Gardens That Grow Gigawatts

By Elisa Wood, Contributor
01 October 2012   |   

Is it possible to develop large solar projects with households as backers, and do it again and again? That's the idea behind solar gardens or community shared solar, a trend catching fast in the US.

 

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Like so many people, Joy Hughes wanted to do something for the victims of the July 2012 mass shooting in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado in the US. But while others held vigils and set up memorials, Hughes found herself scouting sites for solar gardens six days after the shooting in the Denver suburb.

‘It is something positive for people to focus on that might help with the healing process,’ said Hughes, who worked at Apple Computer and several Silicon Valley startups before founding the Colorado-based Solar Garden Institute.

A solar garden, also called community-shared solar, is a photovoltaic array that takes from the ideas of community vegetable plots, crowd source funding and energy aggregations. The garden is built near or within a community, where it is visible to its members. Local households and businesses come together to fund the projects through subscriptions, ownership of shares, or some other form of investment, sometimes using utility on-bill financing. Models vary, but the harvest usually comes in the form of electric bill credits, guaranteed utility rates, or some other type of financial compensation for the gardeners.

Helping a community through trauma is not a solar garden’s usual purpose, but then Hughes points out that the model opens up all kinds of possibilities not often associated with a power plant. ‘This is a way people can take individual ownership, individual responsibility for their power supply,’ she said. ‘lt becomes a symbol for sustainability for every community.’