We now continue our development of broader impacts in systems design and management. So far, we have addressed the Goal of Solar Energy Design through engineering applications (Lessons 2, 3, 4) and through financial/economic applications (Lessons 5, 6, 7). In Lessons 8, 9, and 10 we are addressing the Goal of Solar Design by helping the client to manage risk in the given locale.
The Goal of Solar Design is to:
In Lesson 8, we discovered that there are meteorological phenomena that are really out of our control, and our job as a design and management team is to help the client to manage risk. Now, we continue with important design elements tied to managing risk, but within the social realm of community, regional, and federal stakeholders. In Lesson 9, we want to address helping our client to manage risk in the social environment, through our developed awareness of permitting and policy within the given locale. As we shall see, just because you have a good solar resource and a sound financial return (in principle), doesn't mean that the policies of the locale will allow one to actually implement a SECS, or to implement a system in a financially responsible manner.
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
This lesson will take us one week to complete. Please refer to the Course Syllabus for specific time frames and due dates. Specific directions for the assignment below can be found in this lesson.
Required Reading: |
J.R. Brownson, Solar Energy Conversion Systems (SECS), Chapter 11 - The Sun as Commons (Intro through "Framework: Emerging Local Policy Strategies") S. Bronin (2009) "Solar Rights" [1] Boston University Law Review. |
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Optional Reading (not required): | R. Knowles, "The Solar Envelope: Its Meaning for Energy and Buildings" [8], Energy and Builduings, 35, 15-25 (2003). |
To Do: | Learning Activity: Community Solar Gardens Discussion: National Targets for Electricity Production No Quiz Assignment this week Engage in all Try-This and Self-check activities (not graded). |
Topic(s): | Energy Policy Permitting Incentives Solar Rights Solar Access Community Solar |
If you have any questions, please post them to the Lesson 9 General Questions and Comments Discussion Forum. I will check the forum regularly to respond. While you are in a discussion, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
One of the main limitations to deploying solar energy is just the simple ability to make use of the Sun's energy. Here, we focus on the right to access and use the Sun's energy, and the functional ability to access unobstructed solar energy within the solar envelope. Try to remember that many technologies and objects that are outside serve as SECSs: homes and solar panels, yes, but also clothes lines, patios, and trees.
The DSIRE solar portal describes both solar rights and solar access (easements), along with a map of US states having each or both. Note that PA still has neither solar access laws, nor solar rights laws. The Wikipedia description is also a general framework to think about access to solar energy in society.
Just think, in Germany, you have the right to be exposed to sunlight directly in any office scenario (no windowless cubicles permitted). In many states, you have the right to hang dry your clothes on a line outside. In ancient Rome, an individual had the right to access solar gains or be compensated for an obstruction of that resource. When we talk about policies for solar energy, one of the first is the basic ability to access that sunlight and then make use of it to do work!
The concept of solar rights is still emerging in the USA. I am going to recommend that you take about 10 minutes to review the current state of solar rights from the Solar America Board for Codes and Standards (the Solar ABCs [10]; choose 1 page summary). The coverage is brief but useful when considering the scope of solar legal status in the USA.
The phrase "solar rights" is often used in a general sense and a specific sense. In general, solar rights are the broad class of legal rights to access and make use of the light from the Sun. In the specific sense, solar rights are distinguished from "solar access" by the following description:
Here, solar rights describe the ability to make use of solar energy in your locale.
Solar access is the functional ability of a SECS within a locale to receive or "access" solar gains across property lines without shadowing or other obstruction occurring from buildings/trees/landmarks set in a nearby property. It also has to do with the enacted local policies to manage the commons of the solar resource system, and an individual's ability to be granted compensation if access is blocked in some way. Bronin has described solar access as being managed in three manners: as a solar easement, through covenants, and through lease agreements.
