MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A new concept in renewable energy is
catching fire across the country, allowing customers who
might find solar panels too expensive or impractical to buy
green energy anyway.
Community solar gardens first took off in Colorado a few
years ago, and the model — also known as community or shared
solar — has spread to
Minnesota, California, Massachusetts and several other
states. Capacity is expected to grow sharply this year, and
interest is up among both residential customers who just
like the idea and large companies that want to cut their
carbon footprints.
The gardens feed electricity to the local power grid.
Customers subscribe to that power and get credit on their
utility bills, with contracts that typically lock in for 25
years and shelter against rate increases. Some developers
say customer bills will drop below regular retail rates
within a few years; others say the savings begin
immediately.
"This is really the year that community solar becomes
mainstream," said David Amster-Olszewski, CEO of
Denver-based solar garden developer SunShare LLC, which runs
two operations in Colorado and is developing more with Xcel
Energy Inc. (NYSE:
XEL), including in Minnesota.
Rooftop solar panels are becoming more popular among
homeowners as the cost comes down, but that market is
limited to only about one-fourth of U.S. residences,
according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an
arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. Community solar opens
the door to many more, including renters, customers with
shaded roofs and those who can't afford solar panels.
It's friendly to big customers, too. Ecolab Inc. is the
first major corporate customer to commit to Minnesota's
program. The Fortune 500 sanitation technology company will
get enough electricity from a project in the suburbs to
provide most of the power for its St. Paul headquarters.
At least 10 states promote ways for multiple customers to
share renewable energy systems, according to the advocacy
group Vote Solar, and a dozen states are actively promoting
community solar.
California issued community solar regulations in late
January, requiring three of the state's largest utilities to
contract for 600 megawatts of new solar capacity. San
Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (NYSE:
PCG) will build the largest share, which could supply
30,000-50,000 customers, spokesman Jonathan Marshall said.
"A large number of our customers simply can't go solar on
their own," Marshall said. "This is a tremendous opportunity
for them to go to 100 percent solar if they want it."
In Massachusetts, Clean Energy Collective expects to
complete three community solar facilities in June in
Uxbridge that'll provide enough juice for 400-500
residential and commercial customers in the southern part of
the state. Colorado-based developer CEC has two other
facilities in Massachusetts that serve about 100-200
customers and expects to announce more projects soon,
spokesman Tim Braun said.
Minnesota's Legislature passed a community solar gardens law
in 2013, and solar backers were amazed when Xcel Energy got
a flood of proposals soon after opening the approval process
in December.
But Xcel complained to regulators that many turned out to be
"utility-scale projects," saying it didn't believe that's
what the Legislature had in mind. The law defines a garden
as 1 megawatt or less, and Xcel said developers simply
planned multiple small gardens next to each other to get
around it. Xcel worried that its grid might need expensive
upgrades to handle all that new electricity.
Solar developers and advocates dismissed Xcel's concerns,
saying the more solar that displaces electricity from coal
and gas the better.
One solar garden powering up this summer is at Bethel
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, where roof
panels will serve both the church and other subscribers.
Pastor Brenda Froisland said her congregation has a
progressive theology and wants to be good stewards of the
Earth.
"As we learned more, it became a no-brainer for us,"
Froisland said. "We talked about using the power of the sun,
s-u-n, to glorify the power of the Son, S-o-n."
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