Residential customers of Clark Public Utilities are rapidly embracing the utility’s efforts to build and operate its first community solar program.
After inviting customers to invest in one 74.8-kilowatt solar array that’s expected to be up and running by this summer, the utility quickly sold all of the shares in that facility. Based on that success, the utility is now pursuing three more similar ground-mounted solar arrays for a total of four such projects. Although no decisions have been made, the utility also is researching the feasibility of constructing a fifth cluster of photovoltaic panels.
“The response has been incredible,” Erica Erland, a spokeswoman for the utility, said in an email to The Columbian. Indeed, shares in the utility’s planned second, third and fourth arrays have already sold out.
During the utility’s regular public meeting Tuesday , the Board of Commissioners is slated to vote on recommendations to approve contracts to build the second and third arrays. The utility has already hired Seattle-based A&R Solar to erect the first one. Meanwhile, the utility has issued a request for bids to construct the fourth project.
If all goes as planned, all four solar installations could be up and running by this summer at the same location: near the corner of Padden Parkway and Northeast 117th Avenue at the Clark Public Utilities Operations Center. Three of the four planned solar arrays are 74.8-kilowatt systems involving 272 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels.
The fourth array “would be a bit smaller than the other three because of site constraints,” Erland said. However, the utility hopes “to have it done by the end of June along with the other projects.”
In total, the four projects could power about 20 homes annually.
State production incentives and energy generation credits are helping drive the utility’s move to build a community solar program, which is the first of its kind for the utility. Under the program, utility customers voluntarily purchase shares of a solar array.
A share of the system is one-twelfth of one solar panel and costs $100. Residential customers may buy one share or up to 100 shares, paying as a lump sum or splitting it up quarterly or monthly over a year. All payments will be made by way of customers’ utility bills.
At this point, the utility is no longer processing purchases of shares since all four projects have already sold out. However, the utility has a “fairly robust” waiting list, Erland said, which would be used if any current participants decide to back out of the program.
If the utility decides to pursue a fifth solar installation, Erland said, it would notify customers about signing up for it.
Factoring in the state production incentives and annual energy generation credits, according to the utility, solar investors can expect to recoup most of their investment in less than four years. And investors will continue to receive generation credits on their bills for the life of the system, estimated to be 20 years.
So, for example, if a residential customer purchases one share for $100, according to the utility, then that customer could expect to double his or her investment to $200 by 2035. Erland said most of the return on investment would come in less than four years. “The rest will trickle in over the next 20 years,” she said.
She added, “It’s definitely not a get-rich-quick endeavor, but for people who have been considering putting solar on their own homes, it’s a much quicker (return on investment), with the potential to actually make some money if the projects perform according to the estimates.”
Shareholders will cover the total cost of each solar array, which includes construction, marketing and the monitoring to capture generation data. The cost of the utility’s first solar installation — to be built by A&R Solar using made-in-Washington solar panels and inverters — is $326,400.
The utility expects the costs of its other planned arrays to be comparable to that of the first one.
One goal of the community solar program, utility officials say, is to bolster the utility’s commitment to renewable energy. In 2013, the utility purchased about 55 percent of its power supply from the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets electricity generated by hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest. The utility derives the rest of its power-supply from its natural-gas-fired River Road Generating Plant in Vancouver and from market purchases.
