Massachusetts officials, advocates, and businesses are hoping proposed changes to the state’s solar incentive program will help reinvigorate a flagging market and give more disadvantaged residents access to the benefits of renewable energy. 

“The program has been pretty set in stone since it first launched,” said Katie Moffitt, project development manager for solar investment firm Sunwealth. “I am very excited about making the program more responsive to the needs of the solar industry and allowing us to adapt with the times.”

The state’s energy department earlier this month unveiled an extensive set of proposed adjustments to the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target, or SMART, program, the first major overhaul since the program launched in 2018. The suggested changes include strategies to ensure subsidy rates keep up with the solar market, incentives to encourage more installation of solar on buildings and previously developed land, and plans to make solar power more accessible to low- and moderate-income residents. 

The state is accepting feedback on the proposal until August 2, and expects to file final draft regulations in the fall. 

The proposal comes at a moment when the state has seen significant declines in new solar power coming online. In 2021, Massachusetts saw more than 600 megawatts of new solar installed, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association; in 2022 and 2023, less than 400 megawatts were installed each year. Yet the state’s climate plan calls for at least 27 gigawatts of solar to meet its goal of going carbon-neutral by 2050.

“We know, based on historical deployment rates, that we’re falling behind those goals,” said Samantha Meserve, director of the state’s renewable and alternative energy division. “We need to spur more development.”

Adaptable rates

Much of the slowdown in solar development is due to a mismatch between market conditions and state incentive rates, said those in the industry. SMART works by providing a fixed rate for every kilowatt-hour of power generated by a solar installation, with increased rates (called “adders”) available to projects that advance certain policy goals, like serving low-income populations. The set rates were intended to help encourage development with financial support and also create stability and predictability for developers.

The base rates were set when the program launched in 2018, and were designed to decline as more installations were built. The idea was that the solar market would gain steam and prices would continue falling, making state support less necessary over time. 

However, the market did not cooperate with this vision: Supply chain problems made equipment more expensive, inflation increased costs for materials and labor, and rising electricity rates canceled out much — and sometimes all — of the financial benefit the SMART payments provided. 

“That model theoretically would have worked fine in a noninflationary environment, but worked very poorly in the inflationary period,” said Isaac Baker, co-CEO of solar developer Resonant Energy. 

The proposal tackles this problem by instituting an annual system for setting rates. Each year, the state will undertake an analysis of the current market conditions and progress toward state solar targets, and use this information to determine the program’s rates and capacity for the following year. Developers will provide real cost details to ensure the accuracy of the process. 

“We achieved a lot of certainty in the last program, but we now need certainty with flexibility,” Meserve said. “We know we’re losing momentum to get to some of our goals because of that certainty.”

The proposal’s approach to deciding how much capacity to support each year, however, has some in the industry a bit wary. For the first two years, the capacity for projects larger than 25 kilowatts would be set at 300 megawatts; in subsequent years, the annual analysis would determine the capacity. 

This limit does not help encourage more development, said Lindsay Bourgoine, vice president for policy for the Solar Energy Business Association of New England. And the starting point of 300 megawatts a year does not come close to supporting the state’s goal of hitting 10 gigawatts of solar power by 2030, she said. 

“We remain pretty concerned about the use of caps,” Bourgoine said. 

Getting siting right

Additional changes to the program aim to encourage more solar installations on buildings, parking lots, and other already-developed land.

“We’re making it more attractive to site projects in the built environment,” Meserve said.

A 2023 study found the state has highly suitable sites for 54 gigawatts of rooftop and canopy solar potential. At the same time, some environmental groups have been raising concerns about large solar installations disturbing important wildlife habitats and forests that can pull carbon from the air.

“We can’t be doing that with state money,” said Michelle Manion, vice president of policy and advocacy for Mass Audubon. 

However, the economics of building large, ground-mounted arrays on previously undeveloped land have generally been more favorable. The new SMART proposal lays out several ideas to rebalance that equation. The proposal would lift the cap on subsidizing developments smaller than 25 kilowatts, a category that includes most residential projects and many installations for nonprofits, houses of worship, and small businesses. 

The proposal also increases adders connected to projects in the built environment. The adder for building-mounted projects would go from 2 cents to an estimated 3 cents, and the adder for building over a landfill would increase from 4 cents to 6 cents. 

Canopy-mounted systems would see both an increased adder — from 6 cents to 8 cents per kWh of energy produced — and a new definition. Whereas the current program awards a canopy adder only to projects over parking lots, pedestrian walkways, and canals, the revamped program would widen the criteria to include any array mounted on a structure high enough to maintain the function of the area beneath. This change opens the door for canopy projects shading everything from junkyards and gas stations to compost piles and picnic areas. 

