Heating and cooling are not “nice-to-haves” in most areas of the U.S. – they are a necessity. However, this basic need creates a disproportionate burden on low-income families. Statistics vary on how much low-income families typically spend on their energy bills, but it’s in the range of 6-20 percent of their annual income, much higher than the national average of 3 percent.

As a result, government agencies and utilities have a long history of helping low-income customers meet their electricity needs. The federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) has been funded to the tune of $3-8 billion per year over the past decade, funding state and tribal programs to help low-income residents pay their energy bills. Utilities often have additional assistance programs that provide financial support, usually through voluntary customer donations or a statutory directive that allows utilities to rate-base a subsidy.

So here’s a thought: what would happen if we were to take just a tiny fraction of the funds allocated to low-income assistance and enroll some of these same customers in a shared solar program, whereby participants could receive bill credits from an offsite, shared solar energy system?

By our thinking, often these energy assistance funds could be more wisely invested in solar shares that provide real, long-term utility bill savings for low-income customers, while also helping to spur job creation and a wider deployment of clean energy resources. Importantly, they would also provide low-income customers – a group historically without access to renewable energy – a way to engage directly with distributed generation.

Last year, I wrote about IREC’s CleanCare proposal, which would essentially create this type of structure in California by adding on to the state’s existing California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) program. This approach makes economic sense too, as it would ultimately drive down rates for all consumers through a more efficient use of ratepayer funds for low-income customer assistance.

Short of a wholesale shift in how we approach energy assistance funding, we can still aim to design new and modify existing shared solar programs to better encourage and accommodate low-income customer participation. To do so, we must adjust our thinking a bit on program design, to make sure programs are accessible to a broader range of income levels. Here are some issues to consider.

Upfront cost – An upfront payment is often a non-starter when money is tight. Access to reasonable credit options can also be challenging. Programs that allow customers to make payments on their utility bills over time, while still receiving credits that reduce their overall bill, can make shared solar more accessible to low income customers. Indiana’s Tipmont Electric Cooperative recently launched a program with an “Easy Pay” option that allows members to pay for their solar panels over one, two or three years, to make up-front participation costs more manageable. In other recent news, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has requested comments on its proposed outline for a Community Solar Program (CSP). In its program description, LADWP specified that it anticipates allowing low income and “medical lifeline” customers to use their monthly subsidy to subscribe to the proposed CSP. If these customers see bill savings as a result of their participation in the CSP, then this might be an especially attractive option to them.

Bill credit valuation – Ensuring fair and accurate bill credit valuation is always critical to shared solar program design. IREC’s Model Rules for Shared Renewable Energy Programs offers a detailed discussion of the importance of this program component and how to achieve it. To reach low-income customers, it is especially important to pay close attention to this program element. The financial proposition of shared solar participation is usually a key consideration for these customers, who typically have less financial flexibility than other customer classes.

Participation threshold – Many shared solar programs have a participation threshold (e.g., a 1-kilowatt (kW) minimum), which can be difficult for low-income participants, who may wish to subscribe in smaller increments. Allowing a wide range of participation levels may be more administratively burdensome, but it can facilitate access to a broader range of income levels. In Colorado, for example, the state’s community solar garden rules explicitly state that the 1-kW participation minimum does not apply to low-income customers. Clark Public Utilities in Washington recently launched a program in which customers can purchase shares starting at just one-tenth of a panel (27 Watts).

Allocation of shares – To ensure a diversity of participation, some states and programs have reserved a percentage of solar shares to be allocated among low-income customers. There are several ways to accomplish this. Back to Los Angeles, the municipal utility LADWP’s program outline noted that, in the event of limited capacity, low income and lifeline customers would be given priority.

For another example, rules for Colorado’s Community Solar Garden (CSG) projects require 5 percent of CSG shares to be reserved for those eligible for the state’s Low-Income Energy Assistance Program. Meeting this requirement has taken on a number of forms in Colorado. The Clean Energy Collective (CEC) has allocated a portion of power produced by all of its CSG arrays to be low-income residents in Denver Housing Authority facilities. According to CEC, for the three facilities that were being planned in 2013, this translates to 70 kW, or about 100 panels from each array being allocated to low-income customers. Moreover, it amounts to $7,700 in bill credits for DHA housing residents in the first year, or nearly $230,000 over the 20-year program.

SunShare, another Colorado CSG provider, has worked with families whose children attend Academy 360 in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, where 80 percent of children qualify for free or reduced lunches. SunShare has opted to donate subscriptions of six-tenths of a kW to the families of each of the 125 children enrolled in the school.

