Santa Barbara County plans to build more solar energy projects on its own land, including at the Northern Branch Jail, the Santa Maria Foster Road campus and Lake Cachuma.
Renewable energy projects such as solar can be cost-effective in the long term, given the rising costs of electricity, according to Brandon Kaysen, energy manager for the county’s General Services Department.
“Looking back at the past decade, just the County of Santa Barbara specifically, we’ve seen the average cost of electricity increase 70%, so that’s 5% year over year for the past decade,” he said.
The county Board of Supervisors voted earlier this month to pursue power purchase agreements for eight projects — rather than financing and direct purchase — which means no upfront capital costs.
It’s also a decision made in the interest of time.
Five of the eight projects have what are called NEM 2.0 agreements, so they would receive the retail value of over-generated electricity exported to the grid, Kaysen said at the March 4 meeting.
There’s an April 2026 deadline for those types of projects to get permission to operate, according to the county, so there’s a financial incentive to get the projects up and running by then.
Later projects would be under net billing tariffs. Excess electricity sent to the grid sometimes earns less than the retail value, Kaysen explained. Battery storage systems are often recommended with NBT projects, so energy can be captured and used in peak hours when electricity costs are the highest, he said.
The Board of Supervisors directed staff to negotiate power purchase agreements for all eight sites.
General Services staff issued an intent to award projects to Endelos Energy and Engie in January, and will be negotiating PPAs with those companies.
Supervisor Bob Nelson said he was disappointed that the county couldn’t get the proposed projects going fast enough to get them all into the NEM 2.0 program, which earns more money for energy exported to the grid. The financial difference over a 20-year period would be significant, he said.
“When we go to net billing tariffs, taxpayers are going to lose millions that we potentially would have had over those 20 years,” he said.
The presentation to the Board of Supervisors didn’t include battery energy storage systems, but the county may pursue building them for certain solar projects.
In a separate discussion, the supervisors discussed battery energy storage system safety last week. They voted to pursue more local authority regulating those kinds of projects, in response to public concern about fires such as the one at the Moss Landing facility.
