The transaction represents the largest pre-operational portfolio Nautilus has made to date.
Nautilus Solar Energy reached an agreement to acquire a nine-project portfolio with 54 MW of community solar assets from Seaboard Solar, a New Milford, Connecticut-based utility solar developer.
The portfolio consists of projects expected to enter COD operations by Q4 2023, and located in Chautauqua, Columbia, Erie, Oneida and Onondaga counties, New York.
Once completed, the community solar projects will provide clean energy to power over 10,000 residential and commercial subscribers within the National Grid utility territory of central and western New York.
New Yorkers in the National Grid territory will be eligible to subscribe to the community portfolio beginning in mid-2023.
The community solar portfolio supports New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which set a goal for the state to meet 70% of its electric demand from renewable energy by 2030, with net zero emissions from renewables by 2040.
The Empire State represents the largest community solar market for Nautilus, based in Summit, N.J., with 200 MW of development-stage and operational assets in New York.
New York continues to lead the nation in community solar development, with a total installation rate of 693 MW of solar assets deployed through December 2022.
Initiated in 2011 by then Governor Andrew Cuomo, NY-Sun is New York’s solar incentives and financing platform that makes solar available to all residential homeowners, renters, and commercial businesses.
At the recent NYSEIA New York Solar Summit in Albany, N.Y., the NY-Sun program neared its one-year anniversary for the state’s Distributed Solar Roadmap, in which it set a goal of deploying 10 GW of distributed solar by 2030.
On December 28, the state’s energy development group the New York Research Development Authority outlined an Energy Storage roadmap which calls for 6 GW of new energy storage projects for stationary standalone and paired with solar applications.
Empire State climate leadership
Earlier this week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced the state’s Cap-and-Invest Program to fund a sustainable and affordable future as part of the 2023 State of the State. The program includes a Climate Action Rebate incentive that will shake up $1 billion of future cap and invest proceeds.
The Cap and Invest program is a sister program to the state agencies NYSERDA and Department of Conservation’s co-penned CLCPA, which was finalized this past month.
The Climate Act is a broad-reaching climate accord, which through 2030 intends to enforce and penalize infractions to residential, C&I and utilities that do not adhere to strict carbon emissions protocols.
The distributed energy market is further incentivized by the CLCPA program, with the solar, wind and energy storage asset categories to receive additional credits for new installations while promoting the green energy workforce, promoting energy justice, and switching consumers off of fossil fuel appliances and onto heat pumps, electric stoves and EVs, to name just a few.
Further details on the Cap-and-Invest program and CLCPA platform can be found here and here.
