by Jill Cliburn

This fall, I was fortunate to participate in a meeting for public power utilities launching new efforts with the National Community Solar Partnership. Dozens of utility program managers shared insights regarding the kinds of support they would find useful to move community solar forward in different markets and while facing a range of technical, financial and pricing challenges. It was a time to listen and learn—but later, I realized that this Web site could help in sharing Solutions from the work of those who came before. Our Community Solar Value Project (CSVP), worked with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and dozens of other public power utilities in 2015-18 on what we called utility-driven community solar. We look forward to the NCSP and its new resources, especially addressing needs and opportunities that have emerged in the past few years. But if you are working on a community solar project or program right now, we are sure you will find many of our CSVP Solutions useful right "out of the box."

Here is a page by page guide that highlights some of our most enduring and popular  resources under the Solutions tab:
 
The Process. The overview of the CSVP Process and lessons learned is still timely. I would suggest that other guidance documents, including the DOE-funded Solar in the Southeast Community Solar Implementation Guide (2018) might be useful, too, as well as other guides you can find on the NCSP website. In addition, the Process web page links to the rich and mostly relevant NRECA SUNDA project resources and to SEPA resources for utilities of all kinds.
 
Strategic Design. This page actually refers to both the project technical concept and the program delivery concept. Besides documents, this web page features presentations, such as an excellent webinar on the value-add for solar carports. As the cost of solar has dramatically fallen (even since our CSVP webinar) and as city land becomes more scarce, solar carports merit a second look.
 
Procurement. This was one of the CSVP's most popular topics and resource collections. The market landscape is obviously changed, but the Outsourcing Decision Key and Financing Models resources featured here are still timely. One of the most important early decisions for public power utilities is whether to acquire the solar resource or to work with a third party developer. If the former, the utility still faces financing decisions. CSVP explained pros and cons of options specifically relevant to consumer-owned utilities, including public power. Our financing guide was very popular. The posted webinar features outstanding work by public power utility leaders, including Erin Buchanan, formerly from Cedar Falls Utilities, Karen Poff from Austin Energy, and Ricardo Luna from CPS Energy (San Antonio). Also, we offered an RFP Library, including 11 examples. Watch for a new resource soon from our Solar-Plus for Electric Co-ops project, as we are adding new sample RFPs to help utilities procure solar plus battery storage projects.

Marketing. This is another set of timely resources—very popular with CSVP utility stakeholders. One reason it is timely is that our primary partner, SMUD, was far ahead of the game, regarding market segmentation. We took their work even farther, working with Grounded Research and Consulting to create a concise market research guide. Some utility-driven community solar programs have failed to achieve full subscription, so preparing program managers to include marketing in their plans is very important. It is frankly on our wish list to add newer resources on gearing community solar for low-income customers (NCSP has a treasure trove; also recommended would be CESA). CSVP ended before that market segment really took off.
 
In our section on Assessment the CSVP focused on showing how the municipal utility could incorporate benefits that are not included a typical solar-value model (from incorporating community or jobs-development goals to customer-retention).  "Hard-to-monetize values" have since become an active topic, and a focus of our new work on Solar-Plus (for which, YES, we will be releasing a modeling tool in 2020). If you Contact us, we can recommend several resources and models available today. For example, we suggest one that is widely available is through the Solar in the Southeast effort.

Another relevant resource our Solutions pages is the pricing matrix, which describes how a dozen utilities (mostly public power) priced their programs. Keep an eye on the NCSP for updates, but for any utility manager who is new to this game, reviewing the options listed on slightly older pricing matrix is still instructive. It takes a while for a program innovations to take hold; I added a blog recently (see below) that discusses how SMUD applied some of the thinking we discussed 3 to 5 years ago in new community solar and shared storage programs. I for one will be delighted to support the next round of community solar innovators—perhaps including you!

 By Jill Cliburn

In light of wholesale PPAs in the U.S. averaging less than 3 cents per kWh, the utility solar market is booming with expansive solar possibilities. Today, there is even a strong case to be made for purposely over-building centralized solar resources and dispatching or curtailing them to ease the need for storage in a mostly-renewables world. Yet our work is still focused on local, community-scale solar—sometimes integrated with storage or load management.

Recently, someone asked me why I've been so dogged about solutions on the local grid. In response, I recalled how a few years ago, while our team was breaking new ground for community solar, I called our locally focused work "a market-based laboratory." That is still true and still exciting today. Work at the community scale provides specific solutions, replicable solutions and scaleable solutions—the benefits of which are just starting to unfold.

The headliner, 100+ MW solar projects are mostly new arrivals. California, Florida and a handful of other states led the trend toward big solar in 2019. Support for the solar industry nationwide still stands on a foundation built over decades on the appeals of local solar generation, such as energy-cost stability, resilience, environmental improvement, quality job creation, community education and recently, storage and clean electrification. Political support for solar remains strong in part because citizens can see community-scale projects nearby; solar is attainable by their own experience. Big solar follows in small solar's footsteps. I recall pushing for strategic utility PV beginning in 2005, when the U.S. had about 1 GW of grid-connected solar, despite a looming climate problem. Success then, as now, was solar at every scale. According to SEIA, utilities drive about 60 percent of the solar market today, but local solar, including residential, commercial and utility-partnership projects still make up a big share of U.S. total PV capacity—at 85 GW and rising.