We have already discussed the role of minimizing shading in SECSs that intentionally collect and convert solar gains (rather than shading devices that attempt to control solar gains). Solar access has to do with access to the solar resource within the locale over many hours of the day, and across the months of the year. Recall that we already developed some skill to assess the solar access at a site through the sun path diagrams in Lesson 2. Hey, we just tied together something that was a lot of work earlier with an advanced topic in Lesson 8! Great!
The solar envelope is an extension of solar access, conceived for urban scenarios with a cluster of buildings and obstructions. Professor Emeritus Ralph Knowles of the Dept. of Architecture, the University of Southern California, conceived and developed an extensive exploration of the solar envelope as a concept for policy development and planning. You are welcome to read about Dr. Knowles' solar envelope concept in complement to our assigned reading.
R. Knowles, "The Solar Envelope: Its Meaning for Energy and Buildings" [8], Energy and Buildings, 35, 15-25 (2003).
One of the more recent trends from the past decade of photovoltaic adoption is the ability to connect directly into the power grid. In such cases, policies have been adopted to allow renewable generators to "bank" excess power into the grid and receive credits for the excess energy (in kWh). But each locale will be subject to different policies enabling or prohibiting such practices. Net metering is expanding in creative ways, including aggregation of multiple distributed energy sources for credit, and distributing joint credit from a centralized solar garden [13] among multiple participants in a community.
Permitting is the unseen monster of project development that will slow or stop a project from moving forward. The key rewards of an established permitting process for SECS include reduced costs of installation and faster turnaround from design to deployment. It will be well worth your integrative design team's time to familiarize yourselves with the permitting process for your locale of interest.
Best practices have been itemized by IREC in our reading. We can distill those into a few core features that we would hope for in an integrative process that includes permitting:
So, first, "REN21" is the acronym for the "Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century". REN21 is a non-profit network of stakeholders established to connect key contributors from governments, international organizations, industry partners/associations, participants from science and academia, and society at large. We are using their centralized information base to expose the diverse approaches that countries can take to develop energy generation and manage energy demand at the Federal level.
After reviewing the REN21's Renewables GSR, you will have a little broader perspective on the various approaches, and will be able to compare solar policies in Germany vs. China vs. Columbia vs. Kenya.
For this lesson discussion, do some online research on national targets for PV solar power. You can use the REN21 Renewables Global Satus Report [5] as a starting point, but certainly feel free to search other available resources. Take a look at different several key players representing different continents that are actively setting PV targets:
After reading and taking down some comparative notes, use these guiding questions to create your post in Yellowdig:
Please feel free to use the following topics for your discussion posts this week:
Remember that Yellowdig point earning period ends each Friday. Posting commenting, reacting regularly through the weeek will make the 1000 pts. an easy target and guarantee a high participation grade in the course. Yellowdig discussions will account for 15% of your total grade.
I want you to consider the perspective where we view the resource units derived from the sun (light, converted electrons, converted heat, etc.) and the resource systems to enable those conversions (the Sun, the grid, our buildings) as coupled, but separate entities. This is an extension of our work on economics, but leads us into thinking about management of solar energy among the community.
While reading these materials, think how we might collectively manage both the resource units, and the resource systems in a given locale. Community solar is a new and exciting space in the solar field, and this sets up the foundation to address it and think of new strategies in management.
In both readings, we are going to see the language developed by Nobel Laureate in Economics Elinor Ostrom, from her seminal book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
From this, we state that the Sun is an energetic resource system providing the flow of light (as resource units) in the shortwave band (280–2500 nm). Once we have established our language for resource systems and resource units, we can review the Typology of Goods, discussed with examples in the article by Brownson (2013). We summarize those four main goods below:
NREL Report: J. Coughlin, J. Grove, L. Irvine, J. F. Jacobs, S. Johnson Phillips, A. Sawyer, and J. Wiedman (2012) "A Guide to Community Shared Solar: Utility, Private, and Nonprofit Project Development" [7] USA DoE National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Our final reading puts a few boundaries around the varieties of "community solar" that appear to be emerging in the USA of late. There are good examples in the document, which will be helpful for our Learning Activity in this lesson.
