LOS ANGELES-New research from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation shows that Los Angeles' solar power rooftop program is meeting the city's ambitious goals. The FiT program allows commercial real estate owners to sell clean energy obtained through rooftop solar panels to the LADWP. The study shows that these business will have generated and sold 100 megawatts of clean power for the city by 2015.

The cost of the clean power generated by rooftop solar panels on retail properties, warehouses and apartment complexes is $.15 per kilowatt hour, which is the lowest cost of any solar-power program in North America. Once these businesses sell the power to LADWP, both residential and business customers can use it. "Together the City of Los Angeles and the LABC have made great strides towards our efforts to reduce the City's dependency on coal, moving away from centralized generation toward a more distributed model," says L.A. City Councilmember Mitchell Englander. To date, the program has already generated 40 megawatts of clean power.

UCLA believes the program will eradicate 2.7 million tons of greenhouse gases from the environment each year once it achieves its goal of 100 megawatts. That is the equivalent of removing 500,000 cars from the road. However, with 10,000 acres of rooftop space in Los Angeles, the program is on a track to continue to grow past this benchmark. Felina USA recently joined the program, installing 1.1 MW SunPower solar power system on the 3-acres of rooftop space at its Chatsworth distribution center.