2016 shines as Wisconsin's brightest year for solar
Buoyed by a major investment in solar by Dairyland Power Cooperative, other utilities and Target Stores Inc. as well as projects around the state, Wisconsin solar industry saw its most active year of development, new data show.
Across the state, which had 25 megawatts of solar power installed at the start of the year, projects exceeding 30 megawatts started construction last year. The new projects, once fully online, will be capable of powering about 5,000 homes.
That's nearly five times as much development as took place in 2015 as utilities, businesses and homeowners responded to falling solar prices.
"Wisconsin solar energy saw its best year ever in 2016, with the projects installed and under construction more than doubling the state’s total production,” said Tyler Huebner, executive director of Renew Wisconsin, a clean energy advocacy group based in Madison. “But we can’t stop here, because our neighboring states are growing even faster than us."
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Among the biggest solar projects to be highlighted at a renewable energy policy summit on Thursday in Madison include Dairyland Power Cooperative's multi-site project that's actually a series of solar fields across western Wisconsin.
When Dairyland put out a request for proposals last year for up to 25 megawatts of solar, the response was strong and competitive, said chief executive Barbara Nick, a keynote speaker at Thursday's policy summit.
The power cooperative ultimately decided to move forward with 12 projects scattered around Wisconsin at the site of its local member electric cooperatives. And then the local coops were given the chance to build their own community solar projects alongside the big one.
“It’s a real story of Dairyland doing what the communities want,” she said.
Nine cooperatives ended up building their own solar projects totaling 2 megawatts, with the economics just as favorable as for Dairyland for its move to add 19 megawatts.
“Of the cooperatives throughout the nation we’re the first to be able to do this and at this scale,” said Nick.
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Nationally, statistics for 2016 aren't yet available but industry forecasters expect that the number of installations doubled from 2015, with the growth linked to the fact that solar panel prices have dropped 80% in five years, Tom Werner, chief executive of SunPower, told the Journal Sentinel recently.
“You’re seeing Dairyland sign contracts that are really quite competitive, and that’s something that the state’s investor-owned utilities would do well to copy,” said Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, an advocacy organization based in California.
Many Wisconsin utilities have stalled in new investments in renewable energy given the state’s ample power supply and the fact that they have already complied with the state’s renewable energy target.
The Legislature set a target more than a decade ago to get more than 10% of its electricity from renewable energy, and the utilities complied in advance of the 2015 deadline. Since Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature took control in 2011, there's been some talk of relaxing the standard but little push to expand the state's renewables target.
A report this month from the research group Solar Power Rocks gave Wisconsin a "C" grade and ranked Wisconsin 20th in the country in an evaluation of how solar-friendly the states are, based on their policies.
“Wisconsin does have a long way to go. We’d like to see much better statewide rooftop solar opportunities,” he said.
Challenges include the increasing fixed charges on customers’ monthly utility bills that have cropped up in Wisconsin and other states.
Wisconsin has approved bigger increases in fixed charges than the rest of the country in recent years, including the recent increase that went into effect this month for customers of Wisconsin Power & Light, an Alliant Energy Corp. utility based in Madison.
At Thursday's conference in Madison, Renew is honoring a variety of solar projects, including group-buy programs that helped boost residential installations last year in Milwaukee and Shorewood as well as Racine, Madison and Eau Claire. Also getting honored: a crowd-funded solar project built at the Riverwest Co-op Grocery & Cafe.