Some homes in the Whisper Creek neighborhood of Arvada look out over farms and ranches where cows and horses graze, and, recently, a 13-acre community garden planted with row after row of a growing commodity: solar power.
unveiled a 4,752-panel 1.5 megawatt solar garden in Jefferson County on July 14 that, over the period of 20 years, is expected to put more than 50 million kilowatt-hours of electricity onto the Xcel Energy grid. For reference, that’s roughly enough energy to power 300 typical Colorado homes.
Residents and businesses can subscribe to the garden, paying a little extra to be able to say they are solar powered — without the trouble of installing their own panels — and getting a renewable-energy credit on their utility bill in return.
Gardens open up solar to people who don’t own their homes, whose roofs are incompatible with solar or whose houses are in a bad location for solar, SunShare founder and CEO David Amster-Olszewski said. He estimated as many as 80 percent of homes and businesses fall into that category.
“It just breaks down all those barriers,” Amster-Olszewski said.
Colorado led the nation when it passed the , spurring a growth of community gardens nationally, Amster-Olszewski said.
Customers don’t subscribe to a particular panel in the garden. Instead, SunShare looks at how much energy a customer used the year before and then determines how much electricity to portion off from the garden to offset the customer’s demand. The garden then puts the energy into Xcel Energy’s grid. Customers receive 7.2 cents per 500 kwh, which will show up as a renewable energy credit on the bottom of their bill.
“We recognize how important solar is and its benefits for our community,” Arvada Mayor Marc Williams said. “It’s not only green but it makes sense financially to do these kinds of projects.”
SunShare employees, the mayor, city council members, other solar groups and residents gathered July 14 to celebrate the opening of the garden and tour the area.
SunShare subscriber Shane Zellmann walked around the garden during the grand opening. He said he tried to put solar on his house when it was being built, but the builder wouldn’t do it.
“I could do it on my house, but the upfront cost was too much,” Zellmann said.
He said the cost savings on his utility bill is a nice perk, but he was mainly subscribing for environmental reasons. He said he’s excited about the garden and put a SunShare sign on his lawn so neighbors and friends would be inspired to sign up.
The garden is already completely subscribed. The three largest customers are the cities of Arvada and Northglenn, and . It also has 25 residential subscribers, including some low-income households.
SunShare has other solar gardens that have 300 residential and commercial subscribers in the Denver metro area and 400 in Colorado Springs, including the city and county of Denver, Water World and Colorado College.
And demand is growing. Amster-Olszewski said the company is adding 16 megawatts across nine solar gardens in Colorado next year. He said SunShare receives inquiries from 1,000 new customers a month, compared with a couple hundred a month last year.
