Doug

It’s no secret that the U.S. is struggling with an historic housing shortage compounded by rising rents.

One meaningful – and increasingly popular – path to helping financially-strapped renters, homeowners, and businesses is through community solar programs.

Unlike single family homes where rooftop solar is more feasible and financially beneficial to the homeowner, renters don’t have the option of exploring their own solar installations.

This is where community solar programs enter the picture. As the name suggests, community solar acts as a kind of solar energy collective enabling community members – renters, businesses, and homeowners unable to mount rooftop solar – to subscribe (for a small monthly fee) for access to clean, renewable energy from nearby solar farms.

And unlike the really massive solar farms that are often located hundreds of miles from population centers, community solar farms (sometimes euphemistically known as ‘solar gardens’) are built directly adjacent to neighborhoods.

A Hefty Discount on Utility Bills

In the same way a homeowner with a rooftop solar installation can sell excess energy back to a utility through a process known as ‘net metering,’ community solar programs are able to sell much larger volumes of electrons back to local utilities.

In exchange, every subscriber receives a discount on their monthly utility bill through virtual net metering. These discounts can be particularly meaningful for renters living paycheck to paycheck.

It’s also worth noting that given the infrastructure involved, community solar is a far more sustainable option than its rooftop solar counterparts.

And in much the same way a renter isn’t saddled with the cost of repairs and maintenance to a home, subscribers to community solar programs are immune to similar costs for keeping the solar gardens working.

 

 

 

We’re excited to announce that Pasture Voltaics LLC and its unique SunTracker technology have joined the PlanitWorks partner family.

Using raised, high-tensile cables positioned nine feet above the ground to control a solar grid array to track the sun, SunTracker enables ranchers, farmers, Native American tribes, and other entities with vested land management interests to:

• Provide green energy development
• Protect their herds from excessive heat
• Regenerate land
• Feed power back to the grid

The elevated, cabled solar canopy is particularly ideal for livestock, because they provide badly needed shade (for animals and the land), thereby reducing stress on the animals and mitigating evaporation.

A typical 1,200-acre installation generates up to 200MW of electricity. Additionally, the cabling systems are based on well-known bridge-building principles, enabling them to withstand the kinds of high winds typical on open ranges.

While Pasture Voltaics does the actual instllations, PlanitWorks is managing all development efforts including planning, permitting, and working with ranchers.

To learn more contact us for a free consultation.

Federal hurdles, including onerous fees and development delays, are seriously hampering tribal nations’ efforts to implement ambitious alternative energy projects that could generate reliable power, new jobs, clean energy, and massive new economic opportunities.

Although the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) committed hundreds of billions to support clean energy initiatives across the country, a perfect storm of interconnection requirements, a high volume of complex interconnection requests, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) fees to remain in the development queue have all conspired to create a logjam in the system.

This has proved particularly challenging for many tribes, which are looking to alternative energy solutions,(e.g., solar, wind, and geothermal) as reliable sources of power rather than purely green power initiatives.

“Tribes are unfairly being lumped into the same pool as speculative developers,” says Brian McLaughlin, CEO of PlanitWorks. “At the end of the day, these communities simply want access to reliable power. Understandably, they’d like to take charge of their own energy destinies.”

Big Fees Are Impeding Progress

Per FERC’s Order 2023, within 14 to 30 days, all interconnection requests must be accompanied by a commercial readiness deposit of $5 million (reduced from an original $7.5 million). These fees are designed to limit speculative requests from developers that are actually unprepared to perform the work or that abruptly withdraw (the $5 million would cover withdrawal penalties).

But for most tribes, coming up with that kind of money on such short notice is all but impossible. And to reiterate, the tribes aren’t interested in speculating, they’re interested in generating reliable power.

In its August 2023 report to Congress, DOE’s Office of Indian Energy released the results of a tribal survey showing that 72% of tribes had no ownership or control of their electrical infrastructure. The survey also revealed that tribes suffered an average of 10.5 power outages per year compared to a national average of just 1.6 annual outages.

