When a solar energy developer approached Halifax County, North Carolina, in the early 2010s about renting its former airfield in Roanoke Rapids, community leaders had a condition. 

“If they were willing to lease this land for the very first solar project in the area, the county needed to get something back in return,” said Mozine Lowe from her office, which overlooks the 20 megawatt solar farm now atop the old airport. “What they got was this building.”

Of course, it’s more than a building. It’s the headquarters for the Center for Energy Education, the nonprofit Lowe has run since 2016 that works to maximize the benefits of large solar farms in rural America — one community, one school child, and one worker at a time. 

Lowe, who grew up about five miles from where she now works, had graduated from Greensboro’s North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University but worked across the country, from California to Washington, D.C. 

When she returned to this rural county of less than 50,000 near the Virginia border, formerly a hub of farming and textiles, she said she didn’t see a lot of change.  

“The jobs were the same,” she said. “I didn’t see people making the connection between solar energy and what’s happening with the climate and the impact on rural communities, and I just wanted to try and help from that angle.” 

The Center conducts educational programs for children of all ages, who come in by the busload from surrounding schools both public and private. It holds a Solar Fest every year to celebrate clean energy with community leaders, drawing hundreds.

Through collaborations with local educational institutions like community colleges, the center has also helped to train a new workforce in jobs that pay roughly twice what workers are earning at the fast-food chains off Interstate 95. 

“We have trained more people than most other people around here to become solar installers,” Lowe said. “We want them to be first in line for our jobs.”

And there’s outreach to solar companies themselves in North Carolina as well as Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, where the Center also has offices. The goal is to help them become better community partners.

Only a few ‘good players’ 

Geenex, the Charlotte-based developer who built the solar farm at the airport and over a dozen others in the vicinity, is still involved in the Center, and the company’s chairman also chairs the nonprofit’s board.  

But Lowe and other staff at the organization say not every solar developer is committed — at least at first — to working with community leaders in Eastern North Carolina. 

“Geenex is a very good partner,” said Reginald Bynum, the Center’s community outreach manager. “They’re a good player. But there are only a few of them. Other companies will say, ‘This is your ordinance? Great. This is all I have to do.’” 

Some county ordinances, like that in Halifax, need to be updated, Bynum said. Many still call for a 75-foot buffer between the rows of solar panels and neighboring properties. That figure is “so 2018,” said Bynum. It should be doubled, he said. 

Most solar farms are also built on private land — often bits of farmland that can help cotton growers and other farmers guarantee income. But developers usually obtain the leases first, before airing the project in public. 

“That’s the backwards process of solar,” Bynum said. “They’re talking to landowners and securing that land, and then they’re coming to commissioners.” 

What’s more, simply following ordinances isn’t enough, Bynum says. What’s needed is for solar developers to work with local residents to develop community benefits agreements — documents that memorialize pluses to the area, from minimizing construction impacts to providing jobs. 

“It’s a 30-year commitment to the community,” he said, “because your farm’s going to be here 30 years. They’re asking for that, and they deserve that.” 

Critically, say Bynum and other advocates, solar developers need to work with community leaders to provide benefits beyond tax revenue — an undeniable good, but one that isn’t “seen” by anyone except county bookkeepers.

And though a recent study from the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association shows that solar farms today take up a fraction of a percent of the state’s farmland, the figure is a full 1% in Halifax County, and on pace to triple in the coming years, according to the Center’s research. 

“From rural citizens’ standpoint, that’s a lot,” Bynum said. “You have to really understand what they’re seeing.” 

‘Projects have gotten bigger’

Part of what they’re seeing is the result of a simple fact: solar farms aren’t just growing more abundant in parts of rural America. They’re also much larger.

In North Carolina up until 2016, the average utility-scale solar development was 5.8 megawatts covering 35 acres of land, per the Sustainable Energy Association. After a 2017 state law made larger solar farms easier to build, the average system size increased to 13.6 megawatts and covered 115 acres of land.

“Projects have gotten bigger,” said Carson Harkrader, the CEO of Durham-based Carolina Solar Energy, who appeared on a recent clean energy panel with Bynum. “As they’ve gotten bigger, people freak out a little bit.” 

And while many folks’ worries about the visual impact of solar panels can be mollified — with tree buffers, setbacks, and information about the safety of the structures — some are easy targets for opponents. 

“The opposition has become much, much, more organized. There are national groups, funded by the oil and gas industry,” Harkrader said. “With this opposition that is more organized and has more resources, it’s much harder.” 

In some cases, opponents may fill a vacuum left by solar companies who lined up projects before the pandemic and have only recently begun to start construction. 

That’s what happens, said Bynum, “when you miss steps in keeping citizens updated with the project — particularly when you started talking about it five years before. Commissioners change, a lot of tribal knowledge evaporates.” 

More success stories?

And sometimes, it only takes one or two community members to force the issue with local politicians. Both neighboring Northampton and Halifax counties have passed moratoriums on new solar farms recently. Halifax acted after just a few people appeared at their meeting, concerned about the loss of trees.

Having talked with county commissioners, staff at the Center are hopeful the moratorium will end quickly as planned, after the county has updated its ordinance. But the “pause” on solar farms is an example of the constant game of whack-a-mole solar developers and their advocates must play.

Lowe says that’s why the Center is so vital. 

“What makes us unique is that our work is mainly community engagement,” she said. “Our stance is to be neutral, and to provide factual information. I think we need to tell more success stories.”

How one nonprofit is working to build support for solar — and added benefits for communities — in rural North Carolina 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.

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A new contract between Kalamazoo, Michigan, and utility Consumers Energy signals a change in direction for the city’s clean energy strategy as it seeks to become carbon neutral by 2040. 

Solar was seen as a pillar of the city’s plans when it declared a climate emergency in 2019 and set a goal of zeroing out carbon emissions by 2040. After spending years exploring its options, though, the Michigan city is tempering a vision for rooftop solar in favor of large, more distant solar projects built and owned by the utility. It’s not alone either, with Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Muskegon and other cities taking a similar approach.

“Folks want to see solar panels on parking lots and buildings, but there’s no way as a city we can accomplish our net-zero buildings just putting solar panels on a roof,” said Justin Gish, Kalamazoo’s sustainability planner. “Working with the utility seemed to make the most sense.” 

Initially there was skepticism, Gish said — “environmentalists tend to not trust utilities and large corporate entities” — but the math just didn’t work out for going it alone with rooftop solar.

The city’s largest power user, the wastewater treatment station, has a pumping house with a roof of only 225 square feet. Kalamazoo’s largest city-owned roof, at the public service station, is 26,000 square feet. Spending an estimated $750,000 to cover that with solar would only provide 14% of the power that building uses annually — a financial “non-starter,” he said.

So the city decided to partner with Consumers Energy, joining a solar subscription program wherein Kalamazoo will tell Consumers how much solar energy it wants, starting in 2028, and the utility will use funds from its subscription fee to construct new solar farms, like a 250 MW project Consumers is building in Muskegon. 

Under the 20-year contract, Kalamazoo will pay a set rate of 15.8 cents per kWh — 6.4 cents more than what it currently pays — for 43 million kWh of solar power per year. If electricity market rates rise, the city will save money, and Kalamazoo receives Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to help meet its energy goals. 

The subscription is expected to eliminate about 80% of Kalamazoo’s emissions from electricity, Gish said. The electricity used to power streetlights and traffic signals couldn’t be covered since it is not metered. As the city acquires more electric vehicles — it currently has two — electricity demand may increase, but city leaders hope to offset any increases by improving energy efficiency of city buildings.  

Consumers Energy spokesperson Matt Johnson said the company relies “in part” on funds from customers specifically to build solar, and considers it a better deal for cities than building it themselves, “which would be more costly for them, and they have to do their own maintenance.”  

“We can do it in a more cost-effective way, we maintain it, they’re helping us fund it and do it in the right way, and those benefits get passed on to arguably everybody,” Johnson said. 

Grand Rapids, Michigan, joined the subscription program at the same time as Kalamazoo. Corporate customers including 7-Eleven, Walmart and General Motors are part of the same Consumers Energy solar subscription program, as is the state of Michigan.

Costs and benefits

“There’s a growing movement of cities trying to figure out solar — ‘Yes we want to do this, it could save us money over time, but the cost is prohibitive,’” said John Farrell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. 

Until the Inflation Reduction Act, cities couldn’t directly access federal tax credits. The direct-pay incentives under the IRA have simplified financing, Farrell said, but cities still face other financial and logistical barriers, such as whether they have sufficient rooftop space.  

Advocates acknowledge deals with utilities may be the most practical way for budget-strapped cities to move the needle on clean energy, but they emphasize that cities should also strive to develop their own solar, and question whether utilities should charge more for clean power that is increasingly a cheaper option than fossil fuels.

