The Manhattan Beach City Council has declined to take up a proposal from the nonprofit Clean Power Alliance that would have created backup power through solar energy storage at the Joslyn Center.

The Clean Power Alliance (CPA) had drafted a proposal for Manhattan Beach to join its "Power Ready" program, through which the CPA installs solar panels at a community center to serve as backup power during emergency outages. In Manhattan Beach, the program would have created carports with solar panels at the parking lot adjacent to the Joslyn Community Center. 

For Manhattan Beach, the program would have meant no up-front cost and no monthly bill
increase, no operations and maintenance costs, and backup power at Joslyn Center in an outage.

However, the CPA also could not promise any energy savings - only that the city's bills would not increase - and it could only guarantee a minimum of four hours of backup power during a power outage. Furthermore, CPA was looking for a commitment from the city through at least 2045 - a time frame that caused City Council members to balk.

City Councilmember Suzanne Hadley said that the more than 20-year commitment did not make sense considering the rapid growth of solar technology. "We're tying our hands in a long-term contract in an era of rapidly changing science and technology," she said. "It's too little benefit for too long."

Manhattan Beach Mayor Steve Napolitano said that he wanted to be able to reimagine the entire city block from the new Scout House facility to the Post Office, and he didn't want the city's hands to be tied by committing to the CPA's single-purpose project.

"I don’t care about four hours of emergency power at one facility - I want to see a program where you’re helping cities fund installation of solar panels wherever they want to put it, where the benefit is direct to the city, and where we’re taking facilities off the grid," he said. 

"I’ll be surprised if a lot of cities take you up on it," added Napolitano. "A long-term commitment for a very limited benefit is not enough to make me do this. I appreciate it, but I don’t think it’s the project for us."

The Clean Power Alliance is a public entity formed through a Joint Powers Authority. It is the non-profit default electricity provider for L.A. County and Ventura County and 30 cities in Southern California - including Manhattan Beach.