While community solar PV is just now emerging onto the market, note that community solar products have been in existence for millennia as shared fields and gardens for produce development and resale. Based on the prior examples from farming, the management of a community resource is well within the scope of SECS expansion.
As of 2020, Community Solar is now authorized in 19 states and Washington, D.C. There are companies that specialize in community solar that would arrange deals with farmers to lease portions of their land to build solar projects. As this segment of the solar industry expands, farmers (and landowners in general) may take advantage of this new revenue stream. In addition to generating local revenue, solar projects help states make progress toward their clean energy and sustainability goals [Gahl, 2020].
Browse through this report to learn about several representative community solar case studies across the country:
SEIA Report: Gahl, D., How Community Solar Supports American Farmers [14], SEIA, February 2020.
The case studies presented in the report show that typically, farms will lease portions of their land to community solar companies for a fixed term at a fixed price. These solar lease payments tend to be higher than those for traditional agricultural operations and are normally based on the state policies, where the project is located. Land leasing for solar often provides farmers with higher and more stable income than that obtained through producing agricultural products, which creates an incentive.
Imagine you are part of a superior design team based in PA, a state with a restructured electricity market such that community solar is possible. Your integrative design team is already capable at commercial and residential PV installations, but wants to branch out and take advantage of this "community solar" concept. Your job is to make a short survey of best practices available elsewhere and suggest a model for developing community PV in an urban community in the Philadelphia area. Understandably, your report would be based on limited information of the actual site, but you can leverage extensive access to general information about the types of building and potential stakeholders in the locale of interest. Based on your findings, you need to prepare a concise but convincing summary document for your supervisor to review.
Submit your Summary as a PDF document into the Lesson 9 Learning Activity Dropbox: Community Solar in Canvas. Remember to appropriately cite any sources of information used in your report.
You will be graded on your ability to develop a compelling outline that provides scope for applying the community solar concept in a residential Philadelphia neighborhood. The activity assesses your knowledge of investigating the potential client and stakeholders at the locale when planning to maximize solar utility in the pre-design phase. Please see specific grading rubrics in Canvas.
Please see the Canvas Calendar for specific due dates.
In this lesson, we attempted to flesh out some major policy topics tied to solar energy. In doing so, we were able to describe the connections between policy-making and renewable energy adoption at the local, regional, and federal levels. We explored the deeper meanings and implications of solar rights and solar access, which engage multiple stakeholders from a local and regional government. Then, we addressed the policy and permitting barriers/opportunities in solar project development.
Recall that we want to help our client to manage risk in the social environment, through our skill in negotiating permitting and policy barriers within the given locale. A good solar resource and a sound financial return (in principle) alone doesn't guarantee the locale will even allow a SECS, or to implement a system in a financially responsible manner.
The research of Dr. Ostrom suggested to us how local community action for solar energy is not only possible but is actively used today in other similar industries, where the dynamic appropriation and provisioning challenges of a resource system and resource units are addressed in a sustainable fashion. In turn, we used that thought process to describe new and expanding methods for community solar development.
You have reached the end of Lesson 9! Double-check the to-do list on the Lesson 9 Learning Outcomes page to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 10.
Links
[1] http://www.bu.edu/law/journals-archive/bulr/documents/bronin.pdf
[2] http://www.dsireusa.org/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_access
[4] https://irecusa.org/publications/solar-permitting-best-practices/
[5] http://www.ren21.net/gsr-2019/
[6] http://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/3/4/659
[7] http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/54570.pdf
[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378778802000762?via%3Dihub
[9] http://programs.dsireusa.org/system/program/detail/3
[10] http://solarabcs.org/about/publications/reports/solar-access/
[11] http://www.dsireusa.org/resources/detailed-summary-maps/net-metering-policies/
[12] http://www.irecusa.org/publications/
[13] http://www.solargardens.org/
[14] https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/SEIA-Report-Community-Solar-Support-American-Farms-2020.pdf