“You’ll start to see a lot more interesting and creative applications like that,” said Ben Underwood, Baker’s co-CEO at Resonant Energy.

A new adder, likely starting out at 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, would also be created for raised racking on rooftops: mounting systems that raise solar panels up high enough that other equipment such as climate control systems can still operate and be accessed beneath them. This addition has the potential to unlock enormous amounts of roof space for development, Underwood said. On some of Resonant’s smaller projects, it could even triple the size of projects that could fit on a roof, he said. 

While the changes incentivize solar in the built environment, they also attempt to narrow the criteria for building in previously undeveloped greenfields to make sure only “cream of the crop” sites are developed, Meserve said. While the existing program decides whether land can be developed by looking at the entire parcel, the updated iteration would look more closely at the footprint of a proposed array to make sure it is not disturbing the most valuable green spaces and habitats.

The proposal also calls for an increased “subtractor” — a reduction in the base SMART rate — for greenfield developments. The rate would go down 6 cents plus an additional 0.4 cents per acre of land affected, a significant increase from the current subtractor which tops out at 0.1 cents. Developers can earn back the 6 cents through a community engagement adder by proving they’ve worked with the community to mitigate the impacts the project will have, an element Meserve said will help the state focus on only the best developments. 

Bourgoine, however, said many solar installers are worried that the hefty subtractor will slow down solar development too much at a time when the state needs to be accelerating its move to renewable energy. 

“There are situations where the subtractor could cause damage where it doesn’t need to,” she said. 

Sharing the benefits

New strategies could also make the benefits of solar energy more accessible to low-income households, which have so far made up only a very small fraction of the consumers using SMART-subsidized power. 

The proposal would expand the list of facilities that qualify for low-income adders to include deed-restricted affordable condominiums, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and other affordable housing buildings not covered by the current definition. 

The new plan would also broaden the definition of a low-income customer. Under current guidelines, a low-income customer is someone who receives a discounted rate from the electric utility or who lives in a designated low-income area. The new definition would also include consumers enrolled in other needs-based programs to qualify as low-income, and those who self-attest that they fall under the set income caps. 

“This will make participating in low-income solar a much more accessible option,” Moffitt said. 

Furthermore, community solar developments will now be required to enroll a minimum of 40% low-income customers to receive the community solar adder of 7 cents. Though community solar is fairly widespread in Massachusetts, customers have generally been those with higher incomes and credit scores. The current program includes an adder for low-income community solar, but it is not often used because of the obstacles of locating customers — obstacles the new definitions would lower significantly.

“This new program will lead to there being a massive shift in value coming from stand-alone community solar,” Baker said. “A huge amount of that value is going to be directed to low-income tenants and ratepayers throughout the commonwealth, which is a really positive step.”

Massachusetts aims to ‘adapt with the times’ with updates to solar incentive program is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story was originally published by Canary Media.

Over the past three years, an unusually broad coalition has come together to champion a new way to finance and build community-solar-and-battery projects in California. It includes solar companies, environmental justice activists, consumer advocates, labor unions, farmers, homebuilder industry groups, and both Democratic and Republican state lawmakers — a rare instance of concord in a state riven by conflicts over rooftop solar and utility policy. 

Supporters say the plan, known as the Net Value Billing Tariff, could enable the building of up to 8 gigawatts of community-solar-battery projects over the coming decades, all of which would be connected to low-voltage power grids that sell low-cost power to subscribing households, businesses, and organizations.

But on Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3–1 to reject the coalition’s plan. Instead, it ordered the state’s major utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — to restructure a number of long-running distributed solar programs that have failed to spur almost any projects in the decade or more they’ve been in place. 

Critics warn that these utility-backed plans won’t create a workable pathway to expanding a class of solar power that has become a major driver of clean energy growth in other states and a key focus of the Biden administration’s energy equity policy.

They also fear that the CPUC’s reliance on state and federal subsidies to boost the economic competitiveness of these existing failed community-solar models might jeopardize the state’s ability to even qualify for the $250 million in community-solar funding that the Biden administration has provisionally offered it. 

“We are cheating ourselves out of the benefits of community solar and storage with this decision,” said Derek Chernow, western regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA), which represents companies and nonprofits that advocate for community solar. 

Since CCSA devised the NVBT in 2021, it has won ​“unprecedented bipartisan broad-based support from stakeholders that don’t typically come together and see eye to eye on clean energy issues,” Chernow said. 

The plan the CPUC cobbled together from utility proposals, by contrast, lacks ​“any support — broad-based or otherwise,” he said. 

