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Tag:

community solar

The History and Hope for a First-in-the-Nation City-Utility Clean Energy Partnership

written by John Farrell

In the past month, the city of Minneapolis and its two investor-owned utilities adopted the nation’s first clean energy partnership, with a wide range of goals including meeting the city’s ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. How did it happen and what can it accomplish? The following 8-minute video from one of the “lead rabble rousers” on the Minneapolis Energy Options campaign, John Farrell, explains what got things started and where the partnership may lead.

The Beginning
One of the primary motivators of the Minneapolis Energy Options campaign was to say, “How much money do we spend collectively as a city on these energy services, and how much of that is actually leaving the city of Minneapolis.” The answer is $450 million each year, for electricity and gas services, with most of the profits leaving town. “A lot of it is money that can be recaptured within the local economy, especially…when you’re talking about a transformation taking place in the technology in the electricity sector allowing you to generate energy much closer to home than we ever have before.”

Organizers of the Minneapolis Energy Options campaign started around a conference table asking how this notion of the local energy dollar could be addressed, and immediately thought of the municipalization fight in Boulder, CO. But “it seemed sort of silly to be saying, “let’s go out and form our own utility” [when] we haven’t even really talked to the ones that we’ve got about what we could do with working with them.” On the other hand, the city needed leverage in its negotiations with utilities since most of the power in utility regulation is at the state and federal level. So the campaign was meant to elevate the notion of the city’s energy options, up to and including the formation of a city-owned utility.

The campaign was hottest during municipal elections in 2013: “we had a lot of candidates talking about it, the mayoral candidates talking about it, city council candidates talking about the campaign. We had the specter of a ballot initiative around municipalization.”

The result of the campaign was that the utilities came to the table to negotiate.

A Novel Partnership
As of October 2014, “we have a first-in-the-nation partnership between a city and its utilities to explore not only the two-thirds of climate emissions that are the result of electricity and gas consumption that the city really didn’t have any opportunity to influence before. But also that 450 million dollars that’s being spent in the local economy and how that can be kept more local.”

As one testifier at city council said, ‘Our job now is to figure out how this doesn’t become the quarterly coffee clatch for the city folks and the utilities, and how do we make sure we actually have real substantive conversations about it.’”

“What are the possibilities?”

Three Big Opportunities
“There are three key things at stake. The first one is, what ideas can we generate that are innovative and ambitious and measurable and achievable within a short time frame? Because we’ve established for ourselves that this partnership can go on as long as ten years. We’ve got a check-in point of about five years. Which means we really have to start having stuff happen within two to three years if we want to know whether or not this is working.” All of the parties – Minneapolis Energy Options (Community Power), the city, and the utilities are going to come with great ideas.  “What can this city put on the table with its regulatory authority over local property? What can utilities bring to bear with the data that they have about our local grid and the knowledge that they have about installing local solar?”

“Number two is, can we…set ourselves real benchmarks for accomplishing these things? Can we say two years from now that we are going to make meaningful and substantial progress on energy efficiency by retro-fitting a certain number of homes? Can we do it in a way that focuses on communities that have been traditionally disadvantaged, where folks pay a disproportionate share of their monthly income on energy?  What can we accomplish with community solar over the next couple of years in Minneapolis? What are going to be the opportunities to get synergies between energy savings programs for electricity and gas?

Number three is, “how do we then let this be part of the bigger national conversation about how do we structure a utility business model (see forthcoming ILSR report, to be released 12/2/14) that serves the principles and goals not only of the city of Minneapolis, but – writ-large – all of the utility customers who care about things like clean energy?”



November 20, 2014 0 comment
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Orlando Shared Solar Program Sells Out in 6 Days

written by Walter Wang

Do customers still want solar even if they can’t put it on their own house? From Orlando, the answer is a resounding Yes! Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC), the municipally owned utility serving one of Florida’s largest cities, launched its Community Solar Program in March. Within six days, all 400kW were fully subscribed, and OUC had received another 300kW+

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April 2, 2013 0 comment
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Solar Panels Seeing the Light in Community Solar Gardens

written by Walter Wang

Shading, ownership issues, limited space and many other factors means that most American households simply aren’t suitable for solar panels. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that as much as three-quarters of residential buildings have physical restrictions to going solar.

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August 16, 2012 5 comments
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Third-Party Owned and Shared Solar Expands the Market

written by Walter Wang

Because of shading, building ownership and structure issues, only about 22%-27% of all American rooftops are suitable for solar panel installation. This means that the majority of people will have a hard time contributing to the solar movement. Luckily things are about to change.

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June 28, 2012 1 comment
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How to Grow a Solar Energy Garden

written by Walter Wang

Getting energy from the sun is a great idea. However, installing solar panels house-by-house is slow, costly and cumbersome, and downright inefficient if the goal is to bring solar to the masses.

This problem troubled Paul Spencer after he built his own uber-efficient, custom solar home near Aspen,

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June 22, 2012 2 comments
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A Maryland Twofer: SREC Fix & Community Solar Bills on the Move

written by Walter Wang

Maryland policymakers are considering two bills that would kick solar growth into high gear.

With a solid 2% solar goal and core policies like net metering driving in-state growth, Maryland is already well on its way to building a robust solar market. As costs have come down and the local industry has scaled, solar has been installed at a

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March 8, 2012 1 comment
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Community Solar – Trending in 2012

written by Walter Wang

As the home of some pioneering community solar projects, Maryland’s clean energy champions are seeking to establish a platform on which these renewable energy arrangements can flourish.

Recently introduced as Senate Bill 595, state lawmakers will be considering a proposal that would

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February 9, 2012 1 comment
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Sometimes it Takes a Community to Harness the Sun’s Power

written by Walter Wang

The house in which I grew up sat on a narrow plot of land – only 15 feet separated us from the neighbor’s home. Consequently, my mother didn’t have much room to grow produce in a garden. She wanted more than three tomato plants, so for one summer in the mid-70s she took part in a community garden.

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June 3, 2011 2 comments
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Community Solar Farms Get the Green Light in Cornwall, England

written by EnergyRefuge.com

Cornwall Power, a company that helps landowners to set up renewable energy projects in the southwestern region of England, has been given the green light by local authorities to develop community solar farms in the region.

The company has received the approval to install a £12m ground-mounted solar farm covering 27 acres on Lanhydrock Estate

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January 5, 2011 0 comment
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Community Solar: Coming to a Neighborhood Near You

written by The Vote Solar Initiative

Consider that only one-quarter of residential rooftops are suitable for solar PV and that one-third of Americans are renters who are typically unable to install a solar system on their landlord’s roof. That adds up to a whole lotta energy consumers who simply can’t go solar in the usual way.

New community solar models aim to

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December 13, 2010 0 comment
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2010 Freeing the Grid: Which States Made the Grade?

written by The Vote Solar Initiative

There are plenty of not-so-sunny renewable policy news headlines these days. Congress failed to pass comprehensive energy legislation this year – and as of yesterday, things don’t even look good for a piecemeal extension of the critical Treasury Grant Program before it expires this month. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Despite gridlock higher up, state

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December 9, 2010 0 comment
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The Country’s First Community-Owned Solar Garden

written by Solar Calfinder

Monday was a day for the solar history books.

The country’s first community-owned solar installation began delivering clean, renewable electricity to the grid in El Jebel, Colorado. The 340-panel solar installation is unique because it is owned by an array of local residents rather than any single

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August 18, 2010 0 comment
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