Community Solar

Status
Not open for further replies.
B

bwat

EE
Location
NC
Occupation
EE
Community solar exists in some states where they've passed appropriate legislation. Not all states have passed such legislation.

What I don't quite grasp is why there needs to be legislation in order to actually have community solar sites. It's not like it's something illegal that they're making legal, so why does the state have to get involved at all? Can somebody enlighten me?

There has to be some key concept here that I'm missing.
 
If the utilities don't want to do it then you need a law to force them to do it. Also utilities and rate schedules are heavily regulated compared to many things, so in the sense that you couldn't have a proper way to bill and pay for it without governing regulations, it likely is illegal in some sense until your state PUC approves a regulatory framework. Whether there is also law that hinders your PUC probably depends on the state.

If the utilities could bring in extra profit from it, the legal and regulatory barriers would fall quickly. ;)
 
It's all in the paperwork. In CS, the CS company sells energy to individual customers, the utility just conveys the energy from the CS site to the customer site and handles accounting. This relationship between the CS company and the customer is usually not allowed, only utilities can sell energy, so requires legislation to allow it.
 
pv_n00b said:
It's all in the paperwork. In CS, the CS company sells energy to individual customers, the utility just conveys the energy from the CS site to the customer site and handles accounting. This relationship between the CS company and the customer is usually not allowed, only utilities can sell energy, so requires legislation to allow it.
Click to expand...
It depends. Here in Austin, Austin Energy runs a couple of community solar pilot projects; they do virtual metering for their customers, which is easy for them because they meter everyone's PV system independently already.
 
ggunn said:
It depends. Here in Austin, Austin Energy runs a couple of community solar pilot projects; they do virtual metering for their customers, which is easy for them because they meter everyone's PV system independently already.
Click to expand...
There is a lot of variation, 3000+ utilities out the in the ol' US of A. But if legislation has to be passed to allow community solar it's going to be about changing the law that only utilities can sell power to customers, and usually the utilities affected will be against it.
Now if the utility owns the "community solar" project then IMO it's not a community solar project. Some people play fast and loose with what is community solar. I've seen some definitions that would make any PV project community solar if the energy is sold to customers. That's another point we can argue over on the forum ad infinitum.
 
This provides a pretty readable background on CS, although they do have a broad definition of CS. https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/community-solar-basics
This describes the legislation aspect:
As of 2020, about a third of states have enabling policies for community solar. That means they have passed legislation that created a third-party market for community solar requiring project developers and utilities (typically the larger, investor owned utilities) to follow certain regulations in order to enroll customers and develop community solar installations. Community solar programs that exist outside of those states are developed and managed by the local utility (typically the smaller municipal or cooperative utilities).
Click to expand...
 
pv_n00b said:
Now if the utility owns the "community solar" project then IMO it's not a community solar project. Some people play fast and loose with what is community solar. I've seen some definitions that would make any PV project community solar if the energy is sold to customers. That's another point we can argue over on the forum ad infinitum.
Click to expand...

Every industry is plagued with the "what do you mean when you say that word" hurdle, but it seems like the PV world is one of the worst, and you hit it on the head that one locality's definition of CS can be completely different from another. Maybe it happens a good bit in PV because it's relatively new-ish and so people can make up whatever definitions they want.

The word "array" is almost useless to me now. The definition can vary from client to client, and even project to project for the same client. Virtual Net Metering is another one that I know can mean wildly different things
 
pv_n00b said:
There is a lot of variation, 3000+ utilities out the in the ol' US of A. But if legislation has to be passed to allow community solar it's going to be about changing the law that only utilities can sell power to customers, and usually the utilities affected will be against it.
Click to expand...
I wonder why??
oh yeah, you have no infrastructure or no maintenance plan to keep up your non existent infrastructure….

😂😂
 
What I would like, as a customer, is something akin to 'community supported agriculture'. I would like to be able to invest cash with my local utility to pay for PV and infrastructure, get the 'harvest' (electricity delivered to me when the sun is shining, or sold at the local net metering rate) and to pay the utility going forward only for maintenance of the infrastructure.

-Jon
 
winnie said:
What I would like, as a customer, is something akin to 'community supported agriculture'. I would like to be able to invest cash with my local utility to pay for PV and infrastructure, get the 'harvest' (electricity delivered to me when the sun is shining, or sold at the local net metering rate) and to pay the utility going forward only for maintenance of the infrastructure.

-Jon
Click to expand...
There’s also wheeling charges.

So what is the difference if your making a few loaves of bread at your house and you want to get retail price but tell the bread company you want them to deliver your bread to the retail store for free.
 
The difference is that I'm asking to pay for the infrastructure needed to deliver the electricity, asking to pay for the maintenance of that infrastructure.

Also when I wrote 'pay the local net metering rate' I was honestly thinking 'pay the utility the rate that they use for customer PV being sold to the grid, whatever that happens to be'. IMHO the utility paying full retail for PV generation is a subsidy who's time has long since passed.

What I am looking for from community solar is similar to what _I_ think is fair for residential solar: that I pay for infrastructure to harvest sunlight, and I get the value of that electricity when my infrastructure delivers it. I fully understand that electricity cannot be cheaply stored. The 'community' aspect is that larger dedicated PV arrays are probably more economic in terms of $/kWh, but then you need to add in the cost of distributing those kWh.

-Jon
 
winnie said:
The difference is that I'm asking to pay for the infrastructure needed to deliver the electricity, asking to pay for the maintenance of that infrastructure.

Also when I wrote 'pay the local net metering rate' I was honestly thinking 'pay the utility the rate that they use for customer PV being sold to the grid, whatever that happens to be'. IMHO the utility paying full retail for PV generation is a subsidy who's time has long since passed.

What I am looking for from community solar is similar to what _I_ think is fair for residential solar: that I pay for infrastructure to harvest sunlight, and I get the value of that electricity when my infrastructure delivers it. I fully understand that electricity cannot be cheaply stored. The 'community' aspect is that larger dedicated PV arrays are probably more economic in terms of $/kWh, but then you need to add in the cost of distributing those kWh.

-Jon
Click to expand...
Now I understand your position better.
If only the PV masses thought the way you are thinking we (utility) wouldn’t have such an issue with it.
😁
 
ggunn said:
Here is what community solar is in Austin: https://austinenergy.com/ae/green-power/solar-solutions/for-your-home/community-solar
Click to expand...
I call this "boutique solar" where you pay an adder on your bill to get solar power. I do that with my utility, although it's a fixed monthly fee. Most people don't install PV on their homes just to have solar power, they do it because it saves them money.
Community solar allows someone to get the same benefits of a lower electric bill and solar power as they would have if they installed solar on their roof. Boutique solar just allows someone to pay more for solar power than they pay for their standard electricity. I'm not against boutique solar, I subscribe to it, but it's not community solar.
 
ggunn said:
Here is what community solar is in Austin: https://austinenergy.com/ae/green-power/solar-solutions/for-your-home/community-solar
Click to expand...
pv_n00b said:
I call this "boutique solar" where you pay an adder on your bill to get solar power. I do that with my utility, although it's a fixed monthly fee. Most people don't install PV on their homes just to have solar power, they do it because it saves them money.
Community solar allows someone to get the same benefits of a lower electric bill and solar power as they would have if they installed solar on their roof. Boutique solar just allows someone to pay more for solar power than they pay for their standard electricity. I'm not against boutique solar, I subscribe to it, but it's not community solar.
Click to expand...

That's a really great example of how the terminology/meaning varies widely in this space. Austin's usage of the term"community solar" is very different from all of the states around me. We're more in line with pv_noob.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top