An outpouring of rage from community-solar supporters

CPUC President Alice Busching Reynolds defended the decision to reject the NVBT at Thursday’s meeting. She pointed to other existing California programs that assist low-income households and multifamily buildings in obtaining solar, and noted that the CPUC’s plan will expand an existing community-solar program that offers low-income customers a 20 percent reduction on their bills. 

She said that the NVBT program was too costly a way to bring new solar-and-battery resources to the state, compared to the large-scale energy projects being contracted by utilities and community energy providers. 

“California is really at an inflection point where we must use the most cost-effective clean energy resources that provide reliability value to the system,” Reynolds said. 

Backers of the NVBT hold a very different view. Since March, when the CPUC unveiled its proposed decision to reject the NVBT, there has been broad public outcry. Letters protesting its proposal have flooded into the CPUC from community-solar advocacy groups, environmental organizations, commercial real estate companies, farmworker advocacy groups, farming industry associations, and Republican and Democratic state lawmakers. 

The CPUC issued a revised proposed decision on Tuesday, ahead of Thursday’s vote, which differed little from the initial March proposal. The only major change was the removal of a legal argument claiming that the NVBT violates federal law — a theory that was met with widespread incredulity and was rebutted by three former chairs of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in letters to the CPUC. 

The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a nonprofit that advocates for utility customers, has warned that the CPUC’s community-solar plan will ​“favor large utility companies by ensuring solar program development costs are incurred by home builders, renters, and other solar community participants,” while failing to offer lower-income customers a chance to reduce their fast-rising electric bills by subscribing to lower-cost solar power. 

And 20 lawmakers who supported AB 2316, the 2022 state law that ordered the CPUC to create an equitable and affordable community-solar program, have told the CPUC that its failure to support the NVBT could mean the state falls short on its clean energy and climate goals. 

“Transmission-scale renewables face significant siting, interconnection, and transmission challenges,” creating the risk that utilities won’t be able to hit the aggressive clean energy procurement targets set by the CPUC, the lawmakers wrote in a September letter. ​“Small, distribution-sited community solar and storage projects have incredible potential as we modernize and expand our transmission system.”

Speaking at Thursday’s CPUC meeting, Assemblymember Chris Ward, the San Diego Democrat who authored AB 2316, called the CPUC’s pending decision ​“a dismissal of California’s need for clean, reliable, and affordable energy.” 

“After agreeing with nearly all stakeholders that the state’s existing community renewables programs are not workable, the proposed decision has opted to repeat these mistakes by creating an outdated, commercially unworkable program that will result in no new renewable energy projects or energy storage,” he told the CPUC commissioners, all of whom were appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

Why California lags on community solar 

California leads the country in rooftop solar and stands behind only Texas in utility-scale solar-and-battery farms. But its community-solar projects make up less than 1 percent of the 6.2 gigawatts of community solar that have been built in the 22 states with policies that support this form of solar development. That’s largely because the community-solar programs that have existed in California for more than a decade have been unattractive to solar developers, financiers, and would-be subscribers. 

The earliest programs, which targeted commercial and industrial customers, charged a premium over standard utility rates, making them undesirable. Later programs created for lower-income and disadvantaged communities have been stymied by limits on how many megawatts’ worth of projects can be built and the size of individual projects, as well as onerous rules that require projects serving disadvantaged communities to be located within five miles of those customers. 

Designed to remove those barriers, the NVBT was modeled on a community-solar program created by New York that has led to more than 2 gigawatts of projects in that state. That structure allows community-solar projects to earn steady revenues from the power they produce based on a complex calculation of benefits. Those benefits include helping to meet state climate goals, bringing clean power to underserved customers, and, importantly, helping to support utility grids by, for example, avoiding the cost of securing power during the rare hours of the year when utility grids face the greatest stress. 

Unlike California’s existing community-solar programs, the NVBT would incentivize projects to add batteries to store and shift solar power from when it’s in surplus to when it’s most needed on the grid. 

And under AB 2316, any new community-solar-and-battery projects in California must provide at least 51 percent of their capacity to serve low-income residential customers at prices that reduce their electricity bills — a valuable option for low-income households, renters, and other utility customers that can’t access rooftop solar. 

“We’re very interested in seeing renters have access to community-solar projects,” said Matt Freedman, a staff attorney at TURN. ​“And we’re excited that the California statute requires at least 51 percent of the benefits go to low-income customers. We think that’s revolutionary — that we’re putting low-income customers first in line to receive the benefits of these projects.” 