In other words, far from dabbling in speculative bidding for interconnection opportunities, the tribes simply want access to, and some modicum of control over, a reliable power source.

“If you have homes that don’t have electricity in them, do you believe that they’re really thinking about clean energy,” asks Onna Labeu, the Indigenous Power & Light Fund’s managing director and the former director of the Office of Indian Economic Development at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Labeu added that while it’s understandable the federal government is focused on reducing emissions, it’s important to remember “there are communities that are way ahead of everybody else, but the tribal communities are significantly behind.”

Reliable Power is the Focus

Ironically, Order 2023 is designed to accelerate the approval process for interconnection requests. According to a report by the Berkeley Lab of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, the number of requests in recent years has exploded, most in solar, wind, and storage.

Today more than 10,000 projects (a 40% year over year increase) representing roughly 1,350GW of power generation and another 680GW of storage await approval to connect to the grid. Because part of that effort to speed up things includes the hefty fees to ward off speculative types, tribes are asking for an exemption.

“We have petitioned FERC on behalf of the tribes we serve to waive [or defer] the commercial readiness deposit … and to allow tribes to remain in the interconnection queue,” said Chéri Smith, CEO of the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy.

She noted that large alternative energy projects are “big economic engines” that not only could produce reliable sources of energy, but also generate new jobs and other economic opportunities.

 

Despite what may seem like a steady drumbeat of bad news regarding electric vehicle (EV) sales and leases, the industry is actually enjoying sufficient growth to suggest it soon may achieve a 10 percent share of the domestic auto industry.

Kelley Blue Book estimates EV sales in the third quarter hit 346,309 units, reflecting a year over year growth rate of 11%. EV sales also established new volume and market share records. Even Tesla, which struggled in the first half of the year, enjoyed strong growth in Q3.

Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of Industry Insights at Cox Automotive, acknowledged much of that growth was likely due to an aggressive slate of government and industry incentives and discounts (at 12%, industry incentives for EVs were significantly higher than the 7% offered for other vehicle types).

But Valdez Streaty believes that “as more affordable EVs enter the market and infrastructure improves, we can expect even greater adoption in the coming years.”

What is perhaps most important is that EV’s domestic market share climbed to 8.9% compared to last year’s rate of 7.8%, leading industry observers to believe a 10% market share may not be far off.

Last spring California quietly achieved a milestone that, despite its ramifications for homeowners, businesses, and the planet itself, generated few if any headlines: the use of battery-stored energy surpassed that of natural gas.

In other words, California homes and businesses are now pulling more energy from battery storage systems than from natural gas solutions. And with the cost of batteries plummeting by as much as 80-90 percent, there is little reason to think other sun-drenched states won’t soon be following suit.

The numbers in California are startling. Just five years ago California had 770MW of battery storage. Today that figure is nearly 10.4GW and by year’s end may top 14GW. Since 2020, California has installed more batteries than any other part of the world except for China.

Historically, California has depended on natural gas, nuclear power, hydroelectric services to feed its massive appetite for energy. Batteries – and the green energy solutions that keep them fed – are eating into the market share of those solutions. And bringing cleaner air with them.

“As we’re building more solar and batteries and other renewables on the grid, we’re seeing more and more reductions of gas, and eventually the gas will be eliminated,” said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “There was an eclipse on April 8, when solar supply went down precipitously for a couple of hours and immediately the batteries kicked in and replaced the solar.”

There’s an old saying that ‘where California goes, America follows.’ That may prove particularly true when it comes to battery storage systems. As the nation’s most populous state races toward a net-zero future, other states are paying attention.

And it’s not as if battery storage systems are an option. With the nation’s aggressive push toward renewable energy solutions, batteries necessarily come with that move. “If you want more renewables on the grid, you need more batteries. It’s not going to work otherwise,” said Andrés Gluski, chief executive of AES Corporation.

