With Feed-In Financing, Modest Solar Projects for Long Island

The New York Times

The Long Island Power Authority approved a new program on Thursday to encourage developers to build medium-scale solar projects using a financing mechanism, the feed-in tariff, that has resulted in both booms and busts overseas.

Under the program, called the Clean Solar Initiative, the utility will purchase all of the electricity produced by the projects, which must be at least 50 kilowatts in size and are expected to go no larger than about 3 megawatts, at a rate of 22 cents per kilowatt hour over the life of a 20-year contract.

Utility officials say the rate is high enough to guarantee a steady return to investors but low enough that it can compete with other solar electricity and even with the conventional power that the power authority buys to meet summer daytime peak demand.