Shared solar-plus-storage projects could bring new opportunities for low- to moderate-income communities and commercial tenants.
As solar and energy storage mandates expand across the country, many residents of multifamily housing face difficulties catching the wave.
Most current policies prioritize either single-family homeowners or large-scale commercial and industrial projects, meaning a significant portion of the U.S. population can’t take advantage of the incentives.
“Multifamily housing is almost stuck in the middle between the single-family market and the commercial market,” said Mel Bergsneider, the U.S. executive account manager at Allume Energy. The company develops shared solar systems for multifamily housing.
Bergsneider explained that the language used in solar and storage regulations can be unclear, as multifamily doesn’t fit neatly into existing categories. For instance, much of the multifamily market are renters. In that scenario, she asked, what does it mean to be an owner or a beneficiary?
“These mandates serve to push the market toward more adoption of solar and energy storage, but we need to make sure that the language actually includes multifamily too,” she said, adding that without policy adjustments, these projects risk being excluded from critical storage incentives. “It takes some education and reminding that not every solar project for the residential market is purely single-family homeowners.”
Shared solar, which lets residents of multifamily housing connect to a building-wide solar system, has already made significant inroads, particularly in low- to moderate-income (LMI) communities. Allume’s SolShare technology enables a single rooftop solar system to distribute energy among multiple tenants behind the meter.
(Read: Florida multi-family solar installation uses SolShare behind-the-meter hardware)
Allume, which originated in Australia, said its U.S. deployments have primarily been solar-only, while the company has projects in Australia and the United Kingdom that incorporate storage. Bergsneider said this largely stems from more favorable policy environments compared to the U.S.
“In Australia, there’s no net metering,” she explained. “It’s almost like a window for the future of what’s going to be needed because you have to maximize self-consumption as much as possible.”
Bergsneider expects the U.S. to follow a similar trend where not only is there an onsite solar system maximizing production, but there’s also a battery that can discharge energy when electricity costs are highest.
Shared solar-plus-storage would have particularly large impacts on LMI communities.
“There’s this resilience component. A lot of LMI housing, whether multifamily housing or affordable housing, tends to be located in areas that might experience rolling blackouts more frequently than others,” Bergsneider said. Shared solar-and-storage could eliminate that gap.
“The shared solar takes care of the localization and the storage optimizes the energy delivery.”
As for why landlords or building owners would want to install shared solar? It pencils out very quickly, thanks to some state-level policies.
The Illinois Solar for All program, gives what Bergsneider sees at “unbelievable” incentives. Not to be confused with the similarly-named federal policy, Illinois’s Solar for All program supports low-income and environmental justice communities.
“[The program] gives 50 years’ worth of credits in year one for solar renewable energy credits,” she said. “What ends up happening is that a lot of these projects end up having a one-to-two-year payback, which is pretty unreal.”