“Our position is rooftop and distributed generation is best — it’s best for the customers, in this case the cities; it’s best for the grid, because you’re putting those resources directly on the grid where it’s needed most; and it’s best for the planet because it can deploy a lot faster,” said John Delurey, Midwest deputy director of the advocacy group Vote Solar. “I believe customers in general and perhaps cities in particular should exhaust all resources and opportunities for distributed generation before they start to explore utility-scale resources. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and very likely to provide the most bang for their buck.”

Utility-scale solar is more cost-effective per kilowatt, but Delurey notes that when a public building is large enough for solar, “you are putting that generation directly on load, you’re consuming onsite. Anything that is concurrent consumption or paired with a battery, you are getting the full retail value of that energy. That is a feature you can’t really beat no matter how good the contract is with some utility-scale projects that are farther away.”

Delurey also noted that Michigan law mandates all energy be from clean sources by 2040; and 50% by 2030. That means Consumers needs to be building or buying renewable power, whether or not customers pay extra for it. 

“So there are diminishing returns [to a subscription deal] at that point,” Delurey said. “You better be getting a price benefit, because the power on their grid would be clean anyways.” 

“Some folks are asking ‘Why do anything now? Just wait until Consumers cleans up the grid,’” Gish acknowledged. “But our purchase shows we have skin in the game.” 

A complement to rooftop

In 2009, Milwaukee adopted a goal of powering 25% of city operations — excluding waterworks — with solar by 2025. The city’s Climate and Equity Plan adopted in 2023 also enshrined that goal. 

For a decade, Milwaukee has been battling We Energies over the city’s plan to install rooftop solar on City Hall and other buildings through a third-party owner, Eagle Point Solar. The city sought the arrangement — common in many states — to tap federal tax incentives that a nonprofit public entity couldn’t reap. But We Energies argued that third party ownership would mean Eagle Point would be acting as a utility and infringing on We Energies’ territory. A lawsuit over Milwaukee’s plans with Eagle Point is still pending.

In 2018, We Energies launched a pilot solar program in Milwaukee known by critics as “rent a roof,” in which the utility leased rooftop space for its own solar arrays. Advocates and Milwaukee officials opposed the program, arguing that it encouraged the utility to suppress the private market or publicly-owned solar. In 2023, the state Public Service Commission denied the utility’s request to expand the program.

Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board opposed the rent-a-roof arrangement since it passed costs they viewed as unfair on to ratepayers. But Wisconsin CUB executive director Tom Content said the city’s current partnership with We Energies is different, since it is just the city, not ratepayers, footing the cost for solar that helps the city meet its goals.

Milwaukee is paying about $84,000 extra per year for We Energies to build solar farms on a city landfill near the airport and outside the city limits in the town of Caledonia. The deal includes a requirement that We Energies hire underemployed or unemployed Milwaukee residents.

The Caledonia project is nearly complete, and will provide over 11 million kWh of energy annually, “enough to make 57 municipal police stations, fire stations, and health clinics 100% renewable electricity,” said Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office director Erick Shambarger. 

The landfill project is slated to break ground in 2025. The two arrays will total 11 MW and provide enough power for 83 city buildings, including City Hall – where Milwaukee had hoped to do the rooftop array with Eagle Point. 

Meanwhile Milwaukee is building its own rooftop solar on the Martin Luther King Jr. library and later other public buildings, and Shambarger said they will apply for direct pay tax credits made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act — basically eliminating the need for a third-party agreement.

“Utility-scale is the complement to rooftop,” said Shambarger. “They own it and maintain it, we get the RECs. It worked out pretty well. If you think about it from a big picture standpoint, to now have the utility offer a big customer like the city an option to source their power from renewable energy — that didn’t exist five years ago. If you were a big customer in Wisconsin five years ago, you really had no option except for buying RECs from who knows where. We worked hard with them to make sure we could see our renewable energy being built.”

We Energies already owns a smaller 2.25 MW solar farm on the same landfill, under a similar arrangement. Building solar on the landfill is less efficient than other types of land, since special mounting is needed to avoid puncturing the landfill’s clay cap, and the panels can’t turn to follow the sun. But Shambarger said the sacrifice is worth it to have solar within the city limits, on land useful for little else.

“We do think it’s important to have some of this where people can see it and understand it,” he said. “We also have the workforce requirements, it’s nice to have it close to home for our local workers.”

Madison is also pursuing a mix of city-owned distributed solar and utility-scale partnerships. 

On Earth Day 2024, Madison announced it has installed 2 MW of solar on 38 city rooftops. But a utility-scale solar partnership with utility MGE is also crucial to the goal of 100% clean energy for city operations by 2030. Through MGE’s Renewable Energy Rider program, Madison helped pay for the 8 MW Hermsdorf Solar Fields on a city landfill, with 5 MW devoted to city operations and 3 MW devoted to the school district. The 53-acre project went online in 2022.

Farrell said such “all of the above” approaches are ideal.

“The lesson we’ve seen generally is the more any entity can directly own the solar project, the more financial benefit you’ll get,” he said. “Ownership comes with privileges, and with risks. 

“Energy is in addition to a lot of other challenging issues that cities have to work on. The gold standard is solar on a couple public buildings with battery storage, so these are resiliency places if the grid goes down.”

Correction: Covering Kalamazoo’s public service station roof with solar panels would provide an estimated 14% of power used by that building. An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the number.

In Michigan and Wisconsin, cities are finding rooftops alone may not achieve solar energy goals  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.

A solar-powered microgrid project backed with funding from the Biden administration aims to reduce energy burdens and provide backup power to a tiny northern Minnesota tribal community.

The Pine Point Resilience Hub would serve an elementary school and community center in Pine Point, an Anishinaabe village of about 330 people on the White Earth Reservation.

In June, the project was selected to receive $1.75 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Storage for Social Equity (ES4SE) Program, which helps underserved and frontline communities leverage energy storage to make electricity more affordable and reliable. It’s part of a slew of Biden administration funding related to grid resilience and energy equity that has spurred several tribal microgrid projects across the country.

The developers, locally owned 8th Fire Solar and San Francisco-based 10Power, hope to finish the project next year, and have also secured funding from Minnesota’s Solar for Schools program and foundation grants but said they still need to raise about $1 million. They’re also counting on receiving about $1.5 million in federal tax credits, which face an uncertain future with the incoming Trump administration. 

“The idea of the microgrid is to help with infrastructure,” said Gwe Gasco, a member of the White Earth Nation and the program coordinator with 8th Fire Solar, a thermal solar company based on the reservation.

Tribal communities were largely bypassed during the massive, federally funded push under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to bring electricity to remote rural areas of the country. As a result, grid infrastructure on many reservations remains insufficient to this day, with an estimated 1 in 7 Native American households on reservations lacking electricity connections, and many more contending with unreliable service.

On top of higher-than-average electric reliability issues, tribal communities also generally pay higher rates for electricity and face higher energy burdens due to poverty and substandard housing.

On the White Earth Reservation, these challenges are most pronounced in Pine Point, where one-third of residents live in poverty. Gasco said the area is among the first to suffer from outages, with eleven occurring over the last five years, according to the Itasca-Mantrap Electric Cooperative that serves the area.

The Pine Point Resilience Hub project will build on an existing 21-kilowatt solar array, adding another 500 kilowatts of solar capacity along with a 2.76 megawatt-hour battery storage system, enough to provide about 12 hours worth of backup power for residents to be able to charge cell phones, power medical equipment, or stay warm in the event of a power outage.

Gasco said the microgrid could be especially important in the winter, given the area’s “brutally cold” weather and reliance on electric heat. They also hope it will reduce utility costs, though they are still negotiating with the local electric co-op on rates for power the system sends and receives from the utility’s grid. Itasca-Mantrap President and CEO Christine Fox said it doesn’t set net metering rates, which are determined by its electricity supplier.

The project developers hope to qualify for additional federal tax credits by using equipment largely produced in the U.S., including Minnesota-built Heliene solar panels, inverters made in Massachusetts, and Ohio-produced solar racks.

The developers have partnered with the Pine Point School District, which plans to incorporate the microgrid into an Ojibwe-language curriculum on renewable energy. A monitoring interface will allow students to see real-time data in the classroom.

“It’s powerful to me that this (project) is at a school where we’re hoping to inspire the next generation of kids,” said Sandra Kwak, CEO and founder of 10Power, a for-profit company that specializes in developing renewable energy projects in tribal communities.

Corey Orehek, senior business developer for Ziegler Energy Solutions, which has been hired to do the installation, said they plan to work with a local community college to train students for solar jobs. 

“One of the things that we want to drive in this is workforce development,” Orehek said. “We want to leave something that’s not only a project that’ll last 30 years but provide the training and experience for community members to either start their own energy companies or become contractors in the clean energy workforce.”

