Guide to Community Solar

 Guide to Community Solar. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

NW Sustainable Energy for Economic Development or NW SEED, in cooperation with a number of organizations, has just released a new report called the Guide to Community Solar. Linda Irvine, Project Manager with NW SEED talks about the guide.

IRVINE: The guide is really a introduction to different ways to do community solar project. So we really looked at the three ownership models where you would have a utility sponsoring a project or you might have a private entity - a special purpose entity of private citizens coming together or you might have a non-profit sponsor. So given those three ownership models we looked a the pros and cons and the financing options and the tax impacts. Really it’s just an introductory level to all the things you ought to be aware of if you are thinking of doing a community solar project

Irvine describes how community solar is defined.

IRVINE: It means many things to many people but in a nutshell it is whenever a group of people or businesses gets together to create a single solar installation for the benefit of more than one entity so we’ve got 25 people who pool their money, put a solar installation on a local church and each of those people sees a return on their investment

That is of course just one possible idea for community solar. Irvine says the guide is really just that.

IRVINE: The guide is not going to get you all the way across the finish line. If you are planning to develop your own community solar program, you want to start with the guide. The guide has input from experts in the field. Stoel Rives weighed in on the legal aspects and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council - IREC - contributed a section on optimal policies for promoting community solar.

And she talks about where you can get a copy of the guide.

IRVINE: It’s available at the Solar America Communities website and the url for that it solaramericacommunities.energy.gov. At that website you can download, they call it the Guide for PV Financing but it’s really the Guide for Community Solar.

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.


www.harvestcleanenergy.org