The first community solar project in the US was in Washington state, and projects that have rolled out since then provide financial benefits to community members whether or not they have rooftop solar panels. While innovation has expanded the range of benefits, changes under consideration could change community solar significantly. 

Community Solar Deliver Benefits

Community solar enables a diverse range of customers - including residents, businesses, and institutions - to subscribe to a shared solar project within their utility territory and receive direct credits on their electricity bills for the energy produced by their share, Yale University explained. The term “community solar” reflects the collective nature of these projects, which are designed to serve entire communities rather than just individual property owners. The installations can be on rooftops in the community or at a small solar site nearby. 

Solar energy is already the leading source of new energy solutions in a multitude of locations. Innovations to improve solar panels and inverters as well as to use AI and robots will make it even better.

Note: This is an update to our January 2024 story

Residential solar systems have traditionally been installed as rooftop panels. Now, however, solar is being integrated into roofs, windows, wall panels and more, enabling new solutions for architects and builders as well as installers.

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)

These new solar energy systems, called Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV), are PV elements located within a building's envelope, WBDG explained. They can replace exterior shells such as rooftop solar panel components or be integrated into the building itself. Examples of BIPV materials include glass windows, glass skylights, awnings, canopies, shingles, exterior wall panels and even walkable surfaces. These systems generate electricity and can also add visual interest or aesthetic design elements to a building.

As solar farms are increasingly located on farmland, agrivoltaics offers a new pathway of potentially increasing farm output by combining agriculture with solar panels. The benefits could help overcome objections to using agricultural land for solar energy.

What is Agrivoltaics?

Agrivoltaics is a system where solar panels are placed on farmland in a way that farming can continue. There are three main types of systems, the USDA explained: elevated, inter-row, and a combination of the two. Elevated systems place solar panels above vegetation, usually at least 6 feet, so they can protect vegetation from extreme weather such as heavy rains or drought and also reduce sun exposure. In inter-row systems, vegetation is grown between rows of solar panels rather than beneath them. Crops usually have more access to direct sunlight than in elevated systems, and rows of panels can be spaced out widely enough to allow tractors to cultivate vegetation in between.

One of the challenges of renewable energy is in ensuring consistent and reliable power generation, for example, solar panels cannot generate power during the night. Energy storage can overcome the difficulty by storing excess power for use when renewable energy is not available. Storage is growing rapidly, and innovations can make deployment easier, faster and cheaper. 

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has published its 2024 state-level data for energy generation, and the results show steady growth for utility-scale solar energy in Washington. According to the EIA’s Electricity Data Browser, the net solar generation in 2024 from Washington plants was 436 thousand megawatt hours (MWh). Although still a minor player in electricity generation in Washington, utility-scale solar showed an increase of about 20% over the 2023. The 2024 increase continues a steady climb of utility scale solar in Washington since 2021 when net generation of utility solar topped out at only 50 thousand MwH.

Across the US, tech companies large and small are building data centers to handle generative AI, streaming, social media and myriad other activities that require massive amounts of data. In the past, Washington was a top destination for data centers, but data centers also require tremendous amounts of electricity. While there has been sufficient electricity so far, the scale of the expected growth of data centers and the difficulties with adding more electricity to the grid are reaching a point where there may soon be insufficient power. New solutions are critically needed.

“There is a general consensus that we've got an energy problem coming in Washington State,” Cascadia Renewables co-founder and managing partner Markus Virta said as he started the third session at the 2024 Solar Washington Summit in October. 

We are in an incredibly fortunate position in Washington, Markus opined, in that the Columbia River has been a large “battery” system. “The dams provide an incredible source of resilience to this region and outside of this region. But it is terrifying that they're forecasting 44% less snowpack in 2040. What that means is that later into the winter, instead of snow, we're getting rain that is destabilizing hillsides, putting our transmission equipment at risk. Ultimately, it means less generation in late summer from our dams.”

This month, the Urban Infrastructure Lab at the University of Washington published an “Economic Impact Analysis of Community Solar Programs for the State of Washington”. The study looks at third-party-owned community solar, i.e.,mostly corporate-owned community solar installations where a third party owns the project (neither the utility nor the customer) and the public is given the ability to subscribe to the solar energy service of the third party through their utility bill. Corporate-owned community solar facilities are often arranged through the lease of land, but rooftop array development is also a possibility. Thus, according to the study, solar growth increases the opportunity for payments from corporate developers and owners of the arrays to landowners of rural, commercial, and industrial property.