Several different pieces of legislation, including Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s energy bill, the Consumers and Climate First Act, are under consideration, and the solar industry is hopeful that the Illinois legislature will act on an omnibus clean energy package before the state’s legislative session adjourns on May 31st.
In Illinois, there is broad agreement that a thoughtful expansion of renewable energy needs to happen. The challenge is working out the details in a manner that is good for ratepayers and the grid and addresses all the various stakeholders’ concerns.
“Illinois needs to pass legislation that enables a long and certain runway for clean energy development so the state can build a future grid that is diversified, equitable, and works for all Illinoisans” said Laurel Passera, policy director for Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA). “Absent legislation, the clean energy industry has little path forward. Illinois is a big state, and we’ve only just begun to tap into the customer demand for clean energy. There is also a lot of room to expand access to solar to more people, particularly for those in underserved communities, where community solar can play an important role”.
Rob Sargent, campaign director for Local Solar for All and the sponsor of the analysis, added that by making rooftop and community solar a priority right from the start, Illinois can speed up emission reductions, save money and create more jobs, while building the foundation for a more equitable, customer-focused energy system powered by clean energy.
Several bills currently under consideration at the Illinois legislature are calling for deploying at least 8.5 GW of local solar over the next 10 years, and against this backdrop, Vibrant’s grid-planning analysis for Illinois examined the impact of this amount of local solar would have on grid costs. Specifically, the analysis looked at two views of the grid in Illinois: (1) a decarbonised and fully electrified future in which 5 GW of rooftop solar and 3.5 GW of community solar are co-optimised and installed by 2030, compared against (2) a base case model with the same parameters but without community and rooftop solar and without co-optimising the distribution system with the utility-scale generation.
In its analysis, Vibrant found that local solar and storage assets reduce peak demand and smooth overall load thus reducing the need for utilities to invest in expensive peaker plants and unlocking the potential of the lowest cost utility-scale wind and solar resources. “[That means the lower cost system has] more wind and solar and less fossil fuel capacity,” the study said. Vibrant’s modeling also showed that a local solar and storage scenario cut overall system costs because it permanently eased the stress on the system during critical peak hours and reduced how much bulk-scale power would be needed to serve the state’s distribution grid. “You don’t have to overbuild the system with expensive peaker plants and firming capacity,” the study said.
Compared to the base case model, the study also found that rapidly adopting more local solar and storage would also lead to a nearly 15 percent greater reduction in net carbon emissions in Illinois through 2050. That is equivalent to removing 19 million cars from the road for one year, Local Solar for All’s press release pointed out.
The study also found that scaling up local solar and batteries could add 63,000 more local family-sustaining jobs by 2030 compared to a scenario that doesn’t scale local solar and batteries.
For its analysis, Vibrant used its WIS:dom-P model, a grid planning tool that analyses trillions of data points including every potential energy resource and the direct costs and benefits associated with bringing the most cost-effective resource mix to the electric grid. The report was commissioned by Local Solar for All a coalition of companies and advocates representing rooftop and community solar.
Local rooftop and community solar have been incredibly popular in Illinois, as evidenced by the creation of 25,000 clean energy projects since 2018. Unfortunately, more than 4,000 local solar projects are currently on hold due to a lack of funding, according to Amy Heart, senior policy director at Sunrun.
Illinois’ clean energy projects waitlist has been building since the funds to support the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) ran out last year.
In Illinois, the RPS is the primary policy support for developing clean energy projects. Ratepayers fund the state’s RPS when they pay their monthly electricity bills, which then goes to fund local solar projects.
In a separate report released last month, the independent energy planning and procurement consulting firm, the Power Bureau, estimated that expanding Illinois’s RPS from its current level of 25 percent to 40 percent by 2031 would result in net wholesale and retail savings for Illinois consumers of $1.2 billion.
Governor Pritzker’s proposed energy overhaul, which aims to put Illinois on a path to 100 percent clean energy by 2050, includes a proposal to increase the state’s RPS goal to 40 percent renewable energy by 2030. It also includes dozens of other proposals built around ethics, consumer protections, labour protections, transportation electrification, a just transition, workforce development and equity.
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