A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
You Can Now Get Solar Power With a Netflix-Style Subscription

Courtesy of The Washington Post, a look at how you can now get solar power with a Netflix-style subscription:

No roof, no solar power.

That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun.

But signing up for solar soon might be as easy as subscribing to Netflix. Scores of new small solar farms that sell clean, local electricity directly to customers are popping up. The setup, dubbed “community solar,” is designed to bring solar power to people who don’t own their own homes or can’t install panels — often at prices below retail electricity rates.

Clean electricity for less money seems a bit too good to be true. But it reflects a new reality: Solar energy prices are falling as private and public money, and new laws, are fueling a massive expansion of small-scale community solar projects.

Finding a subscription to one, however, can feel like trying to score Taylor Swift tickets: They’re on sale, but only a lucky few can buy them. At least 22 states have passed legislation encouraging independent community solar projects, but developers are just beginning to expand. Most existing projects are booked

At the moment, community solar projects in the United States generate enough electricity to power about 918,000 homes — less than 1 percent of total households, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group.

But as more states join, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Solar for All” program pours billions into federal solar power grants, more Americans will get the chance.

Should you take it? I took a look.

What is community solar?

While projects exist in most states, they are highly concentrated: More than half are in Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York. These might be on a condo roof, or on open land like the 10-MW Fresno community solar farm, on a city-owned plot surrounded by agricultural land. Most are small: 2 megawatts of capacity on average, about enough to power 200 to 400 homes.

Developers tend to finance their projects through investors or banks, and sign up customers during construction. If there are projects in your utility’s service area, you can subscribe to electricity generated by a certain share of the project’s solar panels.

The electrons that ultimately flow into your home aren’t necessarily from your panel. They are fed into the local grid, which powers households throughout your service area. Most allow subscribers to start or cancel their solar subscription at any time, or sometimes with a few months’ notice. The renewable energy marketplace EnergySage and the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors connect customers to community solar projects in their region.

People generally receive monthly credits for electricity produced by their share of solar panels. These are subtracted from their total electricity bill or credited on future bills. If customers produce more than they consume, those credits roll over. If they produce less, customers pay the difference. Subscribers on average save about 10 percent on their utility bill (the range is 5 percent to 15 percent).

These economics are propelling the industry to record heights. Between 2016 and 2019, community solar capacity more than quadrupled to 1.4 gigawatts. By the end of this year, energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates, there will be 6 GW of community solar. And the Energy Department wants to see community solar reach 5 million households by 2025.

“The economics are strongly on the side of doing this,” says Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s now cheaper to build new solar than to operate old fossil [fuel plants]. … We’re at the takeoff point.”

Who should get it?

Community solar, also called “solar for renters,” is for anyone. But if you’re a homeowner, it won’t maximize your savings. 

On average, savings from community solar amount to about $100 per year for the average ratepayer. Rooftop solar arrays may save homeowners more than $1,000 annually, estimates EnergySage.

But it brings other advantages. It’s a subscription you can walk away from at any time with no upfront investment. And your fixed rate or discount off prevailing electric rates is usually locked in for at least a decade. Residential electricity rates, meanwhile, have jumped about 17 percent since 2018.

The biggest benefit may be expanding access to clean energy to the roughly half of U.S. consumers and businesses not able to install their own solar panels. “The great promise of community solar is it allows everyone to be part of the energy transition,” says Brandon Smithwood of Dimension Renewable Energy, a company that has financed more than 1,000 MW of solar projects, “and not feel they’re being left behind.”

How to buy

If you live in a state with a robust community solar market, subscribing is easy.

Marketplaces like EnergySage aggregate projects signing up new subscribers. I typed in a Zip code in St. Paul, Minn., a hotbed of community solar activity, and was presented with six projects offering savings of $68 to $135 per year, along with 10 tons of greenhouse gases.

The EnergySage community solar marketplace. (EnergySage/TWP)

The marketplace allows you to quickly compare details such as fees, locations and billing. Once I selected a project, I could create an account, link this to my utility and start a subscription.

To get the best terms, say project developers and nonprofit groups, you should look for contracts that uphold a few key terms:

  • Get a discounted electricity rate: Community solar projects tend to offer 5 percent to 15 percent off prevailing electricity rates.
  • Ensure you can cancel any time: Sellers should allow you to cancel your subscription immediately or within a few months to finalize credits on your bill.
  • Avoid cancellation fees: Choose a plan that doesn’t force you to pay if you want to end your subscription.
  • Source close to your home: Ideally, projects should be within 10 or 15 miles of where you live, says Jeff Cramer, CEO of the Coalition for Community Solar Access. This ensures that you decarbonize your local grid.

For millions of people living in places with abundant community solar such as Minnesota, Colorado, New York and Massachusetts, finding projects is relatively easy.

But I live in California, where the market has stagnated amid unfavorable policies and fierce opposition from utilities. While that may change — California, like many other states, is poised to enact policies enabling more community solar — I need to buy electricity now.

I still have options — they’re just not as attractive. Green power plans, or retail electricity plans sold by third parties in about 20 states, are often pricier, and most don’t finance new renewables directly since they often just buy renewable energy credits from existing projects.

Community choice aggregation is another one. Cities or local governments buy power independently for local residents and businesses, and rely on utilities to distribute the electricity, which is often cleaner than the standard mix. CCA can be less expensive, but not always. It served about 5 million customers in 10 states in 2020, according to the EPA.

In the end, I signed up for CCA. It was cheaper than my local utility’s standard rate. I paid a small monthly premium of about $3 to source 100 percent green power.

But if community solar comes to town, I look forward to subscribing to my own solar panels — and paying less.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2023 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.  You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.  Both comments and pings are currently closed. 

Comments are closed.


About This Blog And Its Authors
Grid Unlocked is powered by two eco-preneurs who analyze and reference articles, reports, and interviews that can help unlock the nascent, complex and expanding linkages between smart meters, smart grids, and above all: smart markets.

Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”

In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.