chemistry

Solar bonds

Solar bonds is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Solar bonds rather than just read about it. In short: Solar bonds are municipal revenue bonds issued to provide low-interest financing for lower-cost accelerated development of local renewable energy technologies such as solar power. History The first solar bond authority was drafted by Paul Douglas Fenn, creator of Community Choice Aggregation, and approved by San Francisco, California voters in 2001.

Key takeaways

Solar bonds belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Solar bonds to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Solar bonds from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Solar bonds are municipal revenue bonds issued to provide low-interest financing for lower-cost accelerated development of local renewable energy technologies such as solar power.

History The first solar bond authority was drafted by Paul Douglas Fenn, creator of Community Choice Aggregation, and approved by San Francisco, California voters in 2001. Under "solar neighborhoods" approach, municipal governments would enter into multi-decade community-wide power purchase agreements with competitive suppliers and issue solar bonds, or "H Bonds", to finance the new supplier's rollout of local renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, offering municipal bond financing to residents and businesses, the debt for which would be repaid on monthly electric bills - an approach that has come to be called "on-bill financing." The City of San Francisco enshrined solar bonds in its Community Choice Aggregation program in 2004 when it adopted an ordinance combining the City's authority to procure power for its residents and businesses with its authority to issue revenue bonds under the solar bond authority. Fenn drafted the ordinance (86-04, 2004) for sponsoring supervisor Tom Ammiano, who had also sponsored placing the solar bond authority on the 2001 ballot, and Fenns' company, Local Power Inc., went on to draft a 2007 implementation plan and 2013 business model to implement the $1 billion project. Local Power also contributed substantially to Sonoma county's Sonoma Clean Power program which has a similar structure. Apart from creating a new generation of Community Choice Aggregations, San Francisco's solar bond authority spawned the subsequent appearance of both public and private financing of customer-owned solar and energy efficiency measures, including PACE financing and the solar power purchase agreement or PPA, transforming the photovoltaics industry in the United States.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Solar bonds

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Solar bonds claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Solar bonds before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Solar bonds ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Solar bonds

In research: Solar bonds appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Solar bonds in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Solar bonds is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Bonds (finance), Solar energy, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Solar bonds outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Solar bonds in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Solar bonds means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Solar bonds out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Solar bonds in simple terms?

Solar bonds are municipal revenue bonds issued to provide low-interest financing for lower-cost accelerated development of local renewable energy technologies such as solar power. History The first solar bond authority was drafted by Paul Douglas Fenn, creator of Community Choice Aggregation, and a…

Why does Solar bonds matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Solar bonds?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Solar bonds.