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<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nSolar power press frequently covers home solar with some commercial solar, but typically not nearly as much about community solar. Community solar is a clean, renewable energy solution for people who may not be able to afford to buy their own home solar power systems. Clean, renewable energy must be inclusive of all, or some people in urban centers and rural areas will not be able to experience its benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n Michelle Moore, author of \u201cRural Renaissance<\/em>\u201d and CEO of Groundswell<\/a>, answered some questions about community solar for CleanTechnica<\/em>.<\/p>\n As the author of Rural Renaissance: Revitalizing America\u2019s Hometowns Through Clean Power<\/em>, what are some of the book\u2019s key insights?<\/strong><\/p>\n I wrote \u201cRural Renaissance<\/em>\u201d as a roadmap for building local, clean energy futures (note: \u201cfuture\u201d is plural), and the book is filled with examples of hometown heroes who are doing just that all over America. From energy efficiency to solar, energy storage, EVs, and broadband (which is critical infrastructure for a clean, resilient grid), the book includes funding, financing, and implementation strategies that you can use to bring the same solutions to the place you live. The Inflation Reduction Act became law shortly after it was published, which represents the single biggest investment in rural power in the US in 100 years. Given the abundance of federal funding to start local programs like the ones I write about in \u201cRural Renaissance,\u201d it\u2019s a great time to pick up the book.<\/span> Rooftop solar works for less than half the country. Community solar can work for everyone \u2014 democratizing the benefits of solar and keeping energy affordable. By adding energy storage, community solar can also increase resilience and share infrastructure benefits with local utilities and with the grid. It\u2019s a great \u201cwe\u2019re all in this together\u201d kind of clean energy solution.<\/span><\/p>\n Are there any indirect benefits for community solar power installations that are not commonly known?<\/strong><\/p>\n While it\u2019s not unique to community solar, thanks to the new \u201c<\/span>Direct Pay<\/span><\/a>\u201d option for the solar tax credit \u2014 which was among the many policy innovations in the Inflation Reduction Act \u2014 local communities can now own their own power. Nontaxable organizations like churches, nonprofit affordable housing groups, municipalities, and nonprofit local utilities including rural electric cooperatives can now directly receive the value of the solar tax credit. Direct pay democratizes the ownership of energy assets, which means neighbors can now come together through local community institutions like churches to produce, own, and share solar power (and energy storage!).<\/span> Michelle Moore, image courtesy of Groundswell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Groundswell builds community power with equitable community solar projects and resilience centers, clean energy programs that reduce energy burdens, and pioneering research. We currently serve almost 6,000 income-qualified households in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, and upstate New York with more than $3 million per year in energy savings.<\/span> Groundswell builds community resilience centers that combine solar and energy storage. Our work began in partnership with the City of Baltimore and has now expanded across Maryland and into Chicago\u2019s Southland in Illinois and into Georgia. Most often installed with churches and communities of faith, resilience centers keep the lights on and provide a place to stay warm or cool with the power goes out. It\u2019s an incredibly important service \u2013 particularly to our most vulnerable neighbors for whom power outages and extreme heat and cold are a grave risk to life and health.<\/span> Individually, the community solar and resilience center projects we\u2019ve developed range from about 150 kW to 700 kW and serve from 50 to about 150 households each. The optimal size for projects of these types will vary based on the local built environment and market structure and the needs of the local community.<\/span> There are many. I\u2019ll highlight one for you here. As Groundswell has experienced with each of the projects we\u2019ve built, the legacy of racist policies like redlining that excluded Black and African American communities from access to financing for decades \u2013 starving communities of investment and opportunities \u2013 has impacted our energy infrastructure, too. To build a new solar or resilience project in a neighborhood that has been impacted by policies like redlining, you often have to invest in repairs such as upgrading electrical services, upgrading the infrastructure associated with interconnection, and repairing the roof. Making these reparative investments is important so that everyone has equitable access to clean power, which I would argue is a moral responsibility. Funding and financing tools like the new \u201cLow Income Communities Bonus Tax Credit\u201d in the Inflation Reduction Act help close these gaps.<\/span> There is a financial return on investment for community solar and resilience centers as well as ample community and public benefits associated with these types of projects. The specifics depend on the structure of the local market, including if and what type of state and local incentives may be available. The area Groundswell is most interested in exploring is community ownership, as enabled by the new \u201cDirect Pay\u201d option for solar tax credits. We look forward to the wealth-building potential of asset ownership being broadly available to the community-based nonprofits and individual households that make these kinds of projects possible.<\/span><\/p>\n Does community solar sometimes include agrivoltaics?<\/strong><\/p>\n Land use, and specifically questions about agriculture and energy land uses, is being raised as an area of concern by a growing number of rural communities across the country. While only<\/span> about half a percent of US land resources would be needed to power the entire country with solar<\/span><\/a> \u2013 or about 145 square miles \u2013 it can feel like a lot more than that when a thousand-acre solar farm gets built in your county. Agrivoltaics are a great example of dual land use. Solar panels are intertwined with agricultural production, sometimes using the solar panels themselves to shield tender crops from increasingly intense weather.<\/span> Jack\u2019s Solar Garden<\/span><\/a> in Colorado is a great example of this approach in practice, and<\/span> Dr. Greg Barron-Gafford\u2019s research<\/span><\/a> group at the University of Arizona is a great place to learn more.<\/span><\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n I don’t like paywalls. You don’t like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong \u2014 and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don’t like paywalls, and so we’ve decided to ditch ours.<\/em> Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It’s a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps \u2014 gasp<\/strong> \u2014 grow. So … Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica<\/a> on email. Or follow us on Google News<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n \n <\/p>\n Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here<\/a>.<\/em> <\/p>\n
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<\/span>How and why did you become involved with community solar?<\/strong>
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<\/span><\/i>I had invested 20 years of my professional life helping big companies go green, and inspired by my faith, I recognized it was time to put what I\u2019d learned to work helping people live a little better with clean power. Because community solar lets people come together as a community and share power, thereby expanding access, it was the right place to start.<\/span>
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Why is community solar power important?<\/strong><\/p>\n
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<\/span>How many community solar projects has your organization completed, and where are they?<\/strong><\/p>\n
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<\/span>Do your projects combine solar power with energy storage?<\/strong><\/p>\n
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<\/span>What is the typical electrical capacity of your community solar power projects?<\/strong><\/p>\n
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What are some of the race and class-related aspects of solar power?<\/strong><\/p>\n
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<\/span>Is there a return on investment for community solar and if there is, what is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cleantechnica.com\/files\/2023\/06\/cleantechnica-support-subscribe-news.png\")
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