Weatherization and energy efficiency – Low-income customers often live in less efficient buildings and rely on older, less efficient appliances. Even if solar isn’t located onsite, it still makes a lot of sense to weatherize or adopt energy efficiency improvements first, in order to have a greater bill impact and avoid allocating solar shares to heating and cooling that literally flies out the window. So, to the extent possible, it makes sense to encourage low-income shared solar participants to access available utility and state weatherization and energy efficiency services in conjunction with their solar shares.

Project siting – Shared solar projects have the potential to bring employment opportunities for participants’ communities through the installation, maintenance and administration jobs required of these facilities. Also, given that they have been disproportionately affected by much more polluting forms of energy generation, low-income communities have more than earned the right to transform their landscapes with clean shared solar assets. California’s Green Tariff Shared Renewables legislation (SB 43) requires 100 out of 600 megawatts of the program’s capacity to be located in “disadvantaged communities,” including those with socioeconomic vulnerability or environmental degradation. And because shared solar facilities can be sited where they have maximum grid value and minimum grid impact, they can produce a local grid-boosting effect during times of peak load.

There are certainly other issues on this front that may require some creative thinking, such as expanding information distribution channels or program sign-up methods to target low-income customer segments. It is also important to keep program structures flexible to allow shared solar project developers to develop innovative financing schemes that can drive their prices down as low as possible. However, time invested in program design can ultimately make these programs more accessible to a broader range of participants – which, in IREC’s view, is the principle goal of shared solar.

Image: Venetucci Farms, Colorado Springs. Courtesy of SunShare

Lead image: Gift box via Shutterstock

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An astonishing one out of every five households in Australia is now relying on solar energy, a new report from the Australian Bureau of Statistic (ABS) reveals. Just 3 years ago only 5 percent of homes used rooftop solar panels or solar water heating, but today a full 19 percent do. To put that into perspective, by most accounts, fewer than .4 percent of homes in the US rely on solar.

Out of the 19 percent of homes using solar, 14 percent is attributed to roof panelling. “Add in solar hot water heating and we’re up to 19 per cent, so one in five households are now using some form of solar power.” said Karen Connaughton from the ABS.

Related: MGM Installs America’s Largest Rooftop Solar Array but it Only Powers 1/5 of the Hotel

South Australia has the highest number of rooftop installations with 24 percent of households using solar. Queensland comes close with 20 percent of households doing the same. But despite the huge increase in solar power, almost all of the homes in Australia use on-grid electricity to some degree. Even still, Australia’s numbers are incredibly impressive.

Via REnewEconomy

Lead image via Shutterstock, image via ABS

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The holiday season, while full of joy, family and good cheer, is also a time of hectic travel, rich food and sometimes overwhelming gift lists. Hannukah is already upon us and Christmas is right around the corner, and with holiday parties filling everyone’s calendar, it can be hard to maintain your sustainable ideals in the midst of so much shopping and celebrating. So here are some helpful tips to keep your sanity and enjoy the holidays without throwing Mother Earth under the bus (or the sleigh, ho ho ho):

From the EarthEasy blog, some basic strategies to lower the environmental impacts of the season.

Renewable Choice Energy offers their list of the top 10 ways to make your holiday greener.

Simple Truth has 101 ways for you to make more sustainable holiday choices, from travel planning to shipping to cleaning the house and much more.

And Inhabitat has some good suggestions for a green and happy Hannukah.

Happy holidays, everyone!

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It’s one thing to make the decision to go solar, but depending on where in the U.S. you live, the ease with which one connects a household rooftop array to the grid—i.e., actually gets it up and running—can vary greatly. Produced by the advocacy groups Vote Solar and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Freeing the Grid ranks each of the 50 states based on two key clean energy programs: net metering and interconnection procedures. Now in its eighth year, the report is showing marked improvements in many states, but some troubling stagnation in others.

So what is net metering and interconnection? Net metering “ensures that renewable energy customers receive full credit on their utility bills for valuable clean power they put back on the grid.” Interconnection refers to the “rules and processes that an energy customer must follow to be able to ‘plug’ their renewable energy system into the electricity grid.”

Related: US consumers willing to pay higher utility bills for clean energy

All in all, these are fairly important components in the process of going solar and ones which are often regulated by state utility commissions. In some cases, as the report shows, states have adopted progressive policies; five states ranked ‘top of the class’ for both net metering and interconnection—California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon and Utah. Arizona, New Mexico and West Virginia also gained A grades for interconnection, while large portions of the north east and the west ranked highly for net metering.

But then there are the large, gray sections of the map, those without letter grades, sitting on the sidelines as “N/A.” There are a whopping 16 states that do not have legislation to govern interconnection and seven states that do not allow net metering, which greatly reduces the potential cost benefits of going solar. The worst offenders on this front? Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Idaho.

Check out the full report, and see what guidelines Freeing the Grid has for your state to become more solar friendly.

+ Freeing the Grid

Via NRDC

Lead image: Net-Metering Grades, Freeing the Grid

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