For the past four years, electric cooperatives have worked jointly to advance research into the construction and use of solar energy. The project, known as the SUNDA or Solar Utility Network Deployment Acceleration project, was funded in part with a Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative grant. The program ended earlier this year. Its influence, however, continues.
SUNDA included 17 distribution and generation and transmission cooperatives of various sizes in diverse locations, including Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association in Westminster and Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association in Fort Collins.
“Lessons from their real-world experience formed the core of a set of tools that have already been used by hundreds of other co-ops across the nation,” said Debra Roepke of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s Business and Technology Strategies group. “The partner co-ops collaborated with one another, generously shared their challenges and successes, and contributed to a rich array of resources that will continue to support co-ops as they navigate the changing energy landscape,” Roepke said.
Total solar capacity owned or contracted by electric cooperatives rocketed from 94 megawatts in 2013 to 868 MW in 2018. Electric co-ops now host 75 percent of all utility-sponsored community solar projects. In Colorado, all of the co-ops receive electricity from solar resources, and 18 of the co-ops are working with or will soon be receiving electricity from local solar facilities. In total, cooperatives nationwide now own or purchase more than nine times as much solar energy as they did in 2013 prior to the SUNDA project.
The project built a broad co-op knowledge base, producing field manuals, business models, finance and insurance prospectuses and procurement guides, and establishing a framework to accelerate solar technology adoption by co-ops.
“Solar may not make sense for every co-op,” Roepke said, “but we now have a tool set — made by co-ops, for co-ops — that enables any co-op to objectively assess their solar options and support implementation.