The resilience hub is the second such project announced by a Minnesota tribe in just recent months. The Red Lake Nation received $3.15 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Local Government Energy Program in late September for a behind-the-meter microgrid project at a secondary school.

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is also working with Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative to build a $9 million microgrid with U.S. Department of Energy funding. The electric cooperative will install a 4 megawatt-hour energy storage system and add a 1 megawatt solar system at the reservation in suburban Minneapolis.

It’s unclear whether federal funding for such projects will continue in President-elect Trump’s second term, but for now tribal energy advocates see microgrids as a good solution to both lower energy burdens and improve reliability.   

“This is a great opportunity to create a success story in terms of leveraging cutting-edge technology, being able to help frontline communities, and for tribes and co-ops to work together,” Kwak said.

Minnesota tribe’s solar-powered resilience hub would provide cost savings, backup power to local community 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.

The Solar for Good grant program has awarded over $220,000 in grants and solar panel donations to Wisconsin nonprofit organizations for the Fall 2024 grant round. The 14 nonprofits will install 16 projects for a total of 1,000 kilowatts of solar electricity, leading to more than $2.3 million in renewable energy investments in Wisconsin.

The following organizations have been awarded Fall 2024 Solar for Good grants to install new solar energy
systems:
CAP Services, Inc. – community service, Stevens Point
COULEECAP, Inc. Hillcrest Manor – affordable housing, Ontario
COULEECAP, Inc. REACH – community service, La Crosse
EAGLE School of Madison – education, Fitchburg
Family and Children’s Center – community service, La Crosse
Family Services of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, Inc. – community service, Beloit
Holy Spirit Parish – house of worship, Stevens Point
Hunger Task Force – community service, West Milwaukee
Ozaukee Food Alliance – community service, Saukville
Recreation and Fitness Resources Center – recreation, Bayfield
Union Congregational United Church of Christ – house of worship, Green Bay
VIA CDC – affordable housing, Milwaukee
West Central Wisconsin Community Action Agency – affordable housing, Hudson
*One organization has asked to remain anonymous.

The grant recipients from the Fall 2024 grant round are a diverse range of organizations, representing affordable housing organizations, schools, and houses of worship. Each facility’s solar project will have a significant impact on their budgets, and will allow them to focus more funds on their missions. Holy Spirit Parish will install 90 panels atop their place of worship in Stevens Point, Family Services of Southern Wisconsin will incorporate 69.6kW of solar to their rooftop, and VIA CDC will install solar systems of 5.33 kilowatts on three housing projects in Milwaukee.

“We are thrilled and deeply grateful for this opportunity through RENEW Wisconsin’s Solar for Good initiative. This support allows us to further our mission with VIA’s Turnkey Program and new construction housing, making a lasting, positive impact on our community through sustainable energy,” said JoAnna Bautch, Executive Director at VIA CDC.

Similarly, the Solar for Good grant will allow Family Services of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois to continue serving families in need by reducing operational costs and allocating more funding to programming.

“This funding has allowed us to equip our Next Steps Family Resilience Center with solar power that will be vital to the long-term sustainability of this programming for unhoused parents with young children while also contributing to a healthier community overall,” said Kelsey M. Hood-Christenson, President and CEO, of Family & Children’s Services of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois.

Since 2017, Solar for Good has awarded grants to over 200 nonprofits across Wisconsin, leading to more than $29.4 million of renewable energy investments in the state. Collectively, Solar for Good grant recipients will go on to install more than 10 megawatts of solar energy.

“We are most grateful to the Couillard Solar Foundation for awarding us half the solar panels we need for installation of our solar array at Holy Spirit Parish in Stevens Point,” said Susan Zach Burns, Solar Project Lead of Holy Spirit Parish. “By reducing our reliance on fossil fuel and turning to solar for a good share of our energy needs, we are joining with you and others to address greenhouse gas emissions and to care for our common home, our beautiful Earth.”

“Our congregation has been energized literally and figuratively by our solar installation and our grant from Solar for Good. Not only will our installation reduce the carbon footprint of our church, it has inspired our members to invest in solar and other climate-friendly initiatives as well,” said Reverand Bridget Flad Daniels, Union Congregational UCC of Green Bay.

Through the assistance from Solar for Good grants, these 16 installations will accelerate Wisconsin’s transition to solar energy, facilitating the expansion of environmental stewardship and energy savings. As Solar for Good looks ahead to future grant rounds, the program will remain committed to supporting nonprofits and houses of worship across the state of Wisconsin by supporting organizations in their efforts to contribute to a positive environmental impact, enhance economic advancement in Wisconsin, and strengthen their ability to aid the communities they serve.

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When regulators allowed Duke Energy to lower bill credits to homes with rooftop solar, critics warned the solar industry would suffer a major loss. 

A year after the new rates took effect, available data show those detractors had a point, with new household solar connections in Duke territory on pace to drop about 40% compared to 2023. 

Yet the reason for the dip is multifaceted — ranging from steep interest rates to the loss of a popular rebate program — and seems to have had little impact on longtime installers in the state.

Indeed, many say they’re optimistic about the future of home solar, partly because of new Duke incentives for home batteries that are already having an impact. Their push now is to extend and expand them.  

“We believe this is a strong way forward to support our utility grid and the ability of homeowners to produce and use their own energy,” said Brandon Pendry, communications specialist at Southern Energy Management, an installer based in Raleigh. 

A complex truce on net metering

Most homes that go solar stay connected to the utility grid, drawing electricity at night and providing surplus power on sunny days. The question is what bargain these solar owners strike with their utility for this give and take, known as net metering.  

The arrangement for Duke’s North Carolina customers was long straightforward: they bought the electrons they needed at the retail rate and sold excess ones back at the same rate. Like all customers, they faced a minimum bill charge for the company’s fixed grid costs, such as poles and wires.

But this approach has downsides for a for-profit utility like Duke, whose business model depends on buying or producing electrons at one cost and selling them for a higher one. Like many utilities around the country, Duke had sought for years to impose more costs on solar customers and credit them less for their contributions to the grid. 

A major campaign contributor in the state legislature with an army of lobbyists, Duke helped write and pass two laws, one in 2017 and another in 2021, requiring an end to retail net metering by 2027. 

Seeking to avoid the bruising battles over net metering seen in California and other states, some North Carolina solar installers and clean energy advocacy nonprofits sought – and achieved – compromise with Duke instead. 

Under the deal, new solar customers can choose a “time of use” rate, in which they’re rewarded more for electrons they add to the grid, and charged more for those they subtract, during times of heavy demand. Alternatively, until the start of 2027, customers can select a “bridge rate,” in which they get a one-to-one exchange for electrons taken from and given to the grid. 

While sophisticated customers might conceivably squeeze out substantial benefits of solar with the time-of-use rates, installers pushed the bridge rate for its simplicity and certainty, which they deem nearly as good as the old net metering rate.

“All in all, I think residential solar installers are feeling excited about where the industry is going right now,” said Matt Abele, the executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association.

Industry cross currents 

But the dip in sales since the complex truce took effect is undeniable. Abele’s group tracked a huge spike in solar projects registered with state regulators in September 2023, just before the new net metering rates were implemented, followed by a steep drop off that bottomed out last December.  

Different metrics supplied by Duke — solar connections rather than registrations — show new solar rooftop customers on pace to number about 5,300 in 2024, compared to about 9,100 in 2023 and 10,200 in 2022. The number also falls well short of Duke’s own predictions for new residential solar customers for this year of 11,400. 

Yet the installers contacted for this article were largely unfazed. Reached before the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Clary Franko, chief operating officer at Asheville’s Sugar Hollow Solar, predicted sales this year would be lower than last, but not by a huge amount. “Hooray for the bridge rate!” she said. 

Executives at Yes Solar Solutions, based in Cary, agreed. “In residential, the net metering bridge rate has kind of kept things intact,” said Stew Miller, president of the company. “I think everybody's doing as well as to be expected.” 

And Pendry at Southern Energy Management said his company had more potential customers this year than the year before.  

“Looking back at our previous 12-month period, we saw high interest from homeowners who wanted to lock into the legacy net metering program,” he said. “Moving into this last 12-month period, we have seen slightly more interest in solar overall.” 

The disconnect between these companies’ optimism and the decline in sales may reflect that fewer installers are doing business now in North Carolina, with 40 companies registering new systems in the state in August versus 57 last September, according to the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association. 

Indeed, established rooftop solar companies say part of their business model now includes cleaning up after so-called bad actors, who installed panels incorrectly or incompletely during the heady days of the early 2020’s.

“There were so many systems that were put in in our area that we’re having to redo,” said Dave Hollister, president of Asheville-based Sundance Solar Systems. “It's been a significant problem in our community.”