To date, California’s community-solar programs have subsidized lower-income customers through funds drawn from utility ratepayers at large or from the state’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. NVBT backers hoped the structure they proposed would allow projects to earn enough money in their own right to support reduced rates for lower-income customers. 

Why the CPUC rejected the NVBT

But all the revenues and benefits of community-solar-battery projects under the NVBT rely on a common factor, Freedman said: being able to tap into the same value structure that dictates what rooftop-solar-equipped customers served by California’s three major utilities earn for their solar power. That structure is called the avoided-cost calculator, and AB 2316 explicitly cited it as the metric that the CPUC should use to determine the value of community solar, he said. 

The CPUC’s decision rejected that reading of the law, however. Instead, it agreed with the state’s big utilities that the solar-and-battery projects that the NVBT would finance could increase costs on some of the state’s utility customers in excess of the value those projects would provide to customers at large. 

To reach that conclusion, the CPUC didn’t compare the cost and value of community-solar-and-battery projects against the value assigned to rooftop solar systems and other distribution-grid-connected clean energy resources. Instead, it compared their value against wholesale ​“avoided-cost” rates of electricity generated by power plants, utility-scale solar-and-battery farms, and other large-scale resources. 

Those resources provide power that’s much cheaper on a per-kilowatt-hour basis than power from community-solar-battery projects, which face higher land and construction costs connected to building in more populous areas, and which can’t match the economies of scale achieved by solar-and-battery farms in the hundreds of megawatts apiece. 

But by choosing that comparison point, the CPUC also dismissed the value that distributed community-solar projects can provide by delivering power much closer to customers than far-off power plants and solar farms connected by expensive high-voltage transmission lines, Freedman said. 

A better comparison, he suggested, would be against a form of solar-and-battery power that community projects could actually supplant to significant economic benefit — the solar systems all new homes and many new commercial and multifamily buildings must include under California building codes. 

That’s why the California Building Industries Association trade group has been a strong supporter of the NVBT. CBIA estimates that the state’s building codes will require the addition of 250 to 400 megawatts of new solar per year over the coming decade to keep up with the pace of residential construction. Community solar and batteries under the NVBT could be a much cheaper way to meet those requirements — but only if developers have a program that makes building those projects economically viable. 

A problematic replacement plan 

It’s hard to see how the CPUC’s newly enacted Community Renewable Energy Program (CREP) structure will make that possible. 

In essence, the CPUC has ordered utilities to restructure two existing tariffs that allow distributed energy projects to sell their power to utilities at wholesale avoided-cost rates: the Renewable Market Adjusting Tariff (ReMAT) program, which allows projects of up to 3 megawatts, and the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) Standard Offer Contract, which allows projects of up to 20 megawatts.

But the low prices and short contract terms for these structures have been extremely unattractive to clean energy developers. No project has been completed under the ​“standard offer contract” structure since 1995, and only one 3-megawatt solar-only project has been built under ReMAT since 2021, Freedman said. 

It’s hard to envision lenders or investors backing a solar project with such an unclear pathway to profitability, CCSA’s Chernow said. What’s more, neither of those tariffs reward projects that invest in batteries to store solar power when it’s not as valuable for the grid and discharge it during times of grid stress, he said. 

“You don’t get the scalability, you don’t get the growth, you don’t get the storage — you don’t get all of the avoided-cost benefits that were originally set up with the Net Value Billing Tariff,” he said. 

To make matters worse, both of those programs are meant to supply lower-income customers with solar power that can reduce their electricity bills, Freedman said. But retail electricity rates in California are five to six times higher than the wholesale rates that the CPUC would allow these projects to earn. 

To make up for that discrepancy, the CPUC has ordered utilities to use ​“external funding or incentives” to offer credits to subscribing customers that are structured in a way that doesn’t increase their utility energy costs. Low-income customers, which must make up at least half of all subscribers, ​“will receive no less than 20 percent” bill credits. 

But at present, the only money the CPUC has identified for these external sources is $33 million in state-approved funding available for community-solar usage and storage-backed renewable-generation programs. Beyond that, Thursday’s decision orders utilities to look to federal investment tax credits and a set of programs created by the Inflation Reduction Act to spur investment and lending in underserved communities, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s $7 billion Solar for All program.

Last month, EPA announced 60 provisional recipients of that funding. California is set to receive $249 million, pending approval of how it plans to spend the money — including a commitment to ensure that low-income customers who participate will be able to lower their electricity bills by at least 20 percent compared to what they were paying before. 

CPUC President Reynolds noted at Thursday’s meeting that ​“while we’re still waiting for guidance from U.S. EPA, we hope to use a significant portion of this funding to support projects and subscribers in this new program.” 

