The Urbana Solar project was selected as a Meaningful Benefit Category Special Recognition winner for Equitable Workforce Development for the Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar, an initiative of the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP).
The NCSP, a program of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), supports a coalition of stakeholders working to expand access to affordable community solar to every U.S. household and enable communities to realize meaningful benefits, such as greater household savings, low- to moderate-income (LMI) household access, increased resilience, community ownership, and equitable workforce development. NCSP is working toward a 2025 target to enable community solar to power the equivalent of 5 million households and generate a cumulative $1 billion in energy bill savings.
The Sunny Awards were launched in 2022 to recognize community solar projects and programs that employ best practices to increase equitable access to the meaningful benefits of community solar for subscribers and their communities. Meaningful benefits are key outcomes of community solar development identified by the NCSP. These community solar benefits bring positive impacts to the households, organizations, and the surrounding communities where the projects are developed and operate.
Project Overview
- Project Name: Urbana Solar
- Location: Urbana, Illinois
- Project Size: 5.36 MW
- Project Subscribers: Residential and City of Urbana
- Year Energized: 2021
- Lead Organization: Nexamp
- Partner Organizations: City of Urbana, Embarras River Basin Agency (ERBA), CEFS Economic Opportunity Corporation, Community Action Partnership of Central IL (CAPCIL), National Community Action Partnership, Marcfirst
- Business Model: Third-party developer
- State or Utility Program Leveraged: Illinois Solar for All
- Bill Savings: 50%
- LMI Access: Serves 500 low- to moderate-income (LMI) households
Meaningful Benefits Best Practices
The Urbana Solar Farm is one of the largest community solar projects that primarily serves low-income households in the country. The project is a part of the Illinois Solar for All program and, when leveraging the program’s incentives, can support up to 500 LMI households with reduced energy bills by providing a 50% discount on the solar credits generated by their share of the community solar project. Nexamp bills subscribers monthly for their share of the community solar generation (at a 50% discount) but does not require a minimum credit score or banking information, and includes no upfront costs or long-term commitment for subscribers. All 100% of residential subscribers to this project qualify as LMI households, using the Illinois Solar for All definition and verification requirements.
This project is sited on a former landfill owned by the City of Urbana. The City of Urbana receives a lease payment from Nexamp for the use of this land, but is also subscribed as the project’s anchor tenant and receives utility bill credits for its share of the project. The funds generated by the lease payment and utility savings are placed in the city’s general fund and have been used to offset declining revenues and to support road repair and emergency services in Urbana.
The Urbana Solar project was recognized by the NCSP for equitable workforce development because of its use of union labor. The Illinois Solar for All program requires participating solar developers to hire job trainees for a minimum percentage of project work hours and on a minimum portion of projects in the program. Nexamp chose to leverage a union electrical contractor with previous community solar experience in Illinois that had a strong safety record, a commitment to team development, and a strong relationship with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC). Nexamp maintained regular communication with the subcontractor to ensure the standards and rules of the Illinois Solar for All Program were met. Over the course of this project’s development, local union trainees performed more than 3,700 hours of work to support their careers in skilled labor.
To support customer engagement and enrollment for this project, Nexamp also partnered with local Community Action Partnership agencies (CAP). These organizations worked with Nexamp to send letters to their clients to identify households interested in community solar and, after receiving signed authorization letters, provided the necessary verification information to Nexamp to help reduce the paperwork burden on households. The CAP agencies’ lead on communications with households led to greater trust building and an easier signup process for households. Nexamp compensated the CAP agencies for every customer they enrolled in the project, which gave the participating CAP agencies a source of unrestricted income they could use to support additional work in their communities.
For more information on the Urbana Solar project, please visit www.nexamp.com/project/solar-star-urbana-landfill-east or contact Juan Parra at jparra@nexamp.com.