As for California, the state is keeping the proverbial pedal to the metal. Huge new investments are being made in solar and battery production to ensure the state reaches its 2045 net-zero goal.

And it should be noted that the Golden State isn’t alone. Texas recently passed California as the nation’s leading generator of solar power.

What if a nation struggling with reducing its heavy carbon footprint, an affordable housing deficit, and substandard energy efficiencies could tackle all three at the same time?

Well, it can and we’re going to do it.

The ingredients? Some serious outside-the-box thinking and a marriage of innovative technologies.

Our testbeds? Where affordable housing and energy efficiencies are at their worst: Native American reservations and HBCUs. If we can do it there, we can do it anywhere. And by ‘we’ we mean the nation.

A Game of Leapfrog

A cornerstone to innovation, economic growth, and prosperity is communication. With it, a diverse array of decentralized people are able to get things done. Without it, communities remain isolated and  left to their own devices.

Across virtually the entirety of the 20th century, Africa, India, and China lacked access to telecommunication landlines. As recently as 2000, for example, Manhattan enjoyed more ‘fixed line penetration’ than the whole of sub-saharan Africa.

Rather than invest countless billions erecting poles and stringing tens of thousands of miles of transmission lines, these countries and their investors opted to move straight to mobile. Up went cell towers and into the hands of billions went mobile devices to connect to them.

By leapfrogging costly, increasingly outdated landlines, these regions were able to bypass earlier technologies and the costs that came with them.

All that was needed to fuel this revolution: forward-looking vision and innovative technology.

Which brings us back to affordable housing, energy efficiency, and decarbonization.

Housing and In-Powering the Nation’s Disadvantaged Communities

America has its share of poor people too. And it should come as no surprise these communities struggle with a lack of affordable housing and outdated, inefficient, polluting energy systems. Which got us to thinking, what if we could leapfrog intermediate technologies and systems to fast-track these communities into smart, energy-efficient homes they could afford?

So that’s the vision. The innovation?

We will concentrate not only where the need is greatest, but also where economies of scale can be practiced and results clearly measured. Translation: we’ll initially focus on tribal communities and HBCUs. Here’s how we intend to do it:

• Housing: We’ll leverage pre-fabrication technologies and patented insulated paneling systems to construct affordable homes, dormitories, and administration buildings at half the cost and twice the speed of more conventional approaches. Roofing systems will be pre-fabricated for solar panel installations.
• Efficiency: In addition to those insulation standards, we’ll incorporate rooftop solar with community microgrids to export energy back to the grid and ensure 24/7 supply.
• Decarbonization: We’ll either retrofit existing plant tech with modern heat pump systems or altogether replace them. In both instances, net-zero emissions are the goal, not the wish.

We can provide more detail on these with an upcoming white paper. But for now we’re stealing a page from mobile tech and planning to leapfrog today’s outdated affordable housing and energy programs to move some of the nation’s poorest communities to the forefront of what is possible.

 

It’s no secret that heat pumps are gaining in popularity. They’re more energy-efficient, eco-friendly, and thrive on the very same conditions (moderating winters, intensifying summers) that are the signatures of climate change.

But where the U.S.’s adoption of heat pumps is still measured on a per-housing unit basis, Europe is going one step further. Make that one giant leap further.

Instead of building and installing the kinds of home units dotting the typical suburban American landscape, Europe is building massive heat pumps capable of heating and cooling entire city blocks and, in some cases, entire cities.

The world’s largest heat pump (at least for now), can be found in Hammarby Sjöstad, Sweden. Consisting of seven heat pumps operating in tandem, the plant boasts a thermal capacity of 225MW.

The size of a two-story home, the Hammarbyverket (Hammarby Works) plant pulls waste water into its industrial-sized compressors to eventually pump heat to thousands of buildings across the city.

 

Perhaps given the size of these units, the Swedes and Danes have taken to affectionately giving them their own names. Two of the 40MW units that make up the Hammarby Works plant, for example, are named Fredrika and Kare.