Local solar, including residential, commercial
and utility-partnership projects still make up
a big share of US total PV capacity

Utility culture bends toward centralized solutions, but our world is changing. One indication is a new report from SEPA on integrated distribution utility planning, aimed at "multiple challenges with regards to visibility, tools and resources (e.g., skilled staff, investments) needed to manage a growing number of distributed energy resources (DERs)." The payoff comes for utilities, their communities and their customers if they can make the system work to optimize local value and control, while realizing the benefits of regional relationships, too. In the crucible of 2020, the public seems eager to strike the right balance between local resilience and upstream support for lots of things—including energy services. Local utilities, and especially the co-ops and munis that I have worked with, have investment and knowledge to apply to strategic solar and solar-plus. Non-utility developers and community stakeholders have key roles, too, but the best solutions will be collaborations.

A few examples might help. One emerges from our work with colleagues including DER leaders at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). As early as 2015, SMUD explored options for expanding its landmark community solar program. We explored high-value solar opportunities, such as well-oriented carports at schools or transit centers and a solar-enhanced mixed-income redevelopment project. Already, the falling cost of centralized solar was hard to beat. The utility made a strong cse for a green tariff type approach, which could bring solar to more customers faster at a lower cost. That is an argument that still haunts community solar advocates nationwide, who sometimes relent, as they did for a massive 1.5 GW community solar program launched last spring in Florida by FP&L.

At SMUD, the question of scale crystalized when home builders sought to address a new California law requiring all new homes to have solar. The builders argued that in some cases, new homes could not accommodate solar roofs or they would cost more than moderate-income home buyers could afford. SMUD offered community solar, drawn from big, remote solar projects as a solution.

But in this case, neither the regulators nor the community wanted to settle for solar that was simply cheap. They wanted it local, with options for strategic siting and operations that could enhance local grid value. In February 2020, SMUD delivered, and a new Neighborhood Solar Shares program was born. This program does not replace rooftop solar, but it offers a tree-friendly and fairly affordable option for new home buyers. Home builders and equity advocates statewide have said that this strategy breaks ground for community solar statewide, especially for lower income and multi-family home buyers. Regulators have insisted that such programs in investor-owned utility territories will face scrutiny, following existing California community solar guidelines with non-utility developers playing a lead role.

Solar plus storage has shown up first at the
community scale and often with voluntary support
through community solar-plus programs

Solar plus storage remains a tough nut to crack, but it has shown up first at the community scale and often with voluntary support from customers through community solar-plus programs. In a future blog, we will explore how SMUD applied the lessons of high-value community solar to its commercial StorageShares program.

The generic community solar-plus model deserves more attention, too. Some state community solar programs promise long-term savings based on an outdated assumption that all solar kWh are equal, while others are designed for flexibility, incorporating storage and/or demand response, as well as innovative financing, to assure long-term benefits. In 2018, the Municipal Light Department of Sterling, MA, launched the first hybrid, community solar-plus project in the state. Today, the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) manages two solar-plus projects for Sterling, plus similar projects in four more communities. Building off experience, developer Run Raise Investments launched a 7.1 MW non-utility community solar-plus project in Massachusetts last year. This fall, New York announced its first community solar-plus-storage project. More are planned, including work by CUNY to overcome commercial real estate barriers and tap grid-locational benefits.

We will share more examples in upcoming blogs, but it is worth checking in with Austin Energy for a wrap-around vision of community-scale solar and DERs. In 2016, the Austin, TX, municipal utility launched Austin Shines to demonstrate a new way to assess net solar LCOE, taking into account how solar and other DERs together operate on the grid. The initial solar projects taht helped to launch Shines included a community-solar program array. Shines accessed grant funding for a 1.5-MW/3 MWH battery, but a project ecosystem has grown quickly with the help of public and private partners, demonstrating increasingly cost-effective and replicable integrated DER solutions.

The verdict is still out on how robust and fully integrated tomorrow's community-scale solar will be. But that is exactly the reason why I am still excited to be working with local utilities today. These are the market-based laboratories, where the value of solar, storage and other DER strategies are becoming better understood as key pieces in puzzle that is the decarbonized 21st century grid.

Solar-Plus for Electric Co-ops (SPECs) is a new project led by Cliburn and Associates, to help optimize the procurement and operations of battery storage projects for local electric cooperatives. The project was one of eight selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for the second round of the Solar Energy Innovation Network (SEIN). Cliburn and Associates in joined by a number of partners on this project, including Cobb Electric Membership Corp., Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, United Power, and North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center.

SEIN  supports multi-stakeholder teams pursuing new applications of solar energy and other distributed energy resources in unique locations and contexts. The solutions developed by the teams are demonstrated and validated in real-world contexts, making them ready for replication and scale. With a virtual (Covid Era) kick-off meeting planned for mid-April, the Cliburn and Associates team is well-aware of the need for all kinds of planning that "expects the unexpected." Watch this space for details, coming soon.