Austin Energy, the municipally owned utility that provides electricity to Austin, has a goal of sourcing 35 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020. As part of that the utility is working on its strategy to deploy roughly 200 megawatts of solar and recently issued a report detailing potential plans for deploying that much solar in its grid.

However, the report does not detail a plan set in stone, said Michael Osborne, special assistant to the general manager of Austin Energy, who wrote the report.

“This a response to a request from a particular council member on how we intend to get to our 200 megawatt goal by 2020,” said Osborne. “It is a strategy based on our current assets, and it is describing a plan based on what we have right now.”

The utility’s first large solar plan, the 30-megawatt Webberville Solar Plant, is slated for commissioning by the end of the year, according to the report. The other proposed solar installations are the 30-megawatt Saragosa Solar Plant, 75-megawatt Toyah Solar Plant, 40-megawatt Round Mountain Hybrid and 25 megawatts being deployed through rooftops and community programs.

The Webberville project will supply power to Austin Energy through a power-purchase agreement, according to Osbourne. But that’s not an indicator of how the other projects will be developed and deployed.

“We’ll determine what the best structure is for that as we learn,” he said.

The utility could also develop projects itself or do a combination of building some and signing PPAs for some.

“Whatever is the most economically efficient way of doing it,” he said.

While the utility’s stated goal is 35 percent renewable energy by 2020, the utility could be much closer to 50 percent renewable when considering its wind purchases and energy efficiency efforts, Osbourne said.

“We’ll have about 1,500 megawatts of efficiency and 35 percent renewables. So we’ll be over 50 percent by 2020 in terms of renewables and energy efficiency,” he said.

Some might not be happy with the carve-out for distributed generation. A DOE study found that all the rooftops in Austin could produce up to 3 gigawatts.

“It would provide a substantial amount of our summer load, but only a quarter or so of our total energy needs,” Osbourne said.

It’s also expensive. And while Austin Energy has offered incentives for rooftop solar a number of years, thus far it has only added in 5 megawatts of such projects.

Image courtesy of NREL.