https://www.engineeringnews.co.za

No rooftop, no problem as solar gardens begin to bud in the US

26th August 2016

By: Bloomberg

  

Font size: - +

It is like rooftop solar, without the rooftops. A growing number of consumers are buying into community solar farms that allow renters and apartment dwellers to access renewable energy produced on neighbourhood plots that can be small enough to host a little league baseball game. Some are so modest that they are referred to as “solar gardens”.

Conventional solar farms such as Berkshire Hathaway’s 550 MW Topaz plant, in California, can spread over hundreds or thousands of acres. They sell their electricity mainly to utilities through long-term contracts. Rooftop panels, meanwhile, are mainly available for private homes, and can only work on about 30% of US houses. Community farms offer a middle road.

“Everyone with an interest in solar can now participate,” says Eran Mahrer, director of utilities for Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar, the biggest US panel maker. “That’s particularly true in high urban densities. The market’s clearly accelerating.”

Under the community farm option, consumers who buy into a project do not directly use the energy produced. That is sold directly to a local utility. Instead, their electricity bills are reduced, based on how much the utility buys from the farm. In most states, the arrangement is governed by the same regulations that require utilities to buy solar power from rooftop systems at retail rates.

Community solar farms are already permitted in 14 states, with about 100 MW in operation, enough to power about 30 000 homes. That includes California, the biggest solar state, and New York, which is planning a major overhaul of its energy policies.

Over the next five years, the amount of power available may rise to about 1.8 GW as more states encourage development and individuals take advantage of federal incentives, according to the Washington-based Solar Energy Industries Association. The US Energy Department announced last month it would provide $287-million to help finance 280 MW of solar projects in low- and moderate-income communities.

In Rockford, Minnesota, one of the first of these projects supplies 32.5 kW to about a dozen homes and an office building from panels stretched out on a hilly, ballpark-sized field. In Freetown, Massachusetts, a 1.1 MW plant built last year by Princeton, New Jersey-based NRG Energy, provides power to about 160 homes from an 8-acre plot.

New York State Electric & Gas Corporation has agreed to buy power from the state’s first community solar project, which began construction in April and is designed to provide 582 kW to 100 consumers who live in or near the city of Troy. Over two decades, a local resident may be able to save more than $31 000 on their electric bills, according to the developer, Clean Energy Collective. As an incentive, the group is donating 10 kW of panels to five low-income families.

At a meeting last month of state utility regulators in Nashville, Tennessee, a series of panel discussions on community solar initiatives drew standing-room-only crowds, according to Hannah Masterjohn, director of new markets at Louisville, Colorado-based Clean Energy Collective.


“It was crazy,” Masterjohn said in a telephone interview. “Regulators have become very interested in community solar. I think it will grow as big as rooftop in half the time.”

There are some differences from rooftop power. People who sign solar leases – the majority of the residential market – become customers of the lease companies. With community solar, they continue to buy power from their local providers, and the utility does not lose them as customers.

Also, community projects use the grid to deliver power, and help pay for maintaining the utilities’ infrastructure. That makes them less of a threat to traditional power companies, which are losing revenue to solar leasing providers.

“Utilities see community solar as a bit more friendly,” says Drew Warshaw, vice president of community solar at NRG Energy. “By definition, we have to use their transmission and distribution system, we pay for any upgrades needed and they continue to have a relationship with the customer.”


Still, utilities are closely watching how this initiative plays out, mainly related to lost revenue, according to CEO Jim Torgerson of Avangrid, which owns utilities in New York and New England.

“Shared solar has much better economies of scale than rooftop but net metering issues really have to get resolved,” he said in a phone interview. “We think it’s worth the wholesale price of power, not the retail rate.”

Michael Maravelias, a sales manager for Airgas Refrigerants in Massachusetts, is concerned about climate change and wanted to do his part to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, but the roof on his home is already 15 years old and would need to be replaced long before the panels. He also had concerns that installing a system could damage his home, or that firefighters may hesitate if they saw a system on his roof.

Last year, Maravelias contracted to buy power from an NRG solar farm about 64 km from his home in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Now his monthly power bill is about 15% cheaper.

Edited by Bloomberg

Comments

Showroom

SAIMC (Society for Automation, Instrumentation, Mechatronics and Control)
SAIMC (Society for Automation, Instrumentation, Mechatronics and Control)

Education: Consulting with member companies to obtain the optimal benefits from their B-BBEE spending, skills resources as well as B-BBEE points

VISIT SHOWROOM 
Showroom image
Alcohol Breathalysers

Supplier & Distributor of the Widest Range of Accurate & Easy-to-Use Alcohol Breathalysers

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.062 0.11s - 137pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now