Burbank City Council: Solar Net Billing Program Approved, Fire Chief Speaks

The city council had its first meeting of the new year and despite it being over seven hours, is filled with important information.

0
647

During this year’s initial Burbank City Council meeting at city hall that lasted seven hours and thirty-two minutes, the five-member board unanimously approved the Burbank Water & Power solar net billing program.

Mayor Nikki Perez, Vice Mayor Tamala Takahashi, and members Zizette Mullins, Konstantine Anthony and Christoper John Rizzotti were all in agreement on the matter.

Solar paneling has been popular in this country since the 1970s and 1980s and some of the benefits are that it’s cost effective, can lower your energy bill by generating clean, renewable energy from sunlight, which contributes to environmentally sustainability by lowering greenhouse gas emissions while increasing the home’s value.

Drew Johnstone is BWP’s sustainability officer and a manager with specialties in greenhouse gas emissions accounting, decarbonization of buildings and transportation, utility rate analysis, building electrification, solar and storage implementation, electric vehicles and charging and energy troubleshooting and Drew Kidd is BWP’s sustainability marketing associate and a former electrical engineer with BWP, and both spoke on behalf of the program.

By approving the recommendation of BWP solar net billing, the following resulted:

1) The transition from the current NEM 1.0 solar program to the Solar Net Billing program.

2) Approved the methodology for determining the avoided cost of energy (ACOE).

3) General managers to make administrative changes to the methodology.

Here’s some background into the NEM 1.0, which was established in 1995.

It was required as a solar rate structure until total installations meet five percent of peak demand.

With regard to credits, there would be compensation for excess energy (more than 100 percent of usage) as kWh credits.

Customers would be billed on net energy delivered to customer excess energy received by BWP.

Early in the meeting, the Burbank Fire Chief Danny Alvarez, who was named to the position in 2023, addressed the council and was introduced by Burbank City Manager Justin Hess.

“On Tuesday, January 7, there was a significant wind event in Burbank and the surrounding communities and while Burbank fared fairly well there has been devastation and destruction to our neighboring communities,” he said. “In anticipation of the wind event, we upstaffed.”

Alvarez, who has been in the city’s fire department for a quarter century and was Santa Monica’s fire chief, continued: “From 9 a.m. on Tuesday to 9 a.m. on Wednesday, we received 181 calls to service as compared to an average of 32 calls during that same time period,” he pointed out. “I want to acknowledge and give thanks and heartfelt gratitude to our staff’s willingness to assist in our efforts at the Eaton and Palisades fires.”

The chief, who was the Burbank Deputy Fire Chief since 2018, pointed out that the effort was city-wide, and many local agencies are to be commended.

“This was an all-hands-on deck effort under very difficult circumstances,” he added.

Alvarez closed his address by saying, “there is a red flag warning because of today’s [Tuesday] winds but there are no evacuation orders in place.”

Hess also spoke about several items including the Disaster Training Course and said, “that is something we will advertise more” and because of the recent heavy winds, he said, “we will need to look at all our [American] flags at all our facilities and some of them may need to be changed.”