The Community Solar Value Project (CSVP) represents leading energy thinkers and do-ers, ready to make local solar and DERs better, from both the sponsoring-utility and customer perspective. This website is your place to follow our progress, tap free resources, and prepare your questions for customized results-oriented support.
The CSVP approach focuses on the challenge areas where opportunities for greater net value abound: optimal solar project siting and design, including solar plus storage and load management; procurement, pricing, target marketing, and working through the relationships within the utilities and stakeholder communities, to secure benefits now and for years to come. See our Solutions pages for ready resources and check out our timely, informative Blogs. |
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Announcing... CSVP at Solar 2019 and Solar Power International! The masterminds behind this website (CSVP) are working on several new projects, but often crossing paths, focusing on new ways to increase community-scale solar net value. Jill Cliburn moderated a Solar 2019 panel on PV net value August 6 in Minneapolis. Jill and Extensible Energy CEO John Powers also presented at SPI. They co-authored on a poster on community solar-plus (see Blog), and John provided a panel presentation on load flexibility to boost commercial PV value. For more free CSVP webinars, including fan favorites, see the archive tab above. 
Since completing work for U.S. DOE Solar Market Pathways, CSVP continues to offer both free and fee-for-service support for community solar program design, community-scale solar and solar-plus-storage procurement; policy and training, under the leadership of Jill K. Cliburn and John Powers (Extensible Energy). Contact us to learn more about our network relationships and how we can help you achieve your goals. Favorite Blogs Some material on any website is likely to get outdated, and with the speed of solar and storage development lately, we can barely keep up. But here a a few oldies that still bring good lessons to light: It's Time for Community Solar Plus Timing (for the ITC) is Not Everything |
Get Ready for the Coming Surge in Community Solar Plus by Jill Cliburn • 10/8/2019 A just-released 2019 U.S. Solar Market Insight report from SEIA and Wood Mackenzie predicts, “By 2023, roughly 30% of total non-residential PV capacity will come from community solar, and 20% of all non-residential capacity is expected to have storage attached.” This prediction resonates with the view we expressed last summer, that the market for community solar-plus is rumbling and ready to rock the industry, before a lot of community solar planners and developers can get their socks on. It’s exciting, but also a risky time—especially for municipal utilities and co-ops that are still on the learning curve about solar PPAs and storage operating agreements, even as they are negotiating their place between upstream wholesale providers and downstream customer/advocates. How do you get through it? Continued... News and Resources Manage Demand and Increase Solar Use Without Batteries? Since CSVP culminated initial work with utilities on high-value solar-plus, our site co-sponsor Extensible Energy has led work on this question. Extensible is focused on commercial buildings, where solar is a hard sell due to persistent high-demand costs, and where batteries on the recommended scale are seldom affordable. Extensible has led development of a software-based solution to optimize existing building operations in tune with utility rates and solar resource availability. To learn more about the solution, its field performance and its far-reaching promise, check Extensible’s project summary, and notices of future webinars here. Cliburn Recognized by American Solar Energy Society The American Solar Energy Society, which is the nation's longest-standing organization of solar energy scientists, professionals and organizers, honored CSVP's Jill (Kunka) Cliburn as one of two Fellows inducted at its 48th Annual Conference in Minneapolis this past August. Cliburn contributed to early solar market development in the Midwest and has worked for two decades on integrated-resource strategies and DERs nationwide. She also has worked for broader participation in the field. Close-Up on the Integration Challenge If you found the September conference scene overwhelming, the Peak Load Management Alliance offers an alternative. This organization is large enough, and yet small enough, to host a productive dialog among utilities, solution-providers, policy leaders and stakeholders concerned with high-penetration renewables integration. PLMA will do just that at its 40th Conference in St. Petersburg, FL, this November. CSVP is a frequent contributor to PLMA conferences, including leadership on its Integration Interest Group. See the website or contact us for details. 2019 Updates from LBL and SEIA To pull a quote from a popular CSVP Blog, disruption waits for no one. Here are a couple of reports, just released that we find on our "required reading" list: Tracking the Sun 2019, reviewing a new year of distribution-scale solar market data and trends. Another report from SEIA, published with Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables, updates the U.S. solar market through Q3 2019. It predicts a doubling of the U.S. solar market within the next five years, even without assuming the most beneficial policy conditions. Download Presentations and Check Out Our RFP Library. A presentation from the Rocky Mountain Utility Exchange conference in Aspen, Colorado, is downloadable here. Other popular resources in our Library include community solar RFPs. Time flies, but these best-practice presentations and resources are still very current, and we think you will enjoy them. AVAILABLE NOW: Your Complete Guide to High-Value Community Solar Program Planning and Implementation. Go to our Solutions Menu, to find six ways to think outside the box about community solar challenges, so you can speed your internal processes and add program value for your utility and your customers. These approaches and tools were developed over the course of the CSVP project, working with at more than a dozen utilities nationwide. For a quick peek, here's a blog that previews the Solutions site. Second chance to give a listen. CSVP as concluded its webinar series. But you can revisit top webinars in our archive. If you like what you hear, please send us a note through our Contact page.
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