Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Edina Community Solar Garden is Fully Subscribed

This press release was released by Cooperative Energy Futures.

Cooperative Energy Futures, in partnership with the City of Edina and Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, has filled the Edina Community Solar Garden with residential subscribers.

The solar garden will enable 66 Edina families to offset their energy bills with credits from their share of the solar garden, which will be built on the roof of the Edina Public Works building in Spring 2017. The Edina solar garden will likely be the largest urban rooftop solar garden in Minnesota at the time it is built and will serve as a model for how local governments and organizations can use large vacant roof spaces they own to host clean energy projects that benefit residents of their city.

By hosting the solar garden and subscribing, the City of Edina and subscribers lead the way towards climate solutions that grow local jobs, clean energy, and community wealth.

Subscribers to the Edina solar garden will pay Cooperative Energy Futures each month for the solar energy produced by their portion of the solar garden: if you subscribed for 2 percent of the garden capacity, you pay for 2 percent of its production each month. At the same time, Xcel Energy will credit subscribers on their Xcel Energy bill for that same amount of production.

Subscription rates are set so that each month, the subscriber comes out ahead while locking in their energy cost over the long term. The solar garden also contributes to Xcel Energy’s statewide requirements to provide over 30 percent of total energy from renewable sources by 2020. As members of Cooperative Energy Futures, subscribers are member-owners of a cooperative providing clean renewable energy to the grid.

The subscription drive generated more interest than this first solar garden could accommodate, especially in the final month as the garden filled. Community residents who didn’t make it into this solar garden can participate in two ways:

  • Join the waiting list to be invited to join a Community Solar Garden when one becomes available in your area.
  • Help launch a new Community Solar Garden by recommending and connecting Cooperative Energy Futures with a potential host site. If you know a potential location interested in serving as a host site of a community solar array, you can send a recommendation to Solar Site Assessor Bruce Konewko at bruce@cooperativeenergyfutures.com, 612-568-2334.  Please include your name, contact information, the specific address (street, city, state, zip) of the site you are recommending, and a sentence or two about your connection to the site and its owner.

Good solar garden sites are at least 30,000 square feet of empty space on a flat roof, or 1-5 acres of parking lots (for a solar canopy system) or open land. Large public buildings like schools and public works buildings, some large congregations, and large commercial or warehouse spaces make great roofs, as do open parking lots or fields.

For other questions about CEF’s solar programs or Community Solar Gardens, contact csgmanager@cooperativeenergyfutures.com.

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The City of Edina
4801 W. 50th St., Edina, MN 55424
mail@EdinaMN.gov 952-927-8861

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