BYRON KOMINEK
Hitting on all cylinders
New agrivoltaics farm, set for completion in September, can power 300 homes
by Angela K. Evans
B
ut aren’t all farms solar?,” Lynne Wesenberg asked herself as she and TOP: Jack’s Solar Garden at sunrise her husband, Dave Dell, drove by a sign for a solar farm on North 95th MIDDLE: Dave Dell and Lynne Street one day. It’s a route they often Wesenberg take, having lived in Niwot for decades. Then BOTTOM: From left: Byron they saw an ad in the Left Hand Valley Courier Kominek, owner of Jack’s Solar about Jack’s Solar Garden, the 24-acre plot of Garden; Jonathan Koehn, City of land they often drive by that is being turned Boulder chief sustainability and resilience officer; Jordan into a community solar project. Wesenberg Macknick, lead energy-water-land and Dell became the project’s first subscribanalyst at NREL; Jon Wedel, ers, paying a one-time subscription fee in senior director of commercial services at Namaste Solar; and exchange for discounts on their monthly Xcel Elise Jones, Boulder County bill for the next 10 years. Commissioner. “It just seemed like a good thing to do,” Dell says. “For the environment,” Wesenberg adds. Community solar is an emerging industry across the nation — a way for renters or homeowners without suitable rooftops or means to install their own panels to engage with renewable energy. (Reports from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden estimate that only 22%-27% of residential rooftops can host solar panels.) The idea is simple: a solar array is built near existing infrastructure and renewable energy is fed into the utility grid, replacing fossil fuels and paid for by voluntary subscribers who in turn receive solar credits. In 2010, Colorado became the first state in the nation to pass shared renewables legislation, which was expanded again in 2019 to allow for larger projects. And although there are dozens of community solar projects around the state, Jack’s is a bit different, owner Byron Kominek says. Named after Kominek’s grandfather, who purchased the property in 1972, Jack’s will be home to 3,200 solar panels producing approximately 1.2 megawatts of power — enough to power 300 Boulder County homes. But it will also have community supported agriculture (CSA), an expansive pollinator habitat and a rigorous research component in partnership with Colorado State University, the University of Arizona and NREL, all open to school and community educational tours. “We are focused on making this not only a site that’s going to provide clean electricity and food for the surrounding community, but it’s also a really excellent learning opportunity and a research opportunity,” say Jordan Macknick, lead energy-water-land analyst at NREL. He’s been working with Kominek for the past two years to get Jack’s up and running and will be leading the research at the site. In a study published in the September 2019 issue of Nature Sustainability, Macknick and his colleagues from the universities of Arizona and Maryland explored the benefits of “agrivoltaics,” planting agricultural crops underneath and around solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure. They found that when solar arrays are set atop gravel and sand landscapes, it can easily create a “heat island” effect, making the area substantially hotter than it would be otherwise, while also decreasing the productivity of the panels, as they are known to be sensitive to temperature increases. According to an NREL press release about the study, “The co-location of PV and agriculture could offer win-win outcomes across 12
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JULY 16, 2020
BOTTOM TWO PHOTOS BY ANGELA K. EVANS
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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