Still, a spokesperson for EnergySage, a marketplace that helps connect vetted solar companies with customers, says the company hasn't seen any decrease in the number of active vetted installers working in the state.

It’s also true that the most successful companies are used to the “solar coaster,” the ebb and flow of sales based on policies as well as market conditions. Installations rose sharply immediately after the pandemic, when Duke was still offering rebates, the old net metering rates were in effect, and interest rates were low. That all changed. 

“As usual, we have all these cross currents in the industry,” said Hollister. “I can say that probably the biggest chilling effect was the interest rate hikes.” 

‘An incredible program’

There’s another key factor fueling hope among solar installers: Power Pair, a battery incentive program implemented this spring that was the final puzzle piece in the net metering compromise with Duke. 

For adding a home battery, Duke customers can get a rebate on both it and their solar array. Combined with a 30% federal tax credit, the cash back could cut the cost of an average $40,500 system down to less than $20,000. 

Power Pair participants subscribed to the simpler bridge rate allow Duke to remotely manage their battery and earn an extra $37 a month on average. Enrollees in the more complicated time-of-use rate plan, on the other hand, don’t get monthly incentives but do retain full control of their systems. 

Installers say the incentive is a huge hit, with the great majority of their customers now choosing the bridge rate and buying a battery along with solar panels.

“It’s gotten us to a place where we always thought we would be,” said Miller of Yes Solar, “in that many, if not most, solar systems now include some element of storage.”

The battery inducement drove interest in solar overall, said Bryce Bruncati, director of residential sales with 8M Solar. A whopping 95% of its customers are now installing batteries with their solar systems, as opposed to about a quarter before. “The Power Pair program has been a big success,” he said. 

The uptick in batteries occurred statewide, according to EnergySage. Sixty-nine percent of North Carolina homeowners who went solar with EnergySage in the third quarter of 2024 included battery storage, compared to just 8% in the same period in 2023.

Still, Power Pair is just a pilot program, set to end when each Duke utility reaches a cap of 30,000 kilowatts. Duke reports about 2,000 participants as of early September. According to the company’s website, the utility serving the Asheville area and the eastern part of the state is 36% full, and the one serving central North Carolina is 21% full.

For the solar industry and its advocates, then, the priorities looking forward are several. Extend Power Pair, and count on market forces to make batteries and rooftop solar economically attractive even when the bridge rate expires in 2027. At the same time, expand the incentives to include small businesses and nonprofits, currently under new net metering rates.

“Power Pair has been an incredible program,” said Sugar Hollow’s Franko. Extending it to the commercial sector would make a huge difference, she said, “opening the door for new types of industries that probably aren't thinking about this because sustainability isn't their goal, but reliability would be.”

Correction: Duke Energy's Power Pair pilot program was 36% full for the utility serving the Asheville area and 21% full for the utility serving central North Carolina. An earlier version of this story included incorrect numbers.

Home rooftop solar dips in N.C. after Duke Energy reduces payments, but many installers unfazed 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.

North Carolina regulators on Friday accepted Duke Energy’s controversial plan for curbing carbon pollution, a blueprint that ramps up renewable energy and ratchets down coal power but also includes 9 gigawatts of new plants that burn natural gas.

The biennial plan is mandated under a 2021 state law, which requires Duke to zero out its climate-warming emissions by midcentury and cut them 70% by the end of the decade.

The timing of the order from the North Carolina Utilities Commission, two months ahead of schedule, caught many advocates by surprise. But its content did not: it hewed closely to a settlement deal Duke reached this summer with a trade group for the renewable energy industry; Walmart; and Public Staff, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate.

But critics were dismayed by regulators’ abdication of the 2030 deadline. The ruling said Duke no longer needed a plan to make the reductions by decade’s end, instead telling it to “pursue ‘all reasonable steps’ to achieve the [70%] target by the earliest possible date.”

“Major step back on climate,” Maggie Shober, research director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy,” wrote on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, adding, “for those that say it couldn’t be done, Duke had a 67% reduction by 2030 in its 2020 [long-range plan.] The utility industry generally, and Duke in particular, has had opportunity after opportunity to do better. They chose not to, and here we are.”

EPA rules could complicate plans for gas plants

And while many observers say the three large gas plants approved in the near-term carbon plan are better than the five originally proposed by Duke, detractors note the facilities still could run afoul of rules finalized this spring by the Biden-Harris administration.

“Duke’s plan isn’t even compliant with the latest EPA regulations related to greenhouse gas pollution,” David Rogers, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said in a statement. 

Concerns about the Biden-Harris rules, along with doubt that the natural gas plants could be converted to burn carbon-free hydrogen, appeared not to persuade regulators. 

“The Commission acknowledges that there are uncertainties and risks associated with new natural gas-fired generation resources, but this is true of all resources,” the panel wrote. 

On the contrary, regulators believe Duke can make use of gas plants after the state’s 2050 zero-carbon deadline, even if clean hydrogen doesn’t pan out.

“Accordingly,” the panel said, “the Commission determines that a 35-year anticipated useful life of new natural gas-fired generation and its assumed capital costs are reasonable for planning purposes.”

The greenlight for the gas infrastructure is not absolute, commissioners emphasized in their order, since Duke still must obtain a separate permit for the facilities. But advocates still bemoaned the anticipated impact on customers.

“This order leaves the door open for Duke Energy to stall on carbon compliance in order to develop additional resources, like natural gas, that largely benefit their shareholders over ratepayers,” Matt Abele, the executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, said via text message.

‘Positive step’ for offshore wind

Still, Abele and other advocates acknowledged the plan’s upsides, including its increase in renewables like solar and batteries. The 2022 plan limited those resources to about 1 gigawatt per year; this year’s version increases the short-term annual addition to about 1.7 gigawatts.

Regulators’ decision to bless 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2034 and call for Duke to complete an “Acquisition Request for Information” by next summer also drew measured praise. 

“This order is an overall positive step for offshore wind,” Karly Lohan, North Carolina program manager for the Southeastern Wind Coalition, said in an email, adding, “we still need to see Duke move with urgency and administer the [request for information] as soon as possible.”

With regulators required to approve a new carbon-reduction plan for Duke every two years, advocates are already looking ahead to next year, when the process begins anew.

“Proceedings in 2025 present another chance to get North Carolina back on track to achieving the carbon reduction goals as directed by state law,” Will Scott, Environmental Defense Fund’s director of Southeast climate and clean energy, said in a statement.

“By accelerating offshore wind and solar, the Commission could still set a course for meaningful emissions reductions from the power sector that are fueling the effects of climate change, including dangerous and expensive storms like Hurricane Helene.”

And like Scott, David Neal, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, isn’t giving up on the state’s 2030 carbon-reduction deadline, the commission’s latest order notwithstanding.

“We’ll continue to push for the clean energy future that North Carolinians deserve and that state law and federal carbon pollution limits mandate,” he said in a statement.

Months ahead of schedule, North Carolina regulators accept Duke Energy’s controversial plan to reduce carbon 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.

EVs could help hasten the ongoing transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy through the end of the decade, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA predicts that more than half of the world's electricity will come from low-emission sources by 2030, and that demand for coal, oil, and gas will have also...

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Seventeen days after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, tearing down power lines, destroying water mains, and disabling cell phone towers, the signs of relief were hard to miss. 

Trucks formed a caravan along Interstate 40, filled with camouflaged soldiers, large square tanks of water, and essentials from pet food to diapers. In towns, roadside signs — official versions emblazoned with nonprofit relief logos and wooden makeshift ones scrawled with paint — advertised free food and water. 

And then there were the generators. 

The noisy machines powered the trailers where Asheville residents sought showers, weeks after the city’s water system failed. They fueled the food trucks delivering hot meals to the thousands without working stoves. They filtered water for communities to drink and flush toilets. 

Western North Carolina is far from unique. In the wake of disaster, generators are a staple of relief efforts around the globe. But across the region, a New Orleans-based nonprofit is working to displace as many of these fossil fuel burners as they can, swapping in batteries charged with solar panels instead. 

It’s the largest response effort the Footprint Project has ever deployed in its short life, and organizers hope the impact will extend far into the future. 

“If we can get this sustainable tech in fast, then when the real rebuild happens, there’s a whole new conversation that wouldn’t have happened if we were just doing the same thing that we did every time,” said Will Heegaard, operations director for the organization.  

“Responders use what they know works, and our job is to get them stuff that works better than single-use fossil fuels do,” he said. “And then, they can start asking for that. It trickles up to a systems change.” 

A ‘no-brainer’ solution to the problem of gas generators 

The rationale for diesel and gas generators is simple: they’re widely available. They’re relatively easy to operate. Assuming fuel is available, they can run 24-7, keeping people warm, fed, and connected to their loved ones even when the electric grid is down. Indubitably, they save lives.  