The Move to Massive Heat Pumps

While industrial-sized heat pumps enjoy the same efficiencies as their much smaller cousins, what sets them apart – other than sheer size and capacity – is their ability to put to work large-scale sources of water, including lakes, treated waste water, and commercial output (data centers, for example, produce prodigious quantities of heated water as part of their cooling process).

Europe’s push to adopt massive heat pumps took off in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Long dependent on cheap, plentiful Russian natural gas, most of the continent is understandably eager to build more reliable sources of heat.

At the same time, much of Europe is moving to decommission as many of its old coal-fired plants as possible as part of the continent’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.

• Esbjerg, Denmark – Installing twin heat pumps (60MW capacity) that will pull water from the North Sea to heat roughly 25,000 homes. Largest of its kind to use supercritical carbon dioxide.
• Helsinki, Finland – Using water from the Baltic Sea to heat up to 40% of the capital city. The country is currently building what will be the world’s largest single heat pump, capable of warming 30,000 homes and operating at temperatures as low as -20C.
• Vienna, Austria – Plans to double the city’s current heat pump capacity (from 3 district-sized units to 6).
• Mannheim, Germany – The country’s largest river-based heat pump (Rhine) is heating thousands of homes as part of Germany’s commitment to achieve a climate-neutral heating sector by 2040.

Will the U.S. Follow Suit?

Given the enormous costs associated with retrofitting steam-powered utility plants (heat pumps can’t produce steam) and becaue the U.S. produces abundant supplies of its own natural gas, it’s highly unlikely we will see massive, European-style, heat pumps anytime soon.

That equation changes, however, for smaller, insulated communities such as colleges and universities, new multi-unit developments, or even tribal communities.

At a time when so much of the country is transitioning to green, efficient energy systems, many if not most Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) face numerous and significant impediments to joining that movement. But in those challenges also exist opportunities which, if adequately met, could help to fuel this same energy revolution.

First, the challenges:

Financial Limits. Many HBCUs lack the financial reserves to invest in renewable energy products and services, including solar panels, modern HVAC infrastructure, and microgrids.

Aged Infrastructure. Many if not most HBCU campuses are populated with older buildings that are not energy efficient. While retrofitting these structures could cost a great deal of money and prove complicated, the energy savings and carbon offsets would similarly be substantial.

Funding Access. Although federal and local grants and incentives for renewable energy projects are available, many HBCUs lack the awareness, capacity, and internal knowhow to navigate and leverage these complicated processes.

Limited Partnerships. Many HBCUs lack the partnerships with major corporations and government agencies that can support large-scale green-energy efforts.

Geographic Challenges. Many HBCUs operate in locations that make renewable energy systems more difficult: more limited supplies of consistent sunlight, for example, or dense infrastructure where large-scale microgrid installations are more complicated and expensive.

With all that said, however, when it comes to HBCU renewable energy initiatives, opportunities also abound. Some examples:

Education and Training. At a time when the availability of skilled, competent trades people are in serious demand, the opportunity exists to implement training and mentoring programs that can provide interested HBCU students with the opportunity to learn how to design, plan, implement and maintain renewable energy systems.

Community Adoption. Because many of these technologies have largely bypassed communities in which HBCUs exist and operate, implementation of these services can prove effective both in introducing them to these populations and driving adoption.

Partnerships. While existing partnerships with HBCUs are still relatively rare, introducing efforts and programs to reduce carbon outputs, improve existing energy efficiencies, and implementing renewables could introduce opportunities for these partnerships and the many positive impacts that come with them.

Savings. While up-front costs for some of these efforts can seem prohibitive, longer-term savings can result in opportunities for these campuses to reinvest those monies in other areas of need.

In short, while HBCUs face challenges in joining the nation’s move toward a smarter, renewable energy future, opportunities exist – for the schools as well as corporations, government agencies, and other bodies – to transform these all-important institutions in ways that benefit them, their communities, and the nation.