Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Energy Resources topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Palo Alto committee advances staff study on local energy resources, asks for more focus on resiliency and targeted promotion
Summary
A staff study found limited positive cost‑benefit from most residential solar+battery incentives when measured against utility supply‑cost savings; the committee recommended continued barrier reduction, targeted commercial case reviews and a limited additional staff resource and voted 3–0 to forward the adjusted recommendation to council.
The Climate Action and Sustainability Committee reviewed a staff study on the valuation of local energy resources — including solar, batteries, demand response and vehicle‑to‑grid technologies — on Nov. 20, 2025 and voted to advance an alternate staff recommendation focused on barrier reduction, targeted commercial case‑by‑case evaluation and modest additional staff support.
Assistant Director of Climate Action Jonathan Alenschein summarized the study's core finding: "based on the savings to utility supply costs and the benefits of short‑term reliability of these technologies, there weren't any that had positive cost benefit," as the city updated assumptions and removed the investment tax credit from the analysis.
The study did identify several actions staff will continue to pursue: promoting time‑of‑use rates, reducing permitting and policy barriers, offering low‑cost technical assistance and evaluating commercial battery‑only projects on a case‑by‑case basis. Staff also recommended periodic updates to the analysis and a further discussion in 2026 focused specifically on long‑term resiliency values that macroeconomic or scenario analyses might reveal.
Committee members and utility staff discussed the limitations of current battery technologies for long‑duration backup. Terry Crowley, assistant director of electrical engineering and operations, said battery systems today are typically short‑duration and primarily provide short‑term outage coverage rather than multi‑day resilience. Consultant Nathaniel Fenveson described the interruption‑cost methodology used to estimate short‑term reliability value: "On the residential side it's based on kind of a willingness to pay; on the commercial side values are assigned based on sector economic models and the cost to lost revenue for a given outage duration," he said, while cautioning that uncertainty grows for outages beyond roughly 16 hours.
After discussion, committee member Pat moved to adopt the alternate staff recommendation that would pursue more proactive promotions and authorize scoping for a roughly half‑time equivalent staff resource to support demand‑response and technical assistance; the motion was seconded and passed on a roll call (Council member Burke: Yes; Chair Venker: Yes; Council member Loo: Yes). Staff will bring the item, with the committee's feedback, to city council and will return periodically to update the cost‑benefit analysis and to explore long‑term resiliency valuation in 2026.
Next step: the committee's recommendation will go to city council, and staff will pursue barrier‑reduction measures, case‑by‑case commercial evaluations and development of implementation scoping for the modest staffing addition.
