Solar bumps into grid issues downtown

When Lake|Flato Architects decided to add a 10-kilowatt solar array to its building, the company sailed through CPS Energy's rebate application process. The architecture firm hoped the size of the array would allow it to send electricity back into the grid on days the office was closed.

It was only after the firm had installed a $40,000 system, around $14,000 after CPS and federal rebates, that employees said they heard some ominous words from a CPS inspector: I have made a huge mistake.

Lake|Flato had inadvertently uncovered a quirk in the burgeoning effort to add more solar panels downtown. You can install solar, but if you're downtown, you can't produce excess power and sell it back into the grid because of a risk that resulting surges could cause power outages.

Lake|Flato worked with CPS before installing anything providing its address and CPS account number to make sure the firm would qualify for its solar rebate. A CPS inspector pre-approved the project but somehow didn't realize the company was downtown until coming to the property for a final inspection.

It was only when CPS came for the inspection that this came up, said Heather Holdridge with Lake|Flato. I don't know how he only realized that (this) was downtown at this moment.

It turns out that a glitch in the CPS computer system wasn't flagging downtown addresses as being part of the downtown electric grid.

Only a few buildings have solar arrays in the downtown grid generally defined by CPS as the area within Interstate 10, Interstate 35 and U.S. 281 so this is a relatively new issue, said Lanny Sinkin, executive director of the nonprofit Solar San Antonio.

It's the early stages of things, Sinkin said. You learn.

So far, there have been at least two lessons.

Across the street from Lake|Flato, the recently renovated 1930s-era Hipolito F. Garcia Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse bumped into the same issue with its 50-kilowatt array.

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Solar bumps into grid issues downtown