked to bid their lowest acceptable Base Price of Energy (BPE). LADWP will use the BPE to rank applicants and create a shortlist of the highest ranked projects. The actual kWh payments received by the applicant will be based on the BPE multiplied by the Time of Delivery Multipliers below:

A total of 10 MW of projects will be awarded SOPPAs. The 10 MW is separately allocated to different project sizes and locations as follows:

• Up to 8 MW for systems between 151 kW and 999 kW located within the LA Basin
• Up to 1.7 MW for systems between 30 kW and 150 kW located within the LA Basin
• Up to 0.3 MW for systems between 30 kW and 150 kW located in LADWP's Owens Valley service territory.

All projects must pay an application fee of either $500 or $1,000 depending on system size. Winning projects also must pay a development security deposit, interconnection fees, and costs associated with an interconnection study. The full breakdown of these costs, and all other technical requirements can be found in the FIT Demonstration Guidelines on the LADWP web site.