Community Solar for Folks Without Sunny Roofs
By: Jonathan Hiskes, Sustainable Industries Magazine
Published: Jun 17 2011 – 10:18am
When Stanley Florek, an M.B.A. student at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, began considering new possibilities for solar-energy businesses a few years ago, he quickly made two discoveries. First, Pacific Northwesterners were surprisingly eager to put their money toward solar power. And second, few residents had both large, unshaded roofs and $20,000 or so available for a home rooftop array. (In Seattle, particularly, 50 percent of residents are renters.)
Florek researched community-scale solar projects that let neighbors add rooftop arrays all at once, saving through bulk purchases. But those didn’t help renters or others without a suitable roof.
What if neighbors, instead, could pool their money and invest in a collaborative project on the roof of a community center or government building? And what if they could gain an ownership stake while doing so?
He settled on the metaphor of a tangerine, divisible into “SunSlices” that would let residents pay $1,000 for an ownership stake in a larger project, earning a return of $100 a year until the investment was paid off. After that, the community could decide what to do with the project.
He launched Tangerine Power (originally Tangerine Solar) on that concept two years ago. Now, with its first project underway in the Seattle suburb of Edmonds, he’s hopeful he’s got a scalable new model for distributed solar.
“We’re very interested in giving people not just a sense of ownership, but actually control over their local energy future,” he told me this week in his office – on a tugboat on Seattle’s South Lake Union. “There are a lot of people will to sell you stuff, but not as many people willing to help you get empowered.”
In Edmonds, Tangerine Power partnered with the local group Sustainable Edmonds to put a $40,000 array on the Frances Anderson Community Center. Having a local partner has been so helpful that Florek says he’ll try to do the same on all projects. (He compares the projects to barnraisings that work only with a lot of help.)
The hardware comes from Silicon Energy of Marysville, Wash., since the state offers incentives for projects that use Washington-made equipment. Tangerine is now hashing out terms for a second project on the City of Bellevue Service Center. It’s in the midst of an angel funding round and hopes to expand throughout the nation in the coming years.
In Edmonds, investors should have their initial investment of $1,000 returned in about 10 years. After that, they’ll vote on whether to keep the array, sell it to the local utility, or dismantle it. Until then, they have a way of investing that’s closer to home than most stock purchases but more lucrative than a pure donation.
“If they’re watching news and tearing their hair out over it, this is something they can do in their community that has a concrete impact,” Florek said. “They’re bringing green energy to their community.”