But they’re not without downsides. The burning of fossil fuels causes not just more just more carbon that exacerbates the climate crisis, but smog and soot-forming air pollutants that can trigger asthma attacks and other respiratory problems.  

In Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, generators were so prevalent after the electric grid failed that harmful air pollution in San Juan soared above the safe legal limit. The risk is especially acute for sensitive populations who turn to generators for powering vital equipment like oxygenators. 

There are also practical challenges. Generators aren’t cheap, retailing at big box stores for more than $1,000. Once initial fuel supplies run out — as happened in parts of Western North Carolina in the immediate aftermath of Helene — it can be difficult and costly to find more. And the machines are noisy, potentially harming health and creating more stress for aid workers and the people they serve. 

Heegaard witnessed these challenges firsthand in Guinea in 2016 when he was responding to an Ebola outbreak. A paramedic, his job was to train locals to collect blood samples and store them in generator-powered refrigerators that would be motorcycled to the city of Conakry for testing. He had a grant to give cash reimbursements to the lab techs for the fuel. 

“This is so hard already, and the idea of doing a cash reimbursement in a super poor rural country for gas generators seems really hard,” Heegaard recalled thinking. “I had heard of solar refrigerators. I asked the local logistician in Conakry, ‘Are these things even possible?’”  

The next day, the logistician said they were. They could be installed within a month. “It was just a no-brainer,” said Heegaard. “The only reason we hadn’t done it is the grant wasn’t written that way.” 

‘Game changing for a response’

Two years later, the Footprint Project was born of that experience. With just seven full-time staff, the group cycles in workers in the wake of disaster, partnering up with local solar companies, nonprofits and others, to gather supplies and distribute as many as they can. 

They deploy solar-powered charging stations, water filtration systems, and other so-called climate tech to communities who need it most — starting with those without power, water, or a generator at all, and extending to those looking to offset their fossil fuel combustion.

The group has now built nearly 50 such solar-powered microgrids in the region, from Lake Junaluska to Linville Falls, more than it has ever supplied in the wake of disaster. The recipients range from volunteer fire stations to trailer parks to an art collective in West Asheville.

Mike Talyad, a photographer who last year launched the collective to support artists of color, teamed up with the Grassroots Aid Partnership, a national nonprofit, to fill in relief gaps in the wake of Helene. “The whole city was trying to figure it out,” he said. 

Solar panels from Footprint that initially powered a water filter have now largely displaced the generators for the team’s food trucks, which last week were providing 1,000 meals a day. “When we did the switchover,” Talyad said, “it was a time when gas was still questionable.”

Last week, the team at Footprint also provided six solar panels, a Tesla battery, and charging station to displace a noisy generator at a retirement community in South Asheville.

The device was powering a system that sucked water from a pond, filtered it, and rendered it potable. Picking up their jugs of drinking water, a steady flow of residents oohed and aahed as the solar panels were installed, and sighed in relief when the din of the generator abated. 

“Most responders are not playing with solar microgrids because they’re better for the environment,” said Heegaard. “They’re playing with it because if they can turn their generator off for 12 hours a day, that means literally half the fuel savings. Some of them are spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on diesel or gas. That is game changing for a response.” 

‘Showing up for their neighbors’

Footprint’s robust relief effort and the variety of its beneficiaries is owed in part to the scale of Helene’s destruction, with more than 1 million in North Carolina alone who initially lost power.  

“It’s really hard to put into words what’s happening out there right now,” said Matt Abele, the executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, who visited in the early days after the storm. “It is just the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen — whole mobile home parks that are just completely gone.” 

But the breadth of the response is also owed to Footprint’s approach to aid, which is rooted in connections to grassroots groups, government organizations, and the local solar industry. All have partnered together for the relief effort. 

“We’ve been incredibly overwhelmed by the positive response that we’ve seen from the clean energy community,” Abele said, “both from an equipment donation standpoint and a financial resources standpoint.” 

Some four hours east of the devastation in Western North Carolina, Greentech Renewables Raleigh has been soliciting and storing solar panels and other goods. It’s also raising money for products that are harder to get for free — like PV wire and batteries. Then it trucks the supplies west.

“We’ve got bodies, we’ve got trucks, we’ve got relationships,” said Shasten Jolley, the manager at the company, which warehouses and sells supplies to a variety of installers. “So, we try to utilize all those things to help out.”

The cargo is delivered to Mars Hill, a tiny college town about 20 miles north of Asheville that was virtually untouched by Helene. Through a local regional government organization, Frank Johnson, the owner of a robotics company, volunteered his 110,000-square-foot facility for storage.

Johnson is just one example of how people in the region have leapt to help each other, said Abele, who’s based in Raleigh.

“You can tell when you’re out there,” he said, “that so many people in the community are coping by showing up for their neighbors.”

‘Available for the next response’

To be sure, Footprint’s operations aren’t seamless at every turn. For instance, most of the donated solar panels designated for the South Asheville retirement community didn’t work, a fact the installers learned once they’d made the 40-minute drive in the morning and tried to connect them to the system. They returned later that afternoon with functioning units, but then faced the challenge of what to do with the broken ones.

“This is solar aid waste,” Heegaard said. “The last site we did yesterday had the same problem. Now we have to figure out how to recycle them.”

It’s also not uncommon for the microgrids to stop working, Heegaard said, because of understandable operator errors, like running them all night to provide heat.  

But above all, the problem for Footprint is scale. A tiny organization among behemoth relief groups, they simply don’t have the bandwidth for a larger response. When Milton followed immediately on the heels of Helene, Heegaard’s group made the difficult choice to hunker down in North Carolina. 

With climate-fueled weather disasters poised to increase, the organization hopes to entice the biggest, most well-resourced players in disaster relief to start regularly using solar microgrids in their efforts. 

As power is slowly restored across the region, with just over 5,000 remaining without electricity, there’s also the question of what comes next.

While there’s a parallel conversation underway among advocates and policymakers about making microgrids and distributed solar a more permanent feature of the grid, Footprint also hopes to inspire some of that change from the ground up. Maybe the volunteer fire station decides to put solar panels on its roof when it rebuilds, for instance. 

“We can change the conversation around resilience and recovery by directly pointing to something that worked when the lights were out and debris was in the street,” Heegaard said.

As for the actual Footprint equipment, the dream is to create “lending libraries” in places like Asheville, to be cycled in and out of community events and disaster relief.

“The solar trailer or the microgrid or the water maker that went to the Burnsville elementary school right after the storm – that can be recycled and used to power the music stage or the movie in the park,” Heegaard said. “Then that equipment is here, it’s being utilized, and it’s available for the next response, whether it’s in Knoxville or Atlanta or South Carolina.”

This disaster relief nonprofit is pioneering a clean energy alternative to noisy, polluting generators 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.

When farmer Trent Gerlach found out a solar farm would be built on the land he had long worked in northwestern Illinois, he was disappointed. 

“As a farmer, seeing that land taken out of production is difficult, when you farmed it for many years, you’ve been stewards to that land, fertilized that land, taken care of it as if it was your own,” he said. 

Gerlach’s family had been raising corn, soybeans and livestock since 1968, and like many farmers, they leased farmland in addition to working their own land. And when the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic. 

“The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal,” he said. 

But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.

Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep. 

“We don’t own the land, we don’t get a say — that’s landowners’ rights, and I’m very pro that,” Gerlach recounted. “In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying, ‘that’s how we’ve always done it so that’s what we’re going to do.’ Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you’re for or against it, it’s coming, it’s what’s happening. As an agriculture producer, we’re going to adapt with it.” 

A promising arrangement

Researchers around the country are exploring agrivoltaics, or co-locating solar generation with agriculture in a mutually beneficial way. Projects range from growing tomatoes in California to wild blueberries in Maine, with varying levels of success.

Acciona regional manager Kyle Charpie said that sheep grazing appears an especially promising form of agrivoltaics, and one that the company is likely to continue exploring globally. Solar operators need to keep vegetation controlled, and sheep are a more effective and ecological way to do it than mechanized mowing. Acciona has long had a sheep agrivoltaic operation in Portugal, Charpie noted, and two projects in Texas are underway. 

“It’s incredibly cost-effective — sheep don’t break down like a tractor; if a tractor blows a belt, you’ve lost a whole day of cutting,” he said. “These grasses grow wickedly fast, it’s that constant presence of the sheep that’s been super super effective. It aligns with our sustainability goals.”

“It’s tough to say we’re the greatest renewable company in the world [if] we have a bunch of tractors running up and down our fields belching out CO2,” he continued. 

Another advantage, Charpie said, is that at the end of the solar array’s lifespan, the land beneath it will be restored and refreshed.

“We have all these sheep now who will spend 30-plus years breathing, living, using their hooves to churn up ground, even dying; it’s the circle of life,” he said. “When these farms get turned back to the families, that soil condition will be wonderful.” 

