In 2013, the State of Minnesota enacted 216B.1641 Community Solar Garden, which established the Xcel Energy Community Solar Garden Program. This program brought a lot of excitement to the Minnesota solar industry, leading to an influx of solar developers and long queue of solar garden applications. Because the program is new and has generated a lot of interest, there have been a few bumps along the way.
The Sustainable Communities team at GPI works with a number of stakeholders who are involved with or impacted by this program. My colleague Trevor Drake and I decided to have a conversation to see if we could help people better understand this program.
Note: The following conversation identifies us by last name; Trevor is not to be confused with Canadian hip-hop sensation Drake.
DRAKE: Are we doing this chat blog thing?
FINIS: Yeah, we're doing it!
DRAKE: I have to admit I'm not totally sure what your idea is, but I'm willing to go along with it.
FINIS: No problem. There’s been a lot of news coverage in Minnesota of community solar – some good, some not so good – and since we both work in the area, I thought we could have a conversation about what’s going on and share it with everyone.
DRAKE: Ah. Ok, perfect.
Subscribing to Community Solar Gardens
FINIS: Great! Let’s dig in. CERTs (Clean Energy Resource Teams) has been at the center of providing good information to residents, businesses, and local governments regarding community solar gardens in Minnesota. Can you describe some of that work?
DRAKE: We're serving as a neutral source of information on community solar across the state, both for utilities and customers. We have a number of resources to help customers make smart, informed decisions about subscribing to solar gardens, and we're also helping cooperative and municipal utilities understand the solar garden models being deployed by other utilities.
Unlike many cooperative utility solar garden programs — where the utility builds, operates, and manages subscriptions for the garden — Xcel Energy's program in Minnesota allows private developers to build and manage the gardens. This is good for creating competition, but in some cases it's also led to sales pressure from these developers.
FINIS: Minnesota Public Radio recently ran an article that made it sound like some people have had concerns about community solar subscriptions. What are some of the issues people are having?
DRAKE: Some of the issues have been around pressure from developers, as well as the length of contracts that customers are being asked to sign, which are often 20-25 years. That's a long time for any kind of contract, especially in a market that's brand new. In order to understand what you're signing, you have to ask a lot of questions, read the contract carefully, and in many cases, make a judgement call about what electricity prices will do over the next 25 years, which is difficult even for experts in the field.
FINIS: Seems like the program has brought a ton of solar companies and jobs to the state, but in a way that can make it tricky for an individual customer to navigate. Are there resources available to help them understand what questions they should be asking?
DRAKE: Funny you should ask. CERTs has developed a number of resources to help potential solar garden subscribers understand what questions to ask, what pieces of information are available to them, and even a calculator that can help them understand what their financial advantage or disadvantage might be over the life of their agreement depending on what electricity costs do in the future. These are available at mncerts.org/solargardens. I should add that we're continuing to develop new resources.
FINIS: Cool. Are those in alignment with Xcel’s resources?
DRAKE: Yes! Actually, Xcel links directly to these materials from their website.
Local Governments See the Benefit
FINIS: There was also an article in the Star Tribune that highlighted community solar contracts for local governments. I know you've been working on that project - could you discuss what's been going on with local governments?
DRAKE: Even though local governments arguably have a higher capacity for understanding these contracts, they also have a much higher threshold of scrutiny as they're using public dollars for their subscription payments. Because this is so new, very few local governments have the technical and legal expertise to understand, much less negotiate, for a competitive contract with a solar garden developer. Additionally, it's not always clear whether and how an entity's existing purchasing policies apply to solar garden subscriptions.
Despite these challenges, many local governments would like to subscribe their public buildings to solar gardens because they see an opportunity to save taxpayers money and/or meet their entity's environmental goals.
FINIS: Interesting. Over the life of the subscription (25 years), I would assume local governments would be looking at deals that would save money for their taxpayers. Have they been finding this to be the case with the contracts they've been able to negotiate?
DRAKE: It's definitely possible to negotiate for a contract that will save taxpayers money over the term of the subscription agreement. However, there's currently no public database of these contracts so it's hard to know when you see a news story what the exact terms were.
FINIS: This is such an awesome and unprecedented collaboration between metro communities and the Met Council. How did it come about?
DRAKE: It actually started from two places: Hennepin County submitted an application to our Clean Energy Accelerator program for assistance with figuring out how to evaluate and procure solar garden subscriptions for the County. At the same time, the Metropolitan Council had been building expertise on that very subject. Leah Hiniker from Hennepin County brought everyone together to figure out how we could collaborate, and it blossomed from there.
- See more at: http://www.betterenergy.org/blog/trevor-and-abby-chat-solar-gardens#sthash.Byv4H57c.dpuf
Source by: http://www.betterenergy.org/blog/trevor-and-abby-chat-solar-gardens
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