Buying into solar

Utility’s array largest in area

U.S. Rep. Steve Womack (right) listens to Troy Scarbrough, vice president engineering and operations at Ozarks Electric Cooperative, describe the operation of the Ozarks Electric Cooperative O.N.E. Solar Facility during a tour last month in Springdale. The facility has 4,080 solar panels.
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack (right) listens to Troy Scarbrough, vice president engineering and operations at Ozarks Electric Cooperative, describe the operation of the Ozarks Electric Cooperative O.N.E. Solar Facility during a tour last month in Springdale. The facility has 4,080 solar panels.

Members of Ozarks Electric Cooperative in Arkansas can now buy solar power without installing a panel.

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Solar panels are seen in detail June 29 at the O.N.E. Solar Facility. The facility has 4,080 solar panels.

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Ozarks Electric Cooperative’s O.N.E. Solar Facility just outside Springdale is seen June 9.

Ozarks Electric started the area's first utility-owned solar farm last month on 5 acres off East Robinson Road just outside Springdale.

Ozarks Electric Cooperative solar project

Number of panels: 4,080

Price of a share/one panel’s worth of electricity: $340

Kilowatts per month from one share: 45*

Amount carbon dioxide to produce an equal amount of power by fossil fuel: 883.2 pounds per year, per panel*

Credit on purchaser’s monthly electric bill per panel: $1.83*

Number of shares one purchaser can buy: Up to 100 panels, but no more than the purchaser himself can use

*Estimates

Source: Ozarks Electric Cooperative

How solar panels work

Electricity from the solar panels is produced by the “photo-voltaic effect,” which was first observed in 1839. A weak electric current was detected when platinum or gold plates immersed in acid or other electricity-conducting liquid were exposed to sunlight.

The process was an expensive and inefficient way to produce electricity for more than a century. The phenomenon was useful in researching physics, but the first practical application as a power source was in 1958, to extend the useful life of batteries on a satellite. The method saved weight.

Further research in the space program made the technology efficient enough to draw the attention of private industry by the mid-1970s. The cost-per-watt of power produced by a solar cell has dropped by more than 99 percent since, according to industry figures.

Source: American Physical Society

The array of 4,080 panels can generate a maximum of 1 megawatt, or enough power to meet the peak demand of 150 or more homes. Ozarks' members can buy shares, with each share equalling the power one panel can produce, said Troy Scarbrough, vice president of engineering and operations for the utility.

Each share costs $340 and entitles the owner to a monthly credit on his electric bill that will vary with the cost of electricity. One hundred of the 4,080 shares were sold almost immediately, bought by the city of Fayetteville. Others had bought another 17 shares by Friday, and the credit was worth $1.83 a month.

"We built this project with the plan that the facility would operate for at least 25 years, and we have a very high degree of confidence it will meet that," Scarbrough said. Based on the engineering, the panels should last at least 30 years and perhaps 35, he said. The purchaser of a share should recover his investment in 12 to 13 years.

"After that, the credits they receive on their bills are gravy," he said.

Steve Patterson is executive director of the Arkansas Advanced Energy Association, a nonprofit group that represents a range of energy consumers and businesses that specialize in conservation and alternative forms of energy. Patterson reviewed the share purchase agreements offered by Ozarks Electric.

From the available figures, he said the costs are roughly equal to someone installing his own solar panels. Someone who owned a system tailored to his needs would have to rely less on power from other sources, though.

The process of buying a share from Ozarks is simpler than complying with state regulations to install panels at home, Patterson said.

"The permitting processes, both with state and local regulations, are a factor, but people who want solar tend to be pretty motivated," he said. State regulations on solar energy are being revised by the state Public Service Commission. A public hearing is set for Oct. 4.

Ozarks' claims its panels offer lower maintenance and are on a more suitable site than many homes are overstated, Patterson said.

"If you have shade trees, you don't have to put solar panels just on the top of your house," Patterson said. "There are other options."

The $3 million project is designed to pay off for Ozarks Electric even if no one buys shares, Scarbrough said. This project should produce a return on investment even at the lower end of performance expectations, Scarbrough said.

Biggest Shareholder

Fayetteville was looking into solar options before the Ozarks Electric project got off the ground, said Peter Nierengarten, sustainability and resilience director for the city. It considered installing its own solar panels on roofs of city property, along with other options, he said Friday.

