A kitchen table discussion led to a $5 million solar farm

August 19, 2023 12:12 AM

How a kitchen table discussion led to a $5 million solar farm funded by residents to provide local power. Three-hundred residents in the New South Wales city of Goulburn band together to build their own solar energy project on the edge of town.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (13 comments total)

I just installed solar on my roof, but pooling my resources with the neighbourhood would probably have been more rational.
posted by Harald74 at 5:10 AM on August 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

More of this, please!
posted by May Kasahara at 7:05 AM on August 19, 2023

I'm all for more models of ownership and production of renewable energy, since we need vast amounts more of it and anything that increases it is to the good. This is a very small project (two hectares, or about five acres for those of us using ye olde measurements) but it puts the value directly back to the coop members. If nothing else, this seems like an excellent way to reduce local opposition to smaller renewables projects, though I don't think it would transfer well to a utility-scale project, simply because the costs are so much larger.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:07 AM on August 19, 2023

In the US, there's some potential for the IRA to promote more community solar projects. In addition to the 30% tax credit, community solar projects up to 1 MW (power for ~1000 homes) can get additional credits:

+ 10% for meeting domestic content specifications
+ 10% if at a brownfield site or in a community directly impacted by fossil fuels
+ 10% if in a low-income community or on tribal land (by application)
+ 20% if part of a Low-Income Residential Building Project or Qualified Low-Income Economic Benefit Project (by application)

Up to 80% tax credit... (source)
posted by joeyh at 7:27 AM on August 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

Investors can buy into the project by purchasing one solar panel for just $400

$250 in US money. Damn that's cheap compared to the cheapest ~$2.50/watt (~$1000/panel) installed cost here.

5 acres is a lot of land in California tho! (then again paying ~$1M for a 5 acre lot isn't that burdensome when split 300 ways, plus land is generally a pretty safe investment on the 20+ year horizon).

2 years ago I decided to go solar . . . I have a crappy roof for solar (too many trees and mostly E-W) and installers basically double the price over costs so I would have loved to gone this way instead, 22 optimally-oriented panels woulda cost me $5500 instead of the ~$28,000 my 25 panels cost.

The way we incentivized solar in California is pretty bizarre since loading up everybody's roof wasn't the most economical way of doing it; much easier slotting a panel into a rack on the ground rather than all the crap required to bolt the panel onto a wood roof.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:01 AM on August 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

i got a $200 solar panel for free when someone moved
bought a $100 mini-inverter-battery combo dingus
hooked em together with 20-ft 12ga speaker wire

it all fits in van, deploy when convenient, move panel about 4x per day & prop up with stick
this provides enough energy to keep small fridge running & keep battery topped up

saving up to build a bigger system, already have 3KW inverter; about $3k will be enough to make system that provides house power and move van short distances at low speed

if you wish to help facilitate these operations i have fundraising link in profile
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:04 PM on August 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

anyway the point of that coment was not gimme money (but do that if you wanna) but solar is super cheap for what you get out of it. Electricity is great, and modern batteries are in freakin credible
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:09 PM on August 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Worth noting that the global average cost of solar panels now is 16.1 cents per watt. (source tracks this for BloombergNEF). It was 23.7 cents/watt at the beginning of the year. So there is considerable fat in that $2.50/watt end user price. Larger projects will be able to get closer to the global average, somewhat.
posted by joeyh at 1:48 PM on August 19, 2023

cheapest ~$2.50/watt (~$1000/panel) installed cost here.

What were the incentives like where you installed your panels?

I'm in Australia like the OP, and I got my 6.6kW system installed on my roof for AUD 9,000 (AUD 1.36/watt) before subsidies, about AUD 7,000 (AUD 1.06/watt) after subsidies, using the most expensive European inverter / premium installer company. Realistically most people would spend less, maybe use a Chinese inverter and a contract-work type company for about AUD 7,000 before subsidies, AUD 5,000 (AUD 0.75/watt) after subsidies. Also there are even more low income subsidies for solar install but you're only eligible if you earn less than AUD 180,000.

Panels are installed with North and West facing and they are mostly break even against a usage cost of AUD 0.22/kwh import and AUD 0.07/kwh export. Of course, significantly better than break even when / if power prices rise...I'm constantly cycling through ultra cheap power retailer who lure people in with low power prices then raise it later hoping people don't notice (kind of like home loan / credit card cycling) - at the average prices of AUD 0.28 / kwh import I'm more than break even.

I'm always surprised by how much it costs to install panels in UK and US even when comparing the unsubsidized price, I'm not sure why panels are so cheap here in Australia.

Main reason for roof install is just space constraints, for ground install you basically need to get lucky somewhere with a good grid interconnect nearby that isn't already taken up by wind / solar....
posted by xdvesper at 4:29 PM on August 19, 2023

We (in Australia) have a seven-panel solar system that was on our roof when we bought the house. We do make as much use of it as possible by running appliances like the dishwasher and washing machine and the pool pump during peak generation hours as much as possible. We still feed power into the grid, but this is economically nearly useless because the buy-in rate has dropped so far that it's not viable to invest in more solar generation than we now have, despite the government incentives to do so. We recently looked into this and, of course, nobody will add to our existing system due to hand-wavey 'incompatibilities'. Buying a complete new system much larger than the existing one, with a battery, would see us in the red for at least 15 years based on existing prices and, particularly, feed-in prices. That's not a good investment in my book, although I'm very attracted to the idea of not consuming any power generated by dead dinosaurs.

I like the idea of community systems a lot, but they really aren't practical in suburbia. I wish there was a way (maybe there is) to connect all the rooftop panels in a neighbourhood to a common battery, which would resolve the issue of the land needed for panels.
posted by dg at 6:14 PM on August 20, 2023

Some land can be multi-purpose, too, like having animals graze under the panels or covering up parking lots.
posted by Harald74 at 1:23 AM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm always surprised by how much it costs to install panels in UK and US even when comparing the unsubsidized price, I'm not sure why panels are so cheap here in Australia.

Very high cost of sales. They have to keep a bunch of people going to find leads and most of their sales pitches don't go anywhere. In places with superior solar economics for physics reasons, like Australia, the pitch is much easier to make and therefore you spend less on unproductive sales visits.
posted by atrazine at 1:25 AM on August 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

>What were the incentives like where you installed your panels?

here in California, the main incentive was just our high power rates. My panels are producing $200/yr of power each so the payoff will come pretty quick.

But in addition, the federal solar system tax credit that ran from 2006 to 2023 was 26% in 2022 when I installed the panels but was retroactively boosted back to 30% by Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" that somehow got through the Senate last year, so that was good for a ~$400/panel discount for me (but in reality much of this rebate is actually going toward the 3% interest I'm paying on the system).

The biggest incentive was PG&E's 1:1 net metering agreement, ("NEM-2") which was closed by the CPUC to new customers in April but will run for me out to 2042. This allows me to get full (~38c/kwh) credit for surplus generation each day for later use either at night or in December->Feb for a heat pump or winter trips in my electric RV.

I guess this shifting ~5000kWh/yr from day to night & spring to winter is worth around $1200/panel over the 20 years of NEM-2 ... pulling the trigger on the $30,000 system cost was a no-brainer for me due to the above!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:51 AM on August 21, 2023