‘He saw an opportunity here’

Gerlach’s family had about 50 ewes when the idea for grazing around the solar panels struck. He “hounded” Acciona, in Charpie’s words, to bring an agrivoltaic deal to fruition.

“He saw an opportunity here, and he has been his own best advocate, banging down the door, checking how close are we, when will we get our sheep here,” Charpie said. 

Gerlach ultimately bought about 500 sheep of two types: Dorper and Katahdin, small breeds that can fit easily under solar panels. 

“The panels create lots of shade — during the heat of the day, they’ll all be underneath the panels for shade,” Gerlach said. “In early mornings, late evenings they’re out grazing aggressively. They don’t bother the panels one bit.”

Gerlach said his family “used to raise livestock like everybody did back in the day,” and his farm has won awards for its cattle, but raising livestock has become less profitable in recent years. Agrivoltaics offer an opportunity to delve back into raising sheep, something Gerlach loves. A commercial sheep operation would only be possible with the payments for vegetation management, he said.

“Raising sheep in the United States is challenging because the market for sheep is not very high,” he said. There’s not much of a domestic wool market, and “the meat side of sheep and lamb never really caught on in the U.S. — we’re a beef, pork, poultry-consuming country.” 

Gerlach sells the bulk of his lambs around the Easter season, and largely for kosher and halal consumption. Since that market is so limited, the ewes largely earn their keep being paid to graze.

“We love providing stewardship to the animals. That’s what U.S. agriculture was built on hundreds of years ago,” Gerlach said. “It marries really well with our crop production” on nearby land. “In agriculture you need diversification. By bringing sheep and livestock production in, we can afford to hire more full-time employees.” 

Sheep are the livestock best suited to agrivoltaics, stakeholders agree. 

“You can’t use cattle because they’re too large, they would rub on the panels and break them,” Gerlach said. “You can’t use goats because goats would climb on the panels, and they’re natural chewers, they would chew on the wires.” 

The High Point solar array is divided up into separate plots with fences, “like perfect little pens for the sheep,” added Charpie. 

In a bigger uninterrupted plot, a farmer would likely need to move water sources for sheep strategically around the area to make sure the animals cover the entire plot. Gerlach’s flock only grazes about a fifth of the Acciona solar array. He’s hoping to expand, though feeding and sheltering sheep during the winter when they can’t graze is costly. 

“I’ve got three young kids. Hopefully we raise them in agriculture. It’s such a good practice for our young people to learn responsibility and stewardship,” Gerlach said. 

“[The animals] come first, they get fed and watered and taken care of before us. Sometimes agriculture gets portrayed in a poor light, especially larger production agriculture. I try to really push that that’s not everybody. Talk to a local farmer, a local person — you generally see that we’re stewards of the land, we want healthy ground and livestock. That can marry in fine with clean energy.”

How a solar development turned from threat to opportunity for an Illinois farmer 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.

More than seven years after New Hampshire regulators first approved the idea of using community solar to create savings for low-income households, electric bill discounts are finally on the horizon for the first batch of participants.

“There has been this rhetoric that we want solar to benefit low-income people, but whenever we try to propose programs that will make that happen, they’ve been immensely slow to roll out,” said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire. “But despite being frustrated, I am really glad this is finally happening.”

The state energy department is reviewing seven proposals for community solar arrays that will allocate a portion of the credits they receive for sending power onto the grid to low-income households in the form of credits on their monthly bills. The projects selected will work with the utilities to identify customers receiving discounted rates, who will be automatically enrolled in the program.

Community solar is widely considered an important strategy for extending the benefits of renewable energy to people unable to take advantage of rooftop solar. Nationally, some two-thirds of households can’t install solar panels, generally because they don’t own their home, don’t have a suitable roof, or can’t afford the cost of the array, said Kate Daniel, Northeast regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access. Those obstacles are particularly challenging for low-income households, which are more likely to rent, need costly roof repairs, or lack the cash or credit scores needed to pay for panels, she added.

Community solar, on the other hand, allows these households to buy renewable energy, supporting climate action and saving money. Recent research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that community solar users have, on average, 23% lower incomes than rooftop solar adopters and are six times more likely to live in multifamily homes, suggesting community solar helps increase adoption of solar among these populations. 

Why New Hampshire is important

Many states — including New Hampshire’s northeastern neighbors like Massachusetts and New York — have created programs to encourage the development of community solar projects that provide financial benefits to low-income households. But New Hampshire is falling behind: A recent report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, a federally funded research center, identifies New Hampshire as the state with the smallest share of its solar production going to disadvantaged households. 

“We really have to ask ourselves why that is,” Evans-Brown said. 

The first mandate for utilities to develop a program using community solar to benefit low-income households came as part of the order establishing the state’s current net metering system in 2017. Before a program could get off the ground, the state legislature passed a 2019 bill boosting the net metering rate for community solar projects serving low-income households, and the state suspended the earlier requirement until 2021, declaring it could be redundant given the new bill. 

In 2021, the state asked for — and received — an additional suspension until July 2022, arguing that it had only finalized the eligibility rules for the net metering adder in September 2020, and therefore the utilities should not have to develop their own programs until the adder had a full two years to potentially spark development. 

Then, in July 2022, the legislature passed a bill requiring the creation of a new community solar program including projects totalling up to six megawatts of capacity each year, each providing at least 25% of the credits it generates to low- or moderate-income customers. Customers will be automatically enrolled, but given ten days to opt out.

This program opened for proposals in December 2023, with a deadline of February 29, 2024. The state is now reviewing the seven proposals it received. If the applications total more than the six-megawatt cap, priority will be given to projects proposing greater benefits for low-income households.

“We are hammering out some of the final details with the utilities before we make the official designations,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs for the New Hampshire energy department. “Once we get the details of the processes finalized, we expect this process to move far more quickly in the future.”

‘To be determined’

There are elements of the program to like, advocates said. 

Traditionally, it has been difficult for solar developers to cost-effectively find and recruit low-income customers for community solar. New Hampshire’s strategy of working with utilities to automatically enroll households that have already been identified streamlines the process. The state’s plan to review the program each year is also a strength, said Kirt Mayland, a visiting professor at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law and Graduate School. 

Uncertainties remain, however. Enrolling customers from the utilities’ electric assistance programs may be more efficient for developers, but it runs the risk of missing a lot of low-income households that are eligible for the discounted rate but not signed up. To reach the largest possible number of potential subscribers, a program should also accept households enrolled in other means-tested programs, like Medicaid or SNAP, or even simply allow customers to self-attest their qualifying income. 

“The evidence on states with self-attestation has found there is very little fraud — it really does get over the barriers,” said Daniel, who is not very familiar with the New Hampshire program but has worked extensively with community solar in best practices. 

The small size of the program could mean small savings for each participating household, Mayland said.

“There’s a concern about how much money is actually getting placed on the low-income customer’s bill — sometimes it doesn’t blow you away,” he said. “It’s to be determined whether it’s an effective program to help out the low-income community in New Hampshire.”

New Hampshire’s low-income community solar program is finally nearing the starting line  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.

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A newly published study examining property values near dozens of large Midwest solar farms has found no significant negative impact — and even a slight positive effect — from the projects, according to the data. 

Loyola University researcher Gilbert Michaud has attended scores of community meetings about proposed solar projects across the Midwest. In past research, he quantified that property values were the most common concern brought up in local hearings about proposed utility-scale solar.

And while solar arrays may have an aesthetic impact, property values are influenced by a wide range of other factors, such as the quality of schools and the local economy.

“I’ve observed a lot of the negative comments framed as ‘I think’ or ‘I saw something on social media,’” said Michaud, an assistant professor of environmental policy at the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. So he sought to “elevate the discussion from ‘I think, I think, I think,’” by injecting it with some hard data.

His latest study, published in the December 2024 issue of the journal Solar Compass, looked at property values surrounding 70 utility-scale solar projects in the Midwest and found they actually had a minor positive effect — increasing values 0.5% to 2%. 

“While the impact itself — of a few thousand dollars — might not be incredibly meaningful,” said Michaud, “clearly these projects drive economic development in rural communities, through jobs, tax contributions, etcetera, which in turn increase residential property values.”

Emotions running high 

Michael Wildermuth, a landowner in Allen County, Ohio, was glad to hear about the proposed 300 MW Birch Solar farm, since he supports clean energy and welcomed the economic benefits. Wildermuth cofounded an organization, Allen Auglaize Coalition for Reasonable Energy (named for the two counties where the project would be sited), to advocate for the project as it faced local opposition.

“The nearest neighbors became enraged so quickly and voiced their rage so loudly that others were placed in a reactionary mode,” Wildermuth said. “The neighbors were greatly concerned with property values and flooding. The landowners were afraid of these vocal neighbors, the public officials were afraid of being on the wrong side of a political ‘hot potato’ issue.”

