Solar cooperatives help more people get some solar energy

William Ingentron is passionate about solar energy. But it’s not something he can add to his home, an apartment in Regina.

So he and a group of other like-minded city residents and investors installed 115 solar panels on the roof of the Conexus Credit Union branch in North Albert and are now monetizing the renewable energy they generate, offsetting greenhouse gas emissions that come primarily from fossil fuels in Saskatchewan. network powered.

Their group is called Wascana Solar Co-operative. According to the study, it is one of dozens of solar cooperatives across the country that are helping more people invest in and participate in their local clean energy economy. Census of general energy cooperatives 2022 by scientists from the University of Victoria and the University of Saskatchewan.

Supporters say they are democratizing energy by generating investment in local solar projects and making clean energy more accessible to all as Canada moves toward its goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

What is a solar cooperative?

AND cooperative is a corporation that is owned by members who use the corporation’s products or services.

Local energy cooperatives typically produce or invest in renewable energy, the census shows, and most of them in Canada focus on solar energy.

Here’s how they work:

• They generate and/or invest in solar energy in their home province – often projects called “solar gardens” that are larger than the roof of a single house but smaller than a solar farm.
• They sell shares of the corporation to community members to raise necessary funds for projects.
• They use the proceeds from selling the solar energy generated to repay investors and earn a return over time.
• Some offer additional services to members. For example, Wascana Solar Co-operative negotiated bulk purchases of solar systems so that members with their own roofs could get a discount on installation. It now offers advice and consultation to members looking to install their own solar systems.

Ingenthron said the group also does public education at community events.

“Our ultimate mission is simply to help bring solar energy to the region,” he said.

How solar energy benefits communities

Cooperatives are one way to implement community solar projects that benefit many people, not just a single homeowner (governments, utilities, and other organizations sometimes develop similar projects).

Erwin Hueck, director of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association of Saskatchewan and its director of distributed energy resources, said solar energy gives communities better control over energy costs. “And the second piece is that it helps drive local investment and local participation in these energy services as well.”

This includes the share of people living in multi-family residential buildings; those who cannot afford the initial cost of solar power or those whose location is not suitable for installing solar power due to lack of sun or other issues.

Chris Caners, CEO of the Ontario-based Solar Share cooperative, said community-scale projects are cheaper than individual residential installations due to economies of scale, help increase network resilience and reduce “line losses” that cause energy to leak when transmitted over long distances. He added that local benefits could encourage communities to support renewable energy projects.

Martin Boucher, a researcher at the University of Saskatchewan, co-authored the recent census of energy cooperatives and is the current president of the new Community Energy Co-operative Canada umbrella group.

He said cooperatives also drive innovation in the energy system.

For example, Saskatoon-based SES Solar Coop has a system installed on the roof of a local apartment complex. In 2020, this system began providing solar energy to charge Saskatoon Carshare Cooperative’s electric vehicles. Otherwise, cars would be charged from the Saskatchewan grid, where 81 percent of energy is produced from fossil fuels.

This solution was covered by a “virtual grid metering” arrangement, whereby solar energy produced in one location (a housing complex) is credited for use in other locations (car chargers). This is quite new and unusual in Canada, Boucher said. (Another example is another community solar project, Nelson Community Solar Garden, British Columbia)

More money for solar energy

Boucher said cooperatives tend to be very successful in raising money from people who are willing to accept small but steady profits over a long period of time (rather than expecting large profits immediately). He added that from the government’s perspective, “it’s a cheap way to actually achieve good climate goals.”

Solar Share was founded in 2010 and has raised more than $80 million from 2,200 members for 51 solar projects across the province, from Temiskaming to Ottawa to St. Catharines, Caners said. Together they have 15 megawatts of power generated 117 million kWh of electricity (enough to power over 160,000 homes in Ontario for a year) and generated revenue of $53 million (as of 2021, over $7 million a year).

Solar Share’s latest projects have been financed by the sale of “solar bonds” with a term of three to five years and a yield of 3.5 to 4.5 percent a year, and Caners said it expects to offer several new bonds soon.

The potential of cooperatives is more visible in Europe. 2023 study on citizens’ energy initiatives in Europeshowed that over 10,000 initiatives involving over two million people invested between 6.2 and 11.3 billion euros ($9.1 and 16.6 billion) in installing technology that would generate between 7.2 and 9.9 GW of renewable energy.

There were 97 renewable energy cooperatives in Canada in 2021 (about half of which were active), up from 129 in 2015, according to the census.

EU policy supports ‘renewable energy communitiesBoucher said political support for cooperatives is rare in Canada.

Financial supervisory authorities do not have much experience in dealing with them and vice versa.

Ingenthron said his cooperative “is kind of opening up new opportunities for people who deal with stock exchanges.”

This may slow down your progress. One solar cooperative CBC News spoke to for this story has spent more than five years completing paperwork with financial regulators in British Columbia and has yet to announce or start raising funds for its first project.

Boucher said the census showed that many Canadian cooperatives are isolated, run by volunteers and lack support and resources.

“Many boards are burnt.” Many of those that existed previously no longer had a website when the last census was taken.

In response, Boucher decided to form an umbrella group to support them – Community Energy Co-operative Canada.

How governments helped in Ontario and Nova Scotia

However, there are ways governments can make this situation easier.

Solar Share was founded in 2010, shortly after the then Liberal government of Ontario introduced a program (now canceled) that provided 20-year clean energy contracts, with some contracts going to municipalities, Indigenous communities and cooperatives.

Caners said the certainty that such contracts provide is helpful in managing risk, especially when the high upfront costs of solar energy pay off over the long term.

Caners said that now that the cooperative has to compete for bids with large utilities, financing new projects is more difficult.

He said if Ontario updates regulations to allow virtual net metering, which indicated that it couldthis will help because it will enable Solar Share to acquire customers other than the provincial government – including its own members, “which would be really great because I think that’s what our members would want.”

Virtual grid metering is a key component of Nova Scotia’s new community solar program, announced earlier this year. It will enable not-for-profit organizations, cooperatives, First Nations communities, municipalities, businesses, universities and colleges to build solar gardens ranging from 0.5 MW to 10 MW and sell subscriptions for the electricity they generate via virtual grid metering.

The program sets aside 20 MW for projects under 5 MW that are developed and owned by nonprofits, cooperatives and entities representing underserved or marginalized communities.

David Bushell, chairman of Solar Nova Scotia, has previously said that a photovoltaic installation in Nova Scotia cannot exceed 100 kilowatts (about 10 to 20 times more than a typical rooftop system on a single-family home), and its power can only be officially used at a site where solar panels were installed.

This may be one reason why the census found there are no solar cooperatives in Nova Scotia.

Bushel expects that to change with the new community solar program.

“There has been a lot of interest and I think a lot of exciting projects will come out of this.”