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Two municipal facilities in Livermore are set to soon feature solar and energy storage systems, following the Livermore City Council’s unanimous support for a 25-year agreement between the city and Ava Community Energy.
Installation at the civic center meeting hall and maintenance service center is expected to kick off early next year and reach completion by April 2026, pending finalization of the renewable energy and storage power purchase agreement, city officials said.
This agreement bears no upfront cost to Livermore. Instead, the city would make monthly payments to Ava — the owner, operator and maintainer of the systems — for solar generation at civic center meeting hall ($0.235/kWh) and maintenance service center ($0.210/kWh) as well as storage for each site ($20/kW).
The city expects to save $28,975 over the 25-year contract.
These installations would also expand the city’s portfolio of clean and renewable energy, provide back-up power during outages, reduce time-of-use energy costs and lower its reliance on diesel generators, said Tricia Pontau, the city’s sustainability program manager, during the July 14 council meeting.
Compared to a previous version of the PPA, this agreement features three fewer facilities, different ownership and lower expected cost savings.
The PPA is currently in process, city officials said following council’s vote to authorize City Manager Marianna Burch to sign the agreement.
“I also would have loved to see the original plan, but I’m glad to see we’re at least able to do the two sites,” Councilmember Kristie Wang said during the meeting.
Originally in February, the council authorized the city manager to enter into a PPA with Ava for the installation of solar and battery storage systems at five sites including the civic center meeting hall and maintenance service center as well as city hall, police department and water reclamation plant.
Under the previous PPA, a third-party developer would own, operate, and maintain the solar generation and storage equipment, according to the staff report from February.
At the time, Ava was collaborating with the cities of Berkeley, Fremont, Hayward, Oakland, San Leandro and Livermore to identify a portfolio of cost-effective solar and storage projects for their municipal facilities.
But Livermore did not enter into the agreement because Ava’s contractor Green Bridge removed itself from the partnership after determining that it could not deliver on the project deadlines and rates established in the PPA due to concerns surrounding new federal policies that created uncertainty around equipment costs and supply chain timelines, according to the July 14 report.
Ava’s staff later received authority from its board of directors to negotiate PPAs with cities wherein Ava, not a third party, would finance and own the solar and storage systems for a smaller portfolio of projects.
“Dropping the number of sites down to two per city was certainly not everyone’s first choice,” Ava solar and storage associate Andy McElroy said at the meeting.
“Ava’s board was very enthusiastic about this new opportunity that we stumbled into, where Ava is going to own assets and we’re going to get to see how this plays out, so that we can hopefully venture into future phases of this,” McElroy added.
The systems must be operational by April 2026 in order for the project to be grandfathered into a previous and higher paying iteration of California’s Net Energy Metering (NEM) law. This policy allows solar panel owners to receive credits on their utility bills for excess electricity they generate and send back to the grid, according to the report.
Operating under NEM 2.0, instead of NEM 3.0 — which went into effect April 14, 2023 — means greater financial benefits and flexibility.
“These were the two projects that were determined to still be financially and logistically feasible,” Pontau said.
“However, we won’t be guaranteed significant cost savings that we were seeing in the original agreement with the larger portfolio,” Pontau added.
Across five sites, the combined cost savings was estimated to be over $2.1 million, according to the February staff report. Given two sites, the cost savings is expected to be $28,975.
The sole commenter during the public hearing expressed support for the project as well as additional solar in Livermore.
“I’m saddened but not surprised that chaos at the federal level has hurt us locally, scuttling our original plans for this solar project,” Alan Marling said. “I do appreciate you going forward and doing something — the best you can do under the circumstances.”
Ava generates electricity for over two million residents and commercial customers in Alameda County and the cities of Tracy, Stockton and Lathrop.