But NVBT advocates say it’s far from clear that the programs that will evolve from the CPUC’s decision will provide the underlying utility tariff structures that could allow that federal funding to jump-start a commercially viable community-solar market. In fact, CCSA has calculated that the $249 million in federal funding would allow only about 50 megawatts of community-solar-and-battery projects to achieve economic viability under the CPUC’s proposal and still achieve the Solar for All program’s low-income energy-cost reduction targets, Chernow said. 

That’s a far cry from the gigawatts of solar-and-battery projects financed and built by independent developers on a cost-effective basis that the NVBT could have incentivized to be built. But Freedman pointed out that even that relatively small-scale expansion might not be possible if developers decline to participate due to lack of clear long-term economics. 

“Even if the state gets the commitment from the money, will we be able to spend it? If you design a program that developers don’t subscribe to, and there are no resources under the program, there’s no draw on the program,” he said. 

CPUC Commissioner Darcie Houck, who voted against the decision, echoed some of these concerns at Thursday’s meeting. ​“The reliance on funding that may or may not be available in the future puts the program either at risk of failing or potentially having to have ratepayers cover the full cost of the program going forward,” she said. Houck was outvoted by commissioners John Reynolds and Karen Douglas and CPUC President Reynolds, with commissioner Matt Baker recusing himself.

Chernow said the CCSA planned to ​“work within the CPUC’s process to try to fix this as much as we can.” But without significant changes, he warned that the structure set by Thursday’s order stood little chance of spurring the kind of community-solar growth happening in other states. 

The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of building 25 gigawatts of community solar by 2025, a fivefold increase from today. But Chernow fears the country as a whole ​“can’t get to these federal goals without California — and California can’t get there with this proposed decision.”

California regulators reject plan that would’ve boosted community solar is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

An ongoing billing snafu in ComEd territory in northern Illinois has some solar companies bracing for turbulence.

When the problem is remedied, community solar subscribers will see a backlog of credits on their utility bills, but also accumulated charges for participating in the project. It’s the kind of surprise that can sour customers on community solar and cause them to unsubscribe from a project. 

A new tool being marketed to community solar developers promises to use artificial intelligence to help intervene before such customers drop out.

Subscriber turnover is known as “churn,” and it can be a major headache for owners and managers of community solar projects. Frustration with billing is among the main reasons people withdraw from projects. Others might leave if they are moving, or if a project takes longer than expected to come online. 

Churn is “a huge issue in the community solar space,” said Sam Van Dam, director of asset management for the solar developer 38 Degrees North. “It’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about.”

The stakes include lost revenue and added uncertainty. In areas where community solar is already popular, it can be challenging to find customers still looking for subscriptions. In places where it hasn’t been widely embraced yet, it can mean hours of additional work educating potential subscribers before convincing them to sign up. 

Solstice, a solar company that works with developers to enlist and serve community solar subscribers, is hopeful that artificial intelligence can help companies identify and intervene with customers at risk for churn, and also make community solar more accessible and inclusive in the process. 

Solstice has developed an AI tool — now in testing — that predicts when certain subscribers may be vulnerable to churn, based on data from 15,000 accounts that the AI machine learning model has been trained on. The insight allows Solstice to proactively reach out to subscribers who may be distressed, making sure they are comfortable with their subscription and allaying concerns or confusion. 

If a subscriber is likely to leave, advance warning also helps Solstice more efficiently manage a waitlist of aspiring subscribers, getting them more quickly enrolled. 

Promising numbers 

Solstice spokesperson Mary Jackson said the AI tool was especially useful when 38 Degrees North transferred management of several thousand subscribers from another company to Solstice, a transitional period when customers might have dropped away. 

“Using our churn intervention strategies and high-touch customer service, we kept a staggeringly high number of those subscribers onboard” — 96% of them, Jackson said.

Van Dam called the AI tool “a fantastic idea.”   

“It becomes particularly challenging when you have hundreds of residential customers on a single project,” he said. “There’s a lot to getting everyone signed up and making sure they keep paying their bills if they are replaced. When they have to be replaced, that potentially costs money and potentially results in lost revenue. Avoiding that is the preferred approach.” 

During a pilot program, Solstice saw churn reduced from 48% to 8.3% among a targeted segment of at-risk customers who had a greater than 89% chance of churn, according to their predictions, the company said. A customer’s length of time as a subscriber, and whether a project has consolidated utility billing, are among important predictors of churn. 

Solstice data engineer Jake Ford explained that the machine learning tools analyze the training set of data using “advanced algorithms, including deep learning neural networks to detect patterns between variables, gradient boosting classification algorithms and other tree based models, along with other traditional regression techniques.”