The developer appealed to the Ohio State Supreme Court, and Allen Auglaize Coalition for Reasonable Energy filed an amicus brief in support of the solar farm. Wildermuth wishes more data about property values had been available during the debate. He also thinks opponents ignored the $81 million the developer estimated it would contribute to the economy, with local officials saying the project would have little local economic benefit since the power would go to an Amazon facility.

“Just get people ‘all het up’ and you don’t have to deal with reason and facts,” Wildermuth said.

“Do I think solar farms could actually improve property values or the financial well-being of landowners and neighbors of solar farms? Yes, I do. We argued that. We also pointed out that, in the rural area where the farm was planned, the properties would remain stable for 30 years,” preventing them from being developed for other purposes that neighbors may find less desirable. 

Shining new light

The study, co-authored by Loyola graduate Sampson Hao, notes that the benefits of rooftop solar on energy bills and property values are well-documented. But less is known about how utility-scale solar farms impact nearby properties — even though utility-scale solar accounts for about three-quarters of new solar development. 

The study reviewed 70 solar farms built in the Midwest between 2009 and 2022, from a database by Berkeley Laboratory including solar farms over 5 MW. Hao and Michaud analyzed property values compiled by real estate firm Zillow, comparing values five years before a solar project became operational, with values at the operational date, which is often about two years after construction starts. 

They aggregated by zip code, and controlled for factors like the COVID-19 pandemic that could affect housing values in a given year. Three-bedroom houses were used as a measure of overall property values. They also analyzed “control group” zip codes near the solar farm zip codes, but without solar farms, to account for other factors that might affect property values.

Michaud noted that while the number of bedrooms and other factors have a much larger impact on property values, the small positive impact that nearby solar farms could have could be similar to that of cultural amenities, like arts centers. Solar farms can also have an impact on schools — a major factor in determining property values — since solar projects augment local tax bases. Solar developers also often make ongoing contributions to school districts in the form of donations, supplies and energy education opportunities. 

The study showed high numbers of solar farms going online in 2017 and 2021, with a smaller spike in 2020. 

The projects included in the study range from a 10 MW urban installation in Chicago, installed by Exelon in 2010, to the 268 MW Riverstart Solar Park in Indiana, from 2021. Only 11 of the 70 projects studied were over 100 MW in capacity. Indiana had the most arrays at 22, followed by 14 in Minnesota, eight in Michigan and seven in Illinois. 

The most beneficial impact on property values was from solar farms between 5 and 20 MW in size, perhaps in part because these can be hidden by vegetative buffers. 

“The paper is not about a house that’s 200 feet away from a solar project, that’s very rarely the case,” said Hao, noting that developers often offer to buy properties at above market value in such situations. “We wanted to look at a bigger scale. A project between 5 and 20 MW, you’re really not supposed to even see these with your bare eyes.”

Midwestern focus 

Michaud said that debunking myths around solar farms is particularly important in the Midwest, where there is much untapped potential for solar. While it has less sun than the Southeast and California, which have led the nation in solar farm development, the Midwest has massive stretches of agricultural land where solar can be deployed along with crops.

“This is a really important finding for Midwestern government officials, land owners, and many others to know about,” Michaud said. “Many of these folks are now making decisions about whether to host a large-scale solar project in their community, and the potential impacts to property values is often something that comes up in local debates and at local hearings. Data can help tell a story and move the debate beyond anecdotal or subjective arguments.”

The Loyola study cites a 2018 analysis of 956 specific solar farms by a University of Texas researcher that found no conclusive evidence of impact on property values one way or another. The Loyola researchers also noted a study by Berkeley Laboratory that found about a 1% decline in property values around 2,000 solar farms in six states on the east and west coasts and in Minnesota.

“Most Midwestern states have 10 to 20 gigawatts of potential utility-scale solar in their queue, and developers are coming off of the coasts where the grid is more congested and there is less land for development, targeting agricultural land in the center of the country,” Michaud said. “Finding a large plot of land with good solar irradiation and access to a substation is the sweet spot for a lot of solar developers, and in essence, positive attributes of farming crops in the Midwest are also positive attributes for farming ground-mounted, large-scale solar.” 

Perception becomes reality 

The study notes the irony that perception plays a significant role in determining property values, and fears about property value declines can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

“Projection and speculation drive market forces,” Michaud said. “A farmer might be angry that a solar farm is going in the community, he’s going to sell and move to Florida. A buyer thinks, ‘maybe I can negotiate this price down,’ and the house sells for less than its value, and an appraiser looks at that. But none of this is real, it’s just based on speculation and emotion, which then drives data points … it all started with an emotional response.” 

Hao theorized that developers who make poor choices in siting and managing solar farms can have an impact on property values elsewhere, if negative stories about solar spread by word of mouth or social media. 

“Is a developer doing their best to have as much of a buffer as economically feasible?” he asked. “Is the developer making vegetative screenings so you’re not going to see millions of panels? Is the developer doing their best to move the inverter to the center of the leased land so noise doesn’t get over the road? There’s a lot of things at the end of the day that developers can do better. It’s up to the developers to really step up their game to eliminate those potential negative effects.” 

The Loyola study notes that solar developers often do things like hosting county fairs or supporting local organizations that can increase property values. Michaud said it’s possible such dynamics were reflected in their data showing small increases in property values, along with other benefits.

“From an economic perspective,” Michaud said, “locals should increasingly look at these data to understand the job opportunities, wages paid, new tax revenues and negligible or positive impacts on property values, and realize that large-scale solar projects might actually be an amenity in their community.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Michael Wildermuth planned to lease land for the Birch solar project, and that he personally filed an amicus brief in the case. The story has also been updated to clarify the scope of Gilbert Michaud’s research.

Midwest study finds solar farms don’t hurt property values — and they may even boost them 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.

The growing solar industry needs more workers equipped to get panels into fields and onto roofs. Meanwhile, disinvested populations — including communities of color and formerly incarcerated people — often lack access to such jobs.

An Illinois program aims to tackle both of those problems at once — and goes beyond a few months of training to ensure workers have everything they need to succeed, Audrey Henderson reports for the Energy News Network.

With funding from community solar developer Cultivate Power, the Chicago-based Renewing Sovereignty Program works with a training partner to provide a 13-week solar installation program for people leaving the criminal justice system. Last year’s cohort of 12 trainees all got jobs in solar and related industries. Jacqueline Williams, who works with a social services organization that administers RSP, said this year’s 18 cohorts are on track for similar results.

RSP’s holistic approach to jobs training is a big reason for that success.

“Anything that you can think of that would prevent someone from being successful in a really intensive 13-week program, we’re going to assess that barrier and we’re going to provide it,” Williams told ENN. That includes housing, food, child care and transportation — and that support continues for a year after trainees graduate.

In turn, those newly trained solar workers are helping Illinois meet its ambitious clean energy and climate goals. Read more about RSP’s solar training success at the Energy News Network.

More clean energy news

🐢 Hydrogen’s holdup: Uncertainty surrounding federal tax credit rules has left the clean hydrogen industry stuck in neutral, but experts say the delay is providing much-needed time to figure out the best uses for the fuel. (Canary Media) 

🪧 Who’s behind anti-protest laws: Records reveal how fossil fuel lobbyists worked with state lawmakers to craft anti-protest laws that increase penalties for non-violent participants and aim to quiet opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure. (The Guardian)

🚘 City charging deserts: Rideshare drivers are adopting electric vehicles at five times the rate of other drivers but say they’re struggling to find places to charge in major cities. (Axios)

🥵 Heat waves: Advocates sound the alarm over a lack of policies stopping utilities from shutting off customers’ power for nonpayment during deadly heat waves. (The Guardian)

👷 Building a clean workforce: The governors of 22 states launch an initiative aimed at getting 1 million residents to complete climate-related apprenticeships by 2035, pledging to set up funding and partnerships to expand the clean energy workforce. (The Hill)

🌡️ Hands-on grid management: Utility customers around the country are signing up for programs to save money in return for allowing power companies to remotely adjust their thermostats to manage grid demand. (Washington Post)

⚛️ Nuclear resurgence: The Energy Department approves a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to restart the closed Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, part of a resurgence of interest in nuclear power in the U.S. (New York Times) 

🇺🇲 Plus, some politics

• Several states passed landmark climate measures and emissions goals over the last two years, and some of those provisions could be reversed or weakened if Republicans take over their legislatures or governor’s offices. (Grist)
• Foreign climate leaders hope whoever takes the White House will be open to international cooperation on reducing emissions, though most say Donald Trump shows few signs of doing so. (Politico, New York Times)

The solar industry finds an untapped workforce 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.

Increased activity in the solar energy space has generated the need for more trained and skilled workers. At the same time, disinvested populations are often shut out of these jobs. 

