CLARK PUBLIC UTILITIES communications manager Erica Erland discusses the new community solar project at the solar array in Vancouver.
Participants in Clark Public Utilities' community solar project will gather to celebrate the project's completion with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the community solar array Wednesday morning.
Community solar projects allow individuals within communities to pool their money to purchase shares of a solar array and split the benefits. Clark Public Utilities divided each of the 272 panels in an array into 12 "shares," priced them at $100, and allowed participants to purchase up to 100 of the 3,264 shares.
The array was to be constructed on community property – in this case, a formerly empty corner of Clark Public Utilities' Orchards location at 8600 NE 117th Avenue – and participants would receive generation credits for electricity sold back into the grid.
In addition to generation credits of $.0816 per kW generated, participants will receive a state incentive of $1.08 per kW, which is double the home solar incentive of $.54 but is only scheduled to last until 2020.
Accounting for generation credits and incentives, the utility expects the array to pay for itself in less than four years. After the state incentives expire, participants will continue to receive generation credits for the life of the panels, which is expected to be about 20 years.
"Over the life of the system, it's projected you would about double your investment," said Erica Erland, Clark Public Utilities corporate communications manager.
Utility staff first started having conversations about starting a community solar project during spring 2014, Erland said. By November, the decision to become involved with community solar had been made and utility staff began rapidly pulling pieces of the project together.
"With the clock ticking on incentives, we wanted to move the project forward as fast as we could," project manager Matt Babbitts said in a May project update.
Certain obligations had to be fulfilled before the project could begin. The site had to be chosen, a shade analysis had to be performed to make sure the site was appropriate for solar energy generation, and a marketing plan had to be formed.
"We were really fortunate to work with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation," Erland said last week. "They had funding through BPA to help facilitate the development of community solar … BEF was able to come in as an unpaid strategic consultant and help us with the shade analysis and help us with speccing out the criteria for the materials for the bid and helping us manage that."
With the studies and logistics taken care of, the utility only needed to get the word out to the community. They broke the news with a press release in early January and planned to increase awareness over time with the goal of selling all 272 panels by April – a tight deadline to sell thousands of units in just four months.
Instead, all 3,264 units sold out the very first day they were available.
"Even knowing that projects in other areas had been met with high demand, we were very surprised by the immediate, positive response from our customers," Erland said in the update. "Instead of ramping up communication over several months, we were slamming on the brakes after the first few hours!"
To compensate, board members approved a second project. It sold out in two days.
A third project sold out within a week.
At that point, according to the update, utility staff took a step back and tried to figure out how many projects they could fit on the site. After additional shade analyses and incentive calculations, construction began on five separately-metered projects with 13,920 total units and more than 700 different community owners.
Each project was constructed using Washington-made components. Itek Energy of Bellingham supplied the panels and inverters, Vancouver-based SunModo built the racking, and A&R Solar Specialists of Seattle performed the installation.
The first project began generating power in July. Now, the entire five-project array generates 319 kW – enough to power between 20 and 30 homes, depending on usage.
Aside from the land cost, the project was designed so that participants' initial purchase developed the entire project. Participants' fees paid for all of the production costs: all materials, construction of the gravel access road, signage and the marketing, and fencing.
"We have been very careful to make sure the costs associated with the project are contained within the investment the participants have made," Erland said.
Even with astronomical demand, Clark Public Utilities has no plans for future projects. State incentives for the program have a finite cap, Erland said. With the five projects already constructed, the utility is bumping against the ceiling of what the state will pay.
"We've basically maxed out what we are allowed to produce via community solar through the state incentives," Erland said.
Without state incentives, the panel payback period would be dramatically increased and overall returns would be far lower.
It is difficult to speculate about just how many community solar panels Clark Public Utilities could support if it had the backing, Erland said. The utility decided not to do a big marketing push after the initial project took off so quickly. Most of the interest in the project was organic, spread by word-of-mouth.
"It's hard to anticipate what would happen if you were to educate more customers about the benefit," Erland said. "I definitely think there is more interest in solar, but accommodating that interest at this point is not an option.
"At this point, because of where we are at on capacity … if people want it they should tell their legislature," Erland said.
