Rooftop solar a good FiT for Los Angeles

Los Angeles recently saw the start-up of one of the largest rooftop solar power projects to be installed in the San Fernando Valley, a 1.5-megawatt solar array that will take advantage of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Feed-in Tarif

By Paul MacDonald

Early last year, a ceremony was heldin the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles County, and a switch was flipped, celebrating the start-up of a new 1.5 megawatt (MW) solar array atop a warehouse in the Panorama City neighborhood of the city.

The project is now generating enough renewable energy to power 200 homes, and was developed by Valta Energy, together with building owner Rexford Industrial.

Though it is significant, the Valley project was just the latest to take advantage of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) Feed-in Tariff (FiT) solar program, which enables building owners to create solar power plants on their rooftops and sell the power they generate to the Department for distribution on the city’s power grid. A month later, Valta Energy and Black Bear Energy completed a 1.7 MW rooftop solar array on a Torrance warehouse owned by Ares Management’s Real Estate funds.

In 2013, LADWP launched the nation’s largest urban rooftop FiT program, helping business owners turn their rooftops into an asset. Aside from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the FiT program is credited with spurring major private investment in clean solar power in L.A. County, creating thousands of high-quality local jobs—and moving the county closer to its renewable energy goals.

“LADWP’s FiT program continues to deliver on its promise to put underutilized rooftops in our service area to use generating zero-carbon solar energy while improving quality of life for residents,” said Martin Adams, LADWP general manager and chief engineer.

“Projects like this one at Rexford Industrial in Panorama City align with our goal of reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2035,” he added. “We encourage more building owners to see if they, too, can generate income on their rooftops and help accelerate our city’s move toward clean energy.”

The San Fernando Valley solar project was officially unveiled at a ceremony hosted by the Los Angeles Business Council, which has played a pivotal role in bringing solar programs like the FiT program to areas historically impacted by high pollution. The council is a firm backer of the FiT program, which allows local property owners, solar companies and third parties to sell solar power generated from under-used rooftops back to the LADWP.

“The Los Angeles Business Council has been a champion of the FiT program for more than a decade because we believe in the program’s potential to deliver significant economic benefits while also addressing economic and environmental hardships in communities that experience outsized impacts of poor air quality,” said Mary Leslie, LABC president. “The FiT program is helping ensure our city’s green transformation is rooted in equity and bringing economic benefits to communities that need it most.”

Leslie noted that many of the companies that are involved with FiT program projects, like Valta Energy, have done multiple solar projects, and now factor program projects into their business plans for the industrial and commercial sector of solar power.

Valta originates, develops, owns and operates clean-energy projects in the commercial, industrial, small-utility, and community solar sectors.

The company has solar installations across a diverse set of geographies for municipal, utility, and
commercial off-takers. It has over 120 MW of solar assets under management; either under construction or in
operation.

Rexford Industrial, which owns the warehouse where the San Fernando solar project is located, operates and redevelops industrial properties throughout southern California, the world’s fourth largest industrial market and consistently the highest-demand with lowest-supply major market in the nation. Rexford Industrial’s portfolio alone comprises 424 properties with approximately 51 million square feet.

This particular warehouse is just one part of the supply and support system serving a large region—and population. Over 15 million people live within 50 miles of the county’s core. Nearly 29 million people live within 250 miles. Los Angeles County contains North America’s two largest seaports and one of the country’s top five air cargo hubs. Imports and exports flowing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach directly feed the region’s big-box distribution centers.

These impressive numbers are a great, no pun intended, fit for the program. As of mid-2025, there have been some 166 projects built under the FiT program, totaling 150 MW of solar power, many of them on warehouse roofs.

“The even better news is that there are another 217 projects reserved right now, for another 101 MW,” said Leslie, of the Los Angeles Business Council. A further 900 MW to 1 GW of projects is in the pipeline through to 2035, she added.

“The reason that we have over 200 projects reserved now is that more companies are understanding the benefits of utilizing and optimizing their roofs to generate solar power, and sell it back to the grid. It’s a great deal if you have an empty roof on top of your warehouse.

	The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Feed-in Tariff (FiT) solar program presents building owners with the opportunity to create solar power plants on their rooftops and sell the power they generate to the Department for distribution on the city’s power grid.

