Solar gardens give access to green energy to more Coloradans

From the roof of a one-time Air Force hangar in Denver's Lowry neighborhood to a lot at the edge of Breckenridge, large, community solar-power arrays are popping up across Colorado.
Spurred by a pilot program by Xcel Energy, the state's largest electricity provider, 22 "solar gardens" are being built from Aurora to Grand Junction, with more to come.
"Colorado has become a solar-garden hot spot," said David Amster-Olszewski, chief executive at Colorado Springs-based SunShare, which has Xcel contracts for five solar gardens in Arapahoe and Adams counties.
The 2010 Colorado Community Solar Garden Act has a become a model for Minnesota and California as they move to adopt solar-garden laws, Amster-Olszewski said.
Solar gardens enable small business and people who live in an apartment, don't have a sunny roof or can't afford a full solar array to buy or lease a piece of an array for as little as $3,700.
Only about a quarter of the nation's rooftops are big enough and sunny enough for solar installations, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
And the average cost of a residential rooftop array in Colorado runs between $20,000 and $30,000, according to installers.
A customer can buy a 1-kilowatt share in a solar garden for $3,700, and loans are available through Sooper Credit Union.
The annual savings for a 1-kilowatt share in one of the Boulder arrays is about $270, according to Clean Energy Collective, a Carbondale-based company developing 11 Xcel solar gardens.
"There has been a really positive reaction to the program," said Lee Gabler, Xcel's director of demand-side management and renewable operations.
Sharing access
In 2012, a total of 13 solar-garden contracts were awarded for 9 megawatts of power, according to Xcel.
This month, nine additional projects went under contract for 4.5 megawatts. An additional 4.5 megawatts will be awarded in August.
The developers and operators of the gardens — which cost more than $1 million to build — are paid by Xcel for the electricity they produce on a sliding scale of 10 to 14 cents a kilowatt-hour.
Residents get a credit on their bills of about 6.8 cents a kilowatt-hour for their share of the garden.
"Solar gardens are making the market accessible to a whole lot more people," said Rebecca Cantwell, senior program director at the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association.
And it isn't just residents filling the program, said Tom Sweeney, chief operating officer for Clean Energy Collective.
It turns out that the credits for some commercial customers are much bigger than they are for households.
Commercial customers are charged a fee for the electricity they use, but many also have a demand charge if they need large amounts of electricity at one time.
"They are paying to keep the eight-lane highway open all the time," Sweeney said.
A business or government agency that has a big demand charge gets greater credit in the solar-garden program.
"In metro Denver, the majority of sales have been residential, but in Summit County the majority have been commercial or governmental," Sweeney said.
The mountain ski town of Breckenridge is supplying the land and buying 40 percent of the two Summit County solar gardens in part because it is a good deal, said Brian Waldes, the town's financial-services manager.
"The water pump at the golf course, which takes a lot of electricity at one time, might have a 65-cents-a-kilowatt-hour charge — that's extreme," said Waldes.
"The more you pay as a commercial customer, the larger your credit," Waldes said. "Any business using pumps, like a ski resort, is seeing big returns."
So while residential customers are getting a 6.8-cents-a-kilowatt-hour credit, commercial customers are seeing on average a 15.8-cent credit, Clean Energy's Sweeney said.
Demand runs highThe demand for solar gardens has been so strong that each time Xcel has solicited applications, within a half-hour it has received three times as many as it could fill.
"We put in for some smaller 100-kilowatt projects but were squeezed out by bigger ones," said Joy Hughes, founder of the Westminster-based Solar Gardens Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Hughes said she was concerned that smaller communities and low-income people may not get to participate in the program.
The Xcel program is set up to provide a total of 9 megawatts of projects divided among installations of up to 50 kilowatts, 50 to 500 kilowatts, and 500 kilowatts to 2 megawatts.
While sharing panels might sound simple, the details are complex. Issues include whether individuals can sell their shares and how they will be credited for the energy produced.
The Colorado Community Solar Garden Act — sponsored by Rep. Claire Levy, a Boulder Democrat — sought to address those issues.
In May, Minnesota, which is Xcel's biggest service area and home to its corporate headquarters, adopted a law requiring the establishment of a solar-garden program.
"We used Colorado as a model when we negotiated on the legislation," Xcel's Gabler said.
On Monday, a solar garden, or "shared renewables," bill for a 600-megawatt program is up for a vote in a California Assembly committee. It has already passed the Senate
"This is really the highest hurdle. It is where it ran aground last year," said Tom Price, spokesman for California Share Renewables, a coalition of 70 organizations.
Lower costs keyStill, utilities are becoming more receptive to solar gardens because of the more centralized management and metering, said SunShare's Amster-Olszewski.
"It is a compromise between utility-scale and residential solar," Amster-Olszewski said.
Clean Energy Collective is, for example, building eight solar gardens in Colorado with other utilities, such as Green Mountain Power, Colorado Springs Utilities and Holy Cross Energy.
Solar makes up a tiny portion of Xcel's Colorado generating portfolio, Gabler said.
"There are 160 megawatts of solar on the system compared with around 2,700 megawatts of wind," Gabler said.
For solar to grow, costs will have to continue to decline — the price of a solar module in the past two years has dropped 55 percent to 50 cents a watt — and utilities have to create transparent pricing.
"The response to the pilot program shows there is strong support for solar gardens," the Solar Energy Industries Association's Cantwell said. "We hope we can work with Xcel to continue and expand the program."
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912, mjaffe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bymarkjaffe
Numbers 

22 The number of "solar gardens" being built around Colorado, spurred by an Xcel Energy pilot program
$3,700 The cost of a 1-kilowatt share in a solar garden, and loans are available for customers
$270 The annual savings for a 1-kilowatt share in a solar garden, according to Carbondale's Clean Energy Collective
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