“All of these models are designed to learn patterns and relationships from large datasets,” he continued. “This dynamic nature of machine learning is what differentiates these approaches from traditional computer modeling, in particular static algorithms that were often hard-coded, meaning little to no flexibility to adapt to new inputs and data. This is critical, as often the inputs or customers we wish to analyze in our machine learning applications are different – locationally, demographically, behaviorally – than those we trained the models with.” 

Redefining risk 

Solstice is also hopeful that AI can provide a more accurate and fair way of vetting potential solar subscribers. Typically credit scores are used to decide whether someone is likely to pay their bills, but that means people with poor credit from past financial struggles, or lower-income people in general, may be left out.   

Ford said their AI-based model known as EnergyScore appears to show that customers who might otherwise be sidelined by a poor credit score are actually good fits for community solar, since data shows people are likely to pay their energy bills, even when finances are tight. This might help the households who most need energy savings access community solar. 

“When we’re talking about low-income participation in community solar projects from the perspective of a developer or financier, their concern comes down to risk — revenue risk, churn risk,” said Ford. “The perception is: risk is too high, so let’s not include any low-income customers. Our data is showing the perception of risk is greater than the real risk. There haven’t been that many efforts in the energy industry to measure what the real risk is.” 

Solstice developed EnergyScore “in partnership with The Department of Energy and data scientists at MIT and Stanford using more than 800,000 individuals’ data across 5,000 variables,” the company says. Testing of the patent-pending product has shown that it is more accurate than FICO scores in predicting default rates on solar payments. 

While Solstice is using AI tools to combat marginalization, Ford said they are vigilant regarding the well-known risks of discrimination, racism and other unintended consequences being generated by AI.   

“It’s about being aware and continually reviewing what your model is doing, being cognizant of how it’s impacting real individuals on the ground, not just rows on a spreadsheet,” he said. “It’s important to be nimble and flexible in your methodology.” 

Increasing equity 

Solstice CEO Steph Speirs said AI tools could be especially useful as community solar blossoms in popularity and companies strive to manage larger subscriber bases in an equitable way. 

“We’re at an incredible inflection point in the energy transition,” she said. “There’s been focus on the supply side, but there’s a lot more technology that could be applied to the demand side to improve both the customer experience and the perception of projects in the community. We wanted to apply machine learning lessons around customer behavior and start to improve the metrics that developers care most about for community solar projects.” 

Metrics around churn, subscription levels and collection rates affect a solar developer’s ability to get financing for community solar projects. 

“If those metrics get diminished, the project’s viability is threatened,” said Speirs, who co-founded the company in 2016 with the goal of increasing low-income participation in community solar. “We need to really make sure these projects have low churn rates, and high subscription rates and collection rates.” 

Speirs said that currently, only about 10% of community solar subscribers are low-income. While that is changing thanks in part to equity incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act and state solar programs, “we have work to do as an industry.” 

“The beauty of these machine learning and AI models is we can use data to rewrite the historical exclusion that has existed in this industry, and improve financial viability of these projects so we can build more of them faster,” Speirs continued. “That helps both sides of the marketplace. It helps developers and financiers building projects at a cost of millions and billions of dollars, and it helps low-income customers access these projects.” 

Solstice isn’t the only company in the space. Erik Molinaro, senior vice president of customer experience & operations for solar developer Nexamp, said developers and brokers across the board are using advanced technology and artificial intelligence to facilitate community solar recruitment and retention. The company uses AI to create personalized videos that walk customers through the line items on their bills, he noted. 

“Any time you have something a little out of the ordinary, it triggers a customer, it’s a pain point,” Molinaro said. “We’re looking at that data, leveraging things like ChatGPT to understand why our customer is calling us, things we can do to create a better environment.”

Community solar developers look to artificial intelligence to help manage subscribers and advance equity is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Thanks to a new infusion of state funding, three projects benefiting traditionally under-resourced Black, Brown and Indigenous communities in the greater Chicago area have taken one important step closer to fruition. 

Last week, the Illinois Climate Bank unanimously passed a resolution to authorize loan funds of up to $1.6 million for three community-based solar projects owned by Green Energy Justice Cooperative, launched in 2022 by Blacks in Green (BIG). This increases the total funding to $2.9 million for GEJC’s community solar projects, a portion of which is privately funded. 

The money will be devoted to the pre-development phase of the project, including public outreach, an interconnection study, and a deposit for renewable energy credits awarded through the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), said Naomi Davis, founder and CEO of Blacks in Green.

“Our $2.9 million in predevelopment costs include payments to our electric utility, ComEd — fees to connect our solar system to their grid and a 5% down payment for our renewable energy credits — like buying a house, you have the financing and the down payment,” Davis said.

