Community Solar for Tacoma?

UPDATED:  This is tomorrow.  If you’re really in to clean energy, this might be one to keep an eye on.

We came across this little notice in the City’s News You Can Use newsletter:

The Sustainable Tacoma Commission is scheduled to do a presentation on Community Solar to the Environment and Public Works Committee on Nov. 30 December 14 at 4:30 p.m. in Room 16 of Tacoma Municipal Building North. 

Community Solar is a Washington State incentive program that encourages the use of solar power as a vehicle to create jobs and develop a vibrant solar industry in the state. The community solar act allows local governments to host solar systems on their property. The Sustainable Tacoma Commission will be asking the Council Committee to consider allowing community solar projects on appropriate city properties.

The potential for a Community Solar program in Tacoma caught our attention; these programs seek to facilitate the implementation of solar energy production at the local level, on locationally appropriate scales – not massive production, but larger than individual residential possibilities.  Despite broad public interest in solar energy, advocates argue, most people lack the ability and/or incentives to invest in and install it.  Community solar projects attempt to address this obstacle by making it possible for people to invest in the technology for their communities without having to install it on their own property. 

Of course there are challenges in making community solar a productive undertaking, including challenges in accessing tax incentives and other benefit programs aimed at encouraging solar production, but written in language that precludes these kinds of programs In Washington State we’re situated a little better to see the financial payoff of a community solar project, due to the State’s Community Solar Enabling Act, which gives incentives directly to owners of the projects, at twice the rate of the incentive for individual on-site solar production, along with other potential incentives. 

We found some good information from the Americans for Energy Leadership on how community solar projects typically operate, and the benefits and challenges of such programs.  Read more, including a few mentions of Washington projects and policies on the AEL website.  You can also read a case study on the Community Solar Project in Ellensburg from Northwest Community Energy.

So what do you think?  Who’s excited at the possibility an alternative energy project in Tacoma?