"We did the cost-effect calculations, and when we ran the numbers, it was a good deal," Nierengarten said of the Ozarks project. "Their economies of scale meant that the cost per watt was more affordable than a smaller array. Beyond that, we didn't have to worry about operations, maintenance or insurance. All we have to do is get the credit on our bill.

"A lot of the questions we had looking into our own solar power projects are hard to know, because we don't have any experience in how it works. Even if we'd installed the system ourselves, we would have had to hire outside consultants to help and fix any problems."

The solar panels are expected to provide about 20 percent of the power needed for a new park opening in town, he said.

Direct competitor

"It's going to be a direct competitor with me, but the fact that solar power is now affordable enough for a utility is a good sign," said Flint Richter, owner of Richter Solar Energy of Fayetteville. His company installs solar panels and has since 1998.

"I've looked at it, and it's actually a pretty good option. For some of my customers, it would be the only option," Richter said in a telephone interview Friday. "I have one customer whose roof is full. I have another who had too much shade.

"I got into this business to promote solar because I thought it was important, and the technology is mature enough now that others are getting interested," he said.

Ozarks Electric has had a strong interest in solar power for a long time, Richter said. He toured the utility's solar site and found it to be well-designed and constructed, he said.

Why build it?

Members across Ozarks' service area expressed interest in renewable energy options, including solar, prompting the cooperative to build the system, Scarbrough said.

"The people who are interested in renewable energy tend to be very interested and highly engaged, but everybody who's interested doesn't own their own house," Scarbrough said. "Many of them live in apartments or other rental property. They can't install their own solar panels. Others do own their own home but have beautiful trees they don't want to cut down or have other reasons they don't get a lot of direct sunlight. Others are concerned about the expense of the initial investment, don't want to maintain them or worry that installing solar panels might limit the number of interested buyers if they ever want to sell.

"We asked ourselves what we could do to meet this demand. Once we started thinking about it, we realized there would be a lot of advantages for everybody if we built a facility in one location and took care of the installation and maintenance ourselves," he said.

Designing a system

Once the process to design a system began, the need to tailor it to Arkansas conditions -- particularly the hot summers -- became a priority, Scarbrough said. For instance, most solar power arrays in the northern hemisphere face south. This allows a conventional array to gather the most sunlight during the course of the day, whatever season of the year.

The Springdale array, however, faces west. The panels generate their maximum power during the late afternoon. This is also the time of peak demand on the system. The overall power production wasn't seriously sacrificed because the panel design uses an eastward-facing reflector attached to the back of the panels. The reflectors shine sunlight on the panels directly behind them during the morning hours.

The cooperative bought the panels and related equipment from tenKsolar of Minneapolis. TenKsolar's system has software that directs the flow of electricity through different inverters at different times, ensuring none of them wear out too quickly by bearing the brunt of the work. Inverters convert the direct current electricity produced by solar panels into the alternating current used by homes and businesses.

Hitting the limit

The solar farm is likely to be the one and only for Ozarks Electric in the area. Ozarks Electric, its fellow cooperative Carroll Electric and Southwestern Electric Power provide the bulk of Northwest Arkansas power. Ozarks Electric's power flows to about 73,000 meters in the region, many of them in Washington County.

Arkansas utilities generate a large percentage of the state's power from fossil fuel such as coal and natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric.

Ozarks contracts with the utility's wholesale electrical provider, Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. of Little Rock. The contract limits the amount of solar energy Ozarks can produce. The limit is not arbitrary. It was calculated to prevent the introduction of alternative power from causing disruption to the existing power supply.

Conventional power plants work most efficiently when providing power at a steady rate. Large amounts of solar power added to a system all at once drive down demand from more traditional sources during the day. Demand then rises sharply during the early evening as the sun goes down, then tapers off again suddenly late at night.

Having a working solar farm is already giving Ozarks Electric valuable information on how such fluctuations can be managed, Scarbrough said. Although it is "pie in the sky stuff right now," the utility is getting the kind of data it needs to decide if purchases of battery power storage would even out these shifts.

The contract with Arkansas Electric allows Ozarks Electric to produce a maximum of 1 megawatt of power from renewable sources such as solar. The array met the contract's maximum in one fell swoop, Scarbrough said.

NW News on 07/25/2016

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