“The sweet spot of this pre-development funding is what we invest in building relationships, educating them about the power of cooperative ownership and management, and collaborating with them to build a clean energy economy right where they live,” she said. “We’ve got two years before we flip the switch and start monthly savings and clean energy comfort… and between now and then we’ll be enrolling thousands of community subscribers in conversations for organizing, training and hopefully inspiring them.”

‘A community stake in clean energy’

Energy self-sufficiency is one of the eight key principles of BIG’s Sustainable Square Mile concept, which the organization aims to replicate around the country. 

“We say communities should own, develop, and manage their land and energy, and with our $10 million EPA Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (TCTAC) award, BIG is offering free/open source access to our energy justice portfolio, which includes this 9 MW solar project and community geothermal and wind,” said Davis in a news release. 

“With our energy affordability bill before the Illinois General Assembly, and our energy auditing workforce launching this summer, we aim to connect the dots of community-driven, community-scale energy solutions for low and moderate-income communities across America.”

In December 2023, the Illinois Power Agency recommended awarding the three solar projects, valued at $25.7 million, with $12.5 million in renewable energy credits. The three projects, located in Aurora, Naperville, and Romeoville, Illinois, would each generate 3 megawatts. Once completed, they will provide the dual benefit of lowering the disproportionate energy burden in BIPOC and low-income households, while providing a community stake in clean energy generation. 

“When this project is completed over the next couple of years, it will be the largest non-governmental, non-utility, minority-community-owned solar project in Illinois. And as such, it will be the fulfillment of years of dreams and work by our Green Energy Justice Cooperative, to share middle-class jobs and wealth-building with historically deprived and distressed individuals and families throughout this area.” said Rev. Tony Pierce, GEJC board member and CEO of Sun Bright Energy, in a news release. 

“In doing so, it will be the beginning of lifting these kinds of individuals and families from the bottom of our economic pyramid into the middle class,” Pierce said. “And it will therefore be the beginning of bringing some closure to the Black and White wealth gap that exists in metro Chicago; in addition to reducing the carbon footprint in our area, to reduce climate change.”

For Davis, this level of recognition and financial support reflects more than a decade of advocacy and effort to ensure energy independence for her community of West Woodlawn on Chicago’s South Side – and beyond.

“The cooperative (GEJC) that we organized and funded fits in with our overall mission because we have, as a stated pillar of our work [intend] to increase the rate at which neighbor-owned businesses are created and sustained,” Davis told the Energy News Network in December.

“We understand that the number one employer of Black folks in America is Black folks in America. And we are very committed in our understanding of the whole-system problem common to Black communities everywhere, that we are committed to being a solution.”

Illinois gives $1.6 million boost to justice-focused community solar projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Two bills that would expand the public’s access to shared solar in Virginia are awaiting a signature from Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Shared solar is a program in which solar developers allow people who may be unable to install solar panels on their property to pay a subscription fee to receive energy from their facility. The facilities must generate no more than five megawatts.

The program was created for Dominion Energy customers in 2022 to give property owners whose roofs are unsuitable to hold panels, or who reside on lots that don’t garner enough sunlight to produce electricity, the option of using renewable energy.

But the program was limited to just 150 megawatts of electricity and required a minimum bill charge to cover the costs for distribution and transmission services; low-income subscribers were exempt from paying.

As a result, two years since the program was created, only low-income subscribers have signed up for the program.

This year’s bills would increase the number of projects allowable under the shared solar program in Dominion territory, and also add measures that could lower the minimum charge. A separate bill would create a shared solar program in Appalachian Power Company territory throughout Southwest Virginia.

Del. Rip Sullivan, who carried this year’s bill to change the Dominion program, said the initial iteration of the shared solar program brought “ solar developers who were not in Virginia into Virginia,” which created job and improved access to renewable energy sources in the state. Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, carried the companion to Sullivan’s bill, and the measure to start Appalachian Power’s program.

In his 2022 energy plan, Youngkin called for removing barriers to smaller solar projects being spread throughout the grid, “including shared solar.”

“The Governor is closely reviewing the legislation and budget language sent to his desk,” Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez said. “As stated in the All-American, All-of-the-Above Energy Plan, he believes in commonsense energy policy, including flexibility in our laws and regulations to meet the accelerated energy demands of Virginians and foster innovative energy solutions.”

‘Incremental progress’

According to filings with Dominion’s regulators at the State Corporation Commission, Dominion’s shared solar program reached capacity in May of last year.

