Dive Brief:
- The impacts of a community solar compromise in Minnesota are beginning to be felt by larger power users, some of whom are having to renegotiate contracts or scale back the amount of power they had expected to acquire.
- Xcel Energy and Minnesota solar developers reached an agreement over the summer to cap co-located community projects at 5 MW — five times 1 MW cap the utility had originally proposed, but than solar advocates hoped for.
- St. Olaf College had expected to take 40% of a 15-MW solar garden as part of its plan to go all renewable, but college officials say they are disappointed there will not be enough renewable power online.
Dive Insight:
A compromise over the size of community solar gardens is beginning to be felt by consumers, the Star Tribune reports. Over the summer Xcel and solar developers reached a compromise on the size of the facilities, scaling them back to just 5 MW. Regulators recently approved the deal, and now contracts are being renegotiated and projects are being resized.
“We just won’t have as much clean generation coming online,” Pete Sandberg, St. Olaf vice president for facilities, told the Tribune.
Sanberg said the school expects to only get about two-thirds of the renewable power it had been seeking. “We’re disappointed," he said. It was a tremendous opportunity for Minnesota to really step up and be even more prominent in renewable generation."
Before the size limit was put in place, more than 900 MW of community solar had been proposed in Minnesota. After Sep. 25, the limit will drop down to 1 MW, the size Xcel originally proposed.
Parties to the agreement include a number of solar power developers, but there are notable exceptions, such as national developer SunShare and the Solar Garden Community, an ad hoc alliance of community solar developers formed to push back against the agreement. As Utility Dive has reported, significant debate remains in the state over the value of community solar arrays to Xcel, with some stakeholders claiming the utility has overstated costs and interconnection difficulties.
