Tolemac Solar – A New Hampshire Community Solar Project

Several of my recent posts have been concerned with solar power in New Hampshire. This topic continues to intrigue me, so I am continuing my explorations. This time I delve into community solar projects.

Solar projects are carried out at different scales. The most common are smaller roof-mounted residential projects that range from 3 to 20 kW. A 5 kW installation typically has about 17 panels. I discussed the financing of these projects in my previous post. The solar operations we often see in the press are large ground-mounted projects that cover acres of land and can involve many thousands of panels. These range from 1000 kW to 1 million kW (1000 MW) or larger and are designed to feed electricity directly into the electrical grid. They are often referred to as utility-scale projects. The largest solar farm in the world is presently the Tengger Desert Solar Park, built by China near Zongwei in the Ningxia region. This monster has a nameplate capacity of 1547 MW, cost about $1.1 billion, and covers a land area of 16.8 sq. miles. The center of the figure below shows a satellite view of this operation, which is located on the edge of the Mongolian Desert.

In NH, the largest operation at present is the substantially smaller 2000 kW operation built by New Hampshire Electric Coop. in Moultonborough. This has 7200 panels and is located on 24 acres (0.04 sq. miles) of land.

Between the small residential (owned by a single individual) and large utility-scale projects (owned and financed by utilities or large development and investment funds), we find community solar projects. These are often in the 50 to 500 kW range and are designed and built so that a group of individuals or organizations can benefit from solar power. Drawing from the concept of community gardens, these projects are often referred to as solar gardens.

The unique aspect of a community solar project is that, even though the solar project is built on a single piece of land and the electricity is fed into the grid at a single point, the members of the solar farm community are not directly wired to the project. Instead they are “virtually connected” – they are bound by a legal agreement and they reap the benefits of solar power without having to install solar panels on their property or residence.

This idea is based on the concept of group net metering. One of the members, the host, takes on the responsibility of hosting the project on their property and then shares the benefits with the solar community that the host assembles. Again, it is important to note that the members do not have electrical meters directly connected to the project, nor do they have to make changes to their electrical service: they benefit by getting their share of the solar benefits/credits as if they were connected. Their benefits are directly proportional to their allocated share of the project and the output of the solar array that is located elsewhere; however, the members cannot get benefits exceeding their total electricity consumption.

If you have the opportunity and are invited to join a solar community, this is a great way to become involved with solar without having to take on the burden of installing and owning of solar operation yourself. You might not have the funds for your own solar installation or a residence that is correctly positioned with a south-facing roof, but, as part of a solar community project, you could benefit as if you had your own installation.

It is always easier to understand how these concepts work by taking a look at an example. One of the first projects of this type in NH was the 164 kW Tolemac Solar project  that was installed by Frank Grossman on his property in Hollis, NH. This project went live in January 2017.

I had the opportunity to visit the project last year and to chat to Frank. In the process, I learned more about the project and what was involved in getting it up and running. Frank Grossman is an interesting guy and has been in the tech business for many years and has started up and sold several companies. He is driven to make a difference in the world and he has spent the last few years committing his own time and money to ideas that he considers to be important, such as solar power and high energy efficiency buildings.

Some years ago, Frank decided to install a solar system, but he wanted to make an impact and install a system larger than for just his residential use. He opted to build a 164 kW facility with 507 panels on his property (see the photo below for an aerial view of the completed array.) Frank certainly didn’t need this size operation for own needs (a typical residential system is 3 to 10 kW in size), so he assembled a group of 21 neighbors, friends, and local non-profits to benefit from his solar project. This “solar community” assembled by Frank benefits from the renewable power that his Tolemac project generates. The members are not wired to the project so there is no need for them to be adjacent or even nearby the project. In fact, one of the Tolemac community members is 15 miles from the Tolemac project. They just had to be members of the same utility—in this case, Eversource—and not getting their electricity from a competitive supplier. For the community members, this was an easy and straightforward decision. They had to sign a short legal agreement and, after sharing their electricity bills, they get quarterly checks for their prorata share of the electricity generated from the project. “It couldn’t have been easier”, said one of the members.

However, for Frank it was anything but easy. He provided the funds to build the array, he managed it, and dealt with the very complicated regulatory and administrative issues that accompany a first-time project of this sort. He worked with the utility, filed the paperwork, dealt with delays and obstacles, and worked hard to get local ordinances in Hollis changed so that the project could move forward. For Frank, this was a two-year journey and he learned a lot of lessons along the way. The most important was the need to educate a large group of stakeholders, which included not only the Tolemac community members, but also his neighbors and townspeople, the Town Planning Board, and the various lawyers he employed. He also had to work with the utility to reroute and upgrade the local electrical grid near his home. This was an expensive upgrade and involved the installation of 10 new utility poles.

Frank is the owner of the system and his motivation for this project was altruistic. He wanted to make a difference and his community members are subscribers. They do not own a share of the system: they simply receive the benefits from his project and enjoy lower electricity prices as a result. Frank has taken on all the risk, he paid for the system, he did the hard work, and he now keeps track of the administrative details. He gets paid by Eversource for the electricity sent into the grid and then sends out checks to his community for their agreed share. A total of 45% of the net-metering benefits are paid out to members. The rest is income to the project that is used to offset the original cost of investment. The installed cost of the Tolemac project was $3.21/Watt and, at the time of installation, the projected payback was of the order of 13 years.

Frank’s project generates about 250 MWh per year: compare this with a 5 kW residential system that generates ~6.5 MWh per year. Now, because the Tolemac project is larger than 100 kW, it is considered a large generator in NH and, as such, does not get all the net-metering benefits of smaller residential projects (see my earlier post for net-metering details for smaller residential solar projects). The Tolemac project only gets credit for electricity produced at the default rate and none for distribution and transmission costs. Solar projects that are less than 100 kW in size get credit for the electricity generated at the default rate, as well as the other kWh-based charges such as transmission and distribution costs. The table below shows a comparison of the net-metering benefits of small (<100 kW) and large (>100 kW) projects in NH. Based on present Eversource rates (April 2018), a smaller residential project would get paid 13.36 c/kWh for electricity exported to the grid. The Tolemac project gets a much smaller amount and presently only earns 7.90 c/kWh. An additional source of revenue for the project is the sale of solar renewable energy credits. The price of these varies and is presently of the order of $15 per 1000 kWh of solar energy produced.

There are several such solar projects located through New Hampshire and they are becoming increasingly important. The Peterborough project I wrote about previously is essentially a community solar project but, in this case, the community is various municipal buildings in the town of Peterborough. Solar power is generated at the municipal wastewater treatment facility and, through a group net-metering arrangement, the benefits are shared with the treatment facility and other town buildings. The 1000 kW solar installation on the capped landfill in Milton, NH (see photo below), is also a community solar project.

Group net metering is not just reserved for solar power. It is a concept that can be applied to other forms of renewable power, such as hydro. I will discuss these types of projects in a future blog post.

In the meantime, enjoy your solar benefits if you have your own system or are part of a solar community, but, even then, remember to turn off the lights when you leave the room.

Mike Mooiman

Franklin Pierce University

mooimanm@franklinpierce.edu

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