Macnab, D. (2019). 12-Year-Old Starts Solar Solution: Neighborhood Rooftop Solar Co-ops Driving Expansion State by State. Solutions 10(2): 6–7. https://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/article/12-year-old-starts-solar-solution-neighborhood-rooftop-solar-co-ops-driving-expansion-state-by-state
Idea Lab Noteworthy 12-Year-Old Starts Solar Solution: Neighborhood Rooftop Solar Co-ops Driving Expansion State by State by Deirdre Macnab As a speaker on solar energy speaking to community groups around Florida and Colorado, I like to wake my audience up with a couple of questions. “How many of you in the audience have thought about going solar?” All hands go up. Follow up question: “How many of you have actually gone solar?” With few exceptions, rarely do any hands raise. Consumers today are fascinated by solar, but the obstacles of price, lack of information, and oftentimes a lack of neighbors who have solar loom large. This is where the solution of neighborhood solar co-ops comes in. Giving consumers the confidence, knowledge, and buying power to finally go solar and get a more vigorous return from the lower prices that come from bundled buying power. After three years of a partnership between the non-profit Solar United Neighbors based in Washington DC, and the League of Women Voters of Florida, of which I was a former president, Florida has seen a major boost in distributed solar with a 110 percent growth in 2017. In the past three years of operation USD$25 million in rooftop solar installations have been spent through 45 separate cooperatives that have formed across the state. The idea for Solar United Neighbors (SUN) started with a 12-year-old-boy, Walter, who came home from seeing the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and told his mother: “Mom, we’ve got to go solar.” With persistence, his mother, Solar United Neighbors founder Anya Schoolman, looked into going solar. She soon realized how expensive and complicated the process would be. Walter persisted and she 6 | Solutions | April 2019 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
challenged him to see if he could get the neighborhood interested to help reduce the price. So he did. With his friend Diego, they distributed flyers all across their Washington DC neighborhood, and 100 people turned out, with most of them going solar. Other neighborhoods heard the news and approached Schoolman to do the same approach in their area. And thus, Solar United Neighbors was formed. That group helped 50 neighbors go solar. Word of the effort quickly spread across the city and soon other neighborhood groups formed. In 2015, the organization formed a key partnership in Florida with the state’s large and active League of Women Voters organization. With 31 chapters and an army of advocates, the League has been a ground force along with a legion of volunteers from the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and many other groups to invite homeowners to neighborhood meetings to learn how solar can save them money, protect them from hurricane outages, and reduce their cost of installation by banding together. Now in 13 states, with the newest being Colorado, participants join as volunteer solar advocates to help spread the word in their communities, encouraging their friends and neighbors to attend Solar Information Sessions and sign up to get a solar quote. The solar co-op is free to join, and joining is not a commitment to purchase panels. For those who do decide to go forward after getting a quote, a small fee helps sustain the SUN organization in order that they may continue to facilitate more co-ops and
play the important role as a installer neutral group, to facilitate the installer selection committee meeting, where participants gather together and select their installer of choice. The results have been remarkable. More than 3,600 homes have gone solar through this effort. This has generated more than $70 million in rooftop solar, while educating tens of thousands about the benefits of distributed solar. Rooftop solar benefits solar and non-solar owners alike because it reduces demand on the electric grid and the need for expensive new power plants. I’ve seen this first-hand in Florida. In three years, staffing has grown to four, with two positions funded full time by grants from Miami Dade County and the City of St. Pete. Many other counties and cities are paying small amounts to fund co-ops in their areas. More than 1,200 homes have gone solar through the program. Benefits to the community include new jobs (solar is now one of the fastest growing new employment sectors, outpacing the average growth rate), keeping savings from utility bills in the community and state, and a more resilient grid in the event of extreme weather events, which almost every state is now facing, not just Florida. Many of Florida’s cities have now made commitments to procuring 100 percent of their energy from renewables by a set date in the future, and the co-ops have become a critical tool in their tool kit for making measureable progress toward their goal. Support of solar transcends party lines, and even a state like Florida, which can be so politically divisive, has