“Generally, you can generate a lot more power than you would ever use inside the building. Warehouses generally don’t use a lot of power, except maybe for air conditioning.”

And, as noted, there is one heck of a lot of solar roof potential just in LA County. UCLA has mapped out the industrial, retail, commercial and residential solar potential for the county, and it came in at a stunning 9 GW; that represents enough energy to power some 7.9 million homes.

“The vast majority of that was industrial, said Leslie. “We have a lot of warehouses, e-commerce buildings in LA County. Our potential for this program is extremely high, and that’s why we are seeing reservations for so many additional solar projects under the FiT program.”

The program got its start under then-LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who clearly showed the county meant business with solar power, saying it was going to do 100 MW of solar under the program, and it was oversubscribed. The city and county worked with UCLA to research the potential of a FiT program, based on the models in Germany. “We brought together a coalition of stakeholders that would potentially use the program, and we figured out a pricing model,” explained Leslie.

It has since approved the projects in a series of phases.

Some particularly larger projects have been built under the program, in some interesting locations.

The 16.5 MW Westmont warehouse solar project, for example, is in a heavily industrial area, and is surrounded by fossil fuel facilities, everything from oil storage tanks to a refinery. From the air, it looks like an oasis of renewable power in a sea of oil and gas related buildings. The project was developed and is owned by PermaCity Solar—which is now owned by power developer and producer, Catalyze.
Westmont is a roof-mounted solar project and is spread over an area of 50 acres of roof space. The project generates 28,000 MWh of electricity and supplies enough clean energy to power 5,000 households. The solar PV modules for the project were supplied by SunPower and Sunpreme.

Community leaders were on hand to turn on the ceremonial switch (at left) of a 1.5 megawatt (MW) solar array atop a warehouse in the Panorama City neighborhood of Los Angeles County.

Some of the projects are located in “solar equity hotspots”, areas with abundant flat roofs and a large
population of low-income residents in need of jobs and economic opportunities.

“The reason that the FiT program still works from the social equity perspective is if you analyze the warehouses—the bulk of the buildings you would put solar on—they are all in areas that are underserved in LA County,” said Leslie.

The Los Angeles Business Council is proud of the fact that the warehouse solar power projects—which were the easiest to do—are in areas that are underserved, and it wanted to target these underserved areas to create greater equity. A criticism of California’s Net Energy Metering (NEM) program is that it skewed towards solar projects on homes owned by higher income individuals.

“One of the first solar power projects in East LA was a FiT project—we want to move solar projects into areas that have never seen any kind of solar,” said Leslie.

The FiT projects often rely on workers trained in programs hosted by local community colleges, union apprenticeships and non-profits that offer specialized training to less-advantaged workers.

Leslie emphasized that the program’s solar projects have to “pencil out”—they need to have energy prices that are fair for the consumer, and the producer.

“From the developer perspective, they have to be able run the numbers, analyze the energy production, and then optimize that with a compatible system,” she says.

While there are a number of “rent-a-roof” solar programs, the idea with the FiT program is that it encourages the owner of the warehouse or building to own and operate the solar power system.

The incentive, and returns, are attractive. “If you rented the roof, you got maybe 20 percent of the profit from the power produced—but if they do the system themselves, and own it, they get all of the profit.” And a pretty decent short payback period, to boot.

In addition to encouraging large building owners, the program has also worked to encourage “mom-and-pop” building owners—people who might own an apartment building, or a business.

One of the first companies to install a project under the program was the Southern California Trophy Company, which manufactures Olympic medals and the Oscar award statues, for the Academy Awards. It built a solar array on the roof of its 20,000 square foot downtown LA production facility.

An important feature of the program is that it involves projects that are generating power right in the county. A good deal of the renewable energy that LA consumes comes from outside the county, and is transmitted inefficiently over long distances.

The LA County FiT program looks to work in a number of areas—among them creating jobs, and county-generated solar power. And it also continues to have political backing.

It has the support of present LA mayor, Karen Bass, who was at the opening of the San Fernando Valley solar project. She noted the city and county continue to work with urgency to reach their goal of a 100 percent renewable grid by 2035. “Projects like San Fernando reduce our carbon footprint and strengthen the local economy,” she said.

Q3 2025