Community solar should include urban rooftops and vacant lots – pv magazine USA

July 29, 2024 Michael Puttré

During a panel discussion on community solar at the RE+ Mid-Atlantic Solar and Energy Storage conference in Philadelphia, it was emphasized that developers often need to seize opportunities that are close to the target customer, even in difficult terrain.

While state regulators design programs to encourage rooftop solar and brownfield development in urban New Jersey, developers often prefer to build projects on undeveloped greenfield sites. Leslie Elder, vice president of policy and public affairs at Summit Ridge Energy, a Virginia-based solar developer, said companies don’t always agree with the state’s priorities, but that’s where the project opportunities lie.

New Jersey’s Solar Act of 2012 includes provisions to streamline and authorize permitting and provide financial incentives for developers to build large-scale solar projects “on a vacant lot, on an area of ​​historic fill, or on a properly sealed landfill.” The idea was to transform urban lots, commercial flat roofs, and vacant industrial areas into productive clean energy sites.

Greenfield sites, such as unused agricultural land or other undeveloped properties, are generally easier to install solar on and require less specialized site preparation procedures than brownfields. However, the New Jersey BPU restricts grid-connected projects of 5 MW or larger on many categories of greenfield-type land. Exemptions can be requested but are often denied.

“There is real opposition from within the state (of New Jersey) to developing new areas for a variety of reasons, primarily population size and past conflicts,” said Elder, who added that New Jersey’s community solar policy focuses on urban development and low-income beneficiaries.

Elder contrasted New Jersey’s approach to community solar with Maryland, which defined “buckets” for different types of projects. For example, there was a greenfield bucket; a brownfield bucket, landfills and “cleanfields” (non-toxic landfills); and a low- and moderate-income bucket. These types of definitions for community solar opportunities allowed developers to bid on projects based on their experience, specialization and preferences.

State siting requirements are just one piece of the community solar puzzle. Perhaps even trickier are the labyrinthine subscription and billing policies needed to attract customers and show them real economic benefits. And as always, developers who commit to building community solar projects must see the financial rewards.

Eric Wallace, an attorney at Virginia-based law firm GreeneHurlocker, PLC, who focuses on energy law and regulation, says the success of community solar programs depends on the statutes that establish them at the state level.

“There are a lot of different policy tools available, but finding the right solutions for each state is a challenge,” Wallace said. “There are processes and discussions that are happening in each of these markets. That’s definitely a big part of community solar in the Mid-Atlantic.”

Justin Felt, director of policy analysis and development at Exelon, the parent company of six utilities, said it would be helpful to integrate the utility perspective at the association level rather than seeing it as an adversarial view.

“I think it would be better to have some sort of collaboration,” Felt said, echoing comments made earlier in the morning by SEIA CEO Abigail Ross Hopper. “Let’s also be honest, politics — purple state versus blue state — is going to have a big impact on this. If you’re in a red state, it might be a little bit different. So we have to watch our jurisdictions in a lot of ways. You have to realize that the broader political and policy landscape is going to be a big driver as well.”

If government policy is important for the development of storage capacity in the electricity grid, as discussed in an earlier RE+ panel, then this is probably even more true for community solar, which could be argued to be a more complicated proposition.

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