For people who have spent time in prison, it’s even harder to catch a break.

The Renewing Sovereignty Project — or RSP, based in Chicago — seeks to address both circumstances, not just with job training, but also financial and social support designed to lend substance to the phrase “returning citizen.” 

RSP draws seed funding from community solar developer Cultivate Power, which has pledged six years of financial support. Trainees are recruited through the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism, a collection of more than 70 grassroots organizations across the city working to achieve social change. 

Instruction is provided by training partner 548 Foundation, while job placement is achieved through multiple hiring partners, including Knobelsdorff Energy. 

RSP also provides referrals for possible sealing or expungement of past convictions, which can ease the transition process for eligible participants, according to Jacqueline Williams, Regional and Prison Program Director for Zealous, a social support organization that functions as a primary administrator for RSP.

Opportunities created by the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, or CEJA, earned high praise from Williams, who is determined to ensure those investments yield results.

“The worst thing that we can think of is that all of this money gets poured into these training programs … and then none of [the participants] actually get jobs in the solar field,” Williams said.

Reducing recidivism

While recidivism rates are dropping around the country thanks in large part to the 2008 Second Chance Act, job training and reentry programs for justice impacted people have had mixed success.

According to the findings from a 2023 report from the National Institute of Justice, or NIJ, intensive, individual-focused programs are more effective in reducing recidivism.

For instance, Mt. Tamalpais College, housed within San Quentin Prison, allows enrolled inmates to earn an associate’s degree transferable to four-year institutions. Each student receives an individual education plan — including intensive tutoring. Only 5% of its graduates ever return to prison. 

Likewise, on average 96% of those who complete the JUMPSTART Prison Ministry program, currently active in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio will never return to prison. This peer-led program works with individuals while they are incarcerated as well as after their release.

Specifically, the NIJ report emphasizes that a holistic approach to reentry employment training programs — like RSP — is essential to maximize the chances of a justice-impacted individual actually getting hired.

Williams said that often includes addressing fundamental needs like housing, food, child care and transportation.

“Anything that you can think of that would prevent someone from being successful in a really intensive 13-week program, we’re going to assess that barrier and we’re going to provide it. And those needs do change throughout the course of 13 weeks. And so we’ll be responsive pretty much immediately to those changing needs,” Williams said.

RSP’s results track with the findings of the NIJ report, and justify its intensive wraparound services. According to the RSP website. the first cohort of 12, which completed the program in 2023, achieved a 100% placement rate in solar and related industries. The current cohort of 18 graduates is on a pace to achieve similar levels of success, Williams said. 

“There are a lot of workforce training programs. We didn’t need to add another training program. What we needed to add was the intensive wraparound services and the barrier mitigation and the alumni support that really allows people to go from truly one completely different aspect of their life to through this training and into a long-term career in green energy,” Williams said.

Doing well by doing good 

Cultivate Power has committed $1.75 million over six years to support RSP, while also furthering their own mission of developing a more inclusive solar workforce in Illinois. Over the past two years, Cultivate Power has funded more than $500,000 in support of the current cohort of 18 graduates and the previous cohort of 12 graduates. 

Noah Hyte, managing director and co-founder of Cultivate Power, said the partnership with RSP is “one of the bigger commitments we’ve made” toward community initiatives.

“We’re in a situation broadly as an industry in Illinois where there’s simply not enough labor and construction companies to meet the demand associated with CEJA’s goals,” he said. “The state’s doing an excellent job of providing tens of millions of dollars of funding to workforce development programs to create workforce development hubs. And so we didn’t see a problem writ large with the scaling of workforce development. [Instead] we saw an opportunity for this specific group of people, and this specific profile that needed additional support, that needed a more thoughtful and wraparound approach to ensure that they would be as successful as possible in this endeavor.”

Along with funding, Hyte and fellow managing director and co-founder Brian Matthay lend their business know-how in advising the administration of RSP, while leaving the work of providing training and support services to 548 Foundation and Zealous, Hyte said. 

Inclusive vetting 

Programs like JUMPSTART, Mt. Tamalpais College — and RSP — operate on the principle that justice-impacted individuals are not throw-away beings. This recognition extends to the intensive selection and preparation process for prospective cohort members that takes place before they are assigned to a training program.

The vetting process performed by organizations within the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism focuses on developing candidates so that they are prepared to draw the most benefit from the training. 

“We get each one of our individuals as a referral,” Williams said. “They have to be a part of a community organization. And the reason for that is it really provides another layer of support and another layer of safety net for individuals, most of whom are system impacted. The vast majority of our individuals are involved with the criminal justice system in some way or have been to foster care.

“They go through the whole year of the program where they work on conflict resolution and personal readiness and violence prevention and all those things before they enter the workforce space. Each organization has that same model. So by the time they get to us, they are more ready,” Williams said.

RSP also imposes a strict attendance requirement — which reflects expectations that trainees will face on the job. However, commitment to the wraparound approach often makes the difference between a candidate dropping out — or finishing the program and obtaining a good job. 

“If somebody hasn’t shown up three days in a row, we’re not just going to kick them out of the program. We’re going to send somebody to your house, probably somebody from your coalition partner and see if you’re okay. We’re trying to find out the whys and not be punitive and recreate the same systems that we are trying to overturn. We really bring people that support right to their door.

“You can have the best intentions in the world, but if the lights are out at home and the refrigerator is not running and you’re not able to feed the kids, you’re not going to be able to complete that program,” Williams said.

Getting job-ready

Candidates referred to 548 Foundation for workforce training must meet two specific requirements: the ability to lift 40 pounds and read at an eighth-grade level. Beyond that, actual workforce training involves more than specific job-related task instruction, said 548 Foundation founder and CEO AJ Patton.

“They’re intentional about picking folks from the toughest situations, not just, oh, kid just graduated, doesn’t know what he wants to do in his life. No, they’re talking, ‘You just came home from prison. You’re in a tough situation. Here’s your chance. We’re going to put our arms around you.’ 

“We spend the first two weeks of class talking about professional development and human development, conflict resolution, how to be a professional, how you present yourself and how to communicate on a job site. Those things matter way more before I ever teach you how to install a solar system,” Patton said.

This preliminary instruction reflects a recognition of the lived experience of training cohort members. 

“We know in the streets how you address those things. There’s a very clear protocol. You call me out my name, this is what you get. But on the job site it’s different. We’re professionals now. There’s a kind of recalibration of how we engage one another and how we engage our contemporaries and colleagues,” Patton said. 

That being said, frequently, it’s the “hard timers” who perform the best during training and in the job market, Patton said. 

“People want to work. If you’re willing to show up on time and commit to the effort and the cost, then there’s a marketplace for you… That particular subset of the community has been the group that’s probably been the most focused in the classroom. They’ve been the most attentive. They know what this opportunity means. They’ve been working hard. And they are almost overwhelmed at graduation when there’s a bidding war for their efforts… I’ve had guys that spent 17 years in prison come to my program, and at the end of the program, they had three job offers,” Patton said.

Ongoing wraparound support

The individualized, specialized guidance and support each participant receives continues for a full year beyond formal graduation. Drawn from what the program calls an alumni fund, such assistance can be anything from a down payment for a reliable car to get back and forth to work, referrals and resources for child care or providing funds for required tools and clothing, Williams said. 

“Anything can really knock you for a loop. I mean, somebody hit a coyote the other day and blew out their radiator, and we just immediately got the radiator fixed so they wouldn’t miss a day of work. It’s those sorts of [situations] that can just totally derail a person that we try to just mitigate by providing access to that fund as well as mentorship,” Williams said. 

Sometimes support takes the form of providing a sounding board, Williams said. 

“There’s a lot of just phone calls around, like,’ This is really hard, it’s really hard to be away from my kids and I don’t know if I want to do this.’ And then we think through different options. ‘Would you rather do rooftop solar closer [to home]? Is this just a bad day? Or, is this something that you really want to consider changing?’ So that’s sort of like, guidance and mentorship. We’re pretty much on call all the time. Just making sure that we are there and available for people,” Williams said.

For Williams, Hyte, Patton and their various community and industry partners, RSP is not so much social service as an investment in society, and beyond that, working toward achieving a true just transition away from a carbon-fuel powered economy.

“So really our mission is to try to make these careers viable and sustainable for people through all that additional support …The success is not graduating the program. That’s a milestone. That’s a really great important milestone. 

“But it doesn’t mean anything if people aren’t actually changing the trajectory of their lives and their family’s lives. And if we aren’t actually changing the face of what solar looks like in Illinois and across the country. It’s so important for us to be clear about what success is. And success is a long-term career in green energy,” Williams said.

Illinois program’s ‘wraparound’ approach helps formerly incarcerated people land solar industry jobs 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.