Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative has been expecting construction to start on its new Community Solar Garden any day now for about a month.
First, weather at its other construction sites slowed down the contractor, Hannah Solar, which has also been involved with other community solar projects for North Carolina electric cooperatives. And now the geology at the site of the project has presented a challenge to work crews.
The Community Solar Garden will be located on a 1.3-acre site on the west side of Highway 12 on the eastern edge of Hatteras village — just next to the Hatteras Island Ocean Center and just across from the Sea Gull Motel, which is on the oceanfront.
Because of its location, the contractors knew that they would need sturdier materials and concrete footers to anchor the 180 solar panels on the site. When the crews arrived earlier this week and started digging holes to anchor the footers, they expected to deal with water in the holes. However, they did not expect the holes to start caving in at just 2 feet deep.
Hannah Solar’s engineers are solving the problem, and CHEC hopes the project will be back underway before the end of the month. The contractor says that once construction begins, it will take only about a week to complete.
The delays and issues at the site are not expected to add to the cost of the project, said Susan Flythe, CHEC’s executive vice-president and general manager.
The solar project will not require any upfront costs to the cooperative, will help it comply with state renewable energy laws, and will provide benefits to members.
It’s basically a win-win situation that CHEC has worked on for most of last year.
Flythe explains that when North Carolina passed the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (REPS) law in 2007, CHEC and 25 other state cooperatives formed GreenCo to help them comply with the law by purchasing renewable energy credits for providing solar or wind power or the like.
In 2014, Flythe says that the North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation (NCEMC) rolled out a plan to build small scale community solar projects, since large projects owned by the member co-ops would be prohibitively expensive.
NCEMC has partnered with the National Renewable Cooperative Organization (NRCO) to finance and build 13 community projects in the state. Four were built in 2014, and nine were planned for 2015, the last year for which the tax credit is available. CHEC’s solar garden is the last of the projects. The cooperatives will pay back the investment over 20 years.
Flythe said that CHEC began planning for the community solar project last January, and the biggest challenge was finding a place to locate it, which she said took six months.
First, privately owned land is at a premium on Hatteras Island. And there were other requirements for locating the solar garden.
“We wanted to be visible,” she said, both for eco-minded residents and visitors. It had to be located in a neighborhood where it wouldn’t offend the neighbors. Flythe found out when she started approaching owners about their properties that not everyone wants to live next door to a “solar farm,” Also, the property had to be south-facing and not in a marshy area or wetland.
She finally found the piece of property in Hatteras village. The eco-friendly Hatteras Island Ocean Center was thrilled to have it as a neighbor and will host an education display on solar power.
The property belonged to the business owned by Joe Thompson, whose wife, Tami, is a board member. Flythe said CHEC certainly wasn’t looking to do any favors for board members, but was instead relieved to finally purchase a satisfactory property in August since the tax credit was ending at the end of the year.
Flythe said CHEC paid appraised value for the property — $85,000 — and that Tami Thompson recused herself from the vote on purchasing the property.
The 180 solar panels that comprise CHEC’s Community Solar Garden will produce about 50 kilowatts of energy, enough to provide power for about five homes, Flythe said.
The basic unit of a solar panel is a solar cell, which usually consists of one or two layers of silicon-based semiconductor wafers. When struck by the photons in sunlight, the solar cell generates an electrical charge due to the “photovoltaic effect” ? which is a pretty good name, since it produces voltage from photons. The flow of these electrons moves in a steady electrical current from one side of the cell to the other.
Dozens of these PV cells are packaged together into solar modules, which in turn are packaged into solar panels that are arranged to maximize their hours of exposure to direct sunlight. Because the electricity generated by all those solar cells is direct current (DC), it is then sent to an inverter that transforms the power into the same alternating current (AC), which can then be used by CHEC.
NCEMC notes that the solar projects have been created in the same spirit that drove the creation of electric cooperatives many decades ago. Back in the mid-20th century, electricity was out of reach for residents in many rural communities. Groups of people joined together to create electric cooperatives. CHEC was formed in 1945.
Today, solar energy is too expensive for many individual homeowners to install and maintain.
However, all of us who are members of CHEC will be getting a little bit of the power from the Community Solar Garden. And individual members who want to participate financially in the program can purchase the energy rights to a panel.
The cost of each panel, based on financial modeling by NRCO, will be $685. In return, members who purchase the energy rights will get a credit of $2 to $3 a month on their power bills for 20 years.
Each member may purchase up to 10 panels, and Flythe says CHEC will begin selling the panels immediately after the project is completed. She said the company already has three panels reserved by interested members.
There has been a good deal of interest in the panels from CHEC members, she said, but she doesn’t expect the cooperative to sell out of panels as soon as they are available. Although the cost of solar power has decreased dramatically in recent years, it is still more expensive than other power sources, such as natural gas or nuclear.
Buying a panel isn’t so much a financial investment for individual members as it is an investment in the environment and renewable energy.
However, the new solar garden allows the entire community to invest in solar power without a significant capital investment. It allows CHEC to meet one of its goals of providing environmentally responsible electric service while complying with state laws. CHEC also hopes the solar garden will “enhance the experience” of eco-minded visitors.
Finally, the Community Solar Garden will provide an educational opportunity for residents, visitors, and school students.
CHEC is working with the Hatteras Island Ocean Center to design the solar power exhibit in that building, which will be available to residents and visitors. The exhibit will include access to the “Sunny Portal,” a website that offers management of solar projects and provides information on solar power, such as visualization of live data on power yield.
The Sunny Portal website will also be made available to members of CHEC and to school classes. The Community Solar Garden can also be a significant addition to the school’s science curriculum.
For more information on the Community Solar Garden, you can e-mail Laura Ertle, CHEC director of public relations and marketing, at laurae@chec.coop.