The commission is allowed to expand the program by an additional 50 megawatts, once determining at least 30% of them, or 45 megawatts, have been claimed by low-income customers. But a case with regulators to decide that expansion is still pending.

Originally, this year’s bills would have expanded the program to allow for far more megawatts equal to 10% of Dominion’s peak load, but they were scaled back, allowing the program to increase to 200 megawatts. There’s also an opportunity for an additional energy boost.

Once they determine that customers have subscribed to 90% of that 200 megawatts, the commission can expand the program by an additional 150 megawatts, according to the legislation, with up to half of that expansion serving low-income customers.

“Where we ended up, we view it as incremental progress to continuing to move the market forward,” said Charlie Coggeshall, mid-atlantic regional director of the Coalition for Community Solar Access, a group that advocates for shared solar use. “It was a lot of negotiating to find a place where we were comfortable. It says a lot that we achieved a major compromise.”

The other change the bill would bring to the Dominion program is language that orders the SCC to “calculate the benefits of shared solar to the electric grid and to the Commonwealth and deduct such benefits from other costs,” to determine the minimum bill.

As it stands now, the minimum bill — typically $55.10 — is necessary, Dominion says, to cover the cost of the grid’s distribution and transmission services to deliver electricity from the shared solar facilities that may be miles away from the user.

Without the minimum bill, the shared solar subscribers see reductions in their bill from using renewable energy while other customers pay to maintain the grid, the utility has argued.

But that typical $55.10 amount is a barrier to people subscribing to shared solar since it will negate any possible energy savings, said Southern Environmental Law Center staff attorney Josephus Allmond, unless affluent people have the means for it, which is “certainly not the majority of Virginians.”

The bill also includes language to conduct an analysis of other benefits, including the renewable energy credits, or RECs, that the solar project developers will have to give to Dominion, which must purchase them to meet renewable energy portfolio standards in the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

A report from CSSA released ahead of the session found that the utility and ratepayers could see savings from an expanded shared solar program, in part, by reducing the need to build new generation sources.

“Also, solar energy produces few externalities like cancer, pollution, climate change,” Surovell said. “All those benefits need to be calculated into reducing the minimum bill.”

Though the bill passed out of the legislature, some opposition came from some lawmakers, like Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham, who argued the new minimum bill calculation is “still shifting to the rate base benefits that are just impossible to quantify,” such as climate change.

Katharine Bond, Dominion vice president for public policy & state affairs, said in testimony on earlier versions of the bill the utility had a concern over seeing the projects in the first trench of the program getting completed before expanding it. But in a Feb. 9 Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, Bond stated the utility’s support for the bill, noting that the bill had language stating the SCC will determine shared solar participants ”pay their fare share and minimize the cost shift to non-participating customers.”

A workgroup to determine the amount and form of incentives for shared solar projects that can be built on rooftops, or on previously disturbed lands like former coal mines called brownfields is another provision that emerged this session. Bills separate from Sullivan and Surovell’s that would expand those incentives are now awaiting signature from the governor.

“We think these small projects are just what we should be looking at more to preserve prime farmland and forestland,” said Allmond in committee testimony.

A new Appalachian Power program

The separate bill from Surovell creates an entirely new program for Appalachian Power Company with a cap of 50 megawatts.

Peter Anderson, director of state energy policy at the environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices, echoed sentiments similar to Coggeshall in response to the bill’s passage.

“People in Southwest Virginia have already waited too long for access to shared solar, and the establishment of a program will provide proof of concept and something to build on,” Anderson said.

There will be a minimum bill in the Appalachian Power program, the amount of which the SCC will have to determine as it does with the Dominion program ,while including the new calculations. But one difference with the APCo program is that low-income customers are not exempt from that cost and will instead receive a 10% discount.

“We would have preferred a larger program and a minimum bill exemption in the new APCo program to really signal that every Virginian can benefit from these smaller, distributed solar facilities,” Anderson said. His group is aware of a number of APCo customers who are interested in the program, he said, as well as at least one nonprofit that will consider a subscription and local governments who have spoken up about the program.

Without the low-income exemption, Coggeshall said, “it just places all pressure on the minimum bill proceeding” to determine if subscribing is a viable option for participants, but his group is still excited by the progress.

Appalachian Power is “pleased” with the bill, utility spokeswoman Teresa Hall stated, adding the cost shifting was a concern for the company.

“The minimum bill is critical to ensure that shared solar participants pay for their share of the grid, so that these costs aren’t shifted to other ratepayers,” said Hall. “Ultimately, if the costs of clean energy initiatives aren’t fairly distributed we will not be able to achieve our goals.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

Bills could expand shared solar programs in Dominion, Appalachian Power territories is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.