Rosebud Sioux Tribe Tribal Utilities Commission – 2018 Project

NOTE: Project pages are being updated regularly to reflect changes, if any; however, some of the information may be dated.

Summary

Under this project, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe (RST) will install an approximately 149-kilowatt (kW) AC ground-mount solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system south of the Sicangu Village subdivision, along with rooftop solar PV for 13 homes in the Sicangu Village subdivision.

The community solar system is expected to offset roughly 50%–55% of the electric bill, saving an estimated $23,770 annually. The 13 rooftop units, sized at approximately 5.8 kW DC, are estimated to produce 7,547 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year for an annual savings of $862 per year per unit.

As part of the project, tenants will receive energy efficiency education to reduce energy consumption. Local trainees will be recruited to assist in the installation, providing a number of jobs.

The Rosebud Sioux Nation and its members are spending a disproportionate amount of revenue and income on energy costs. The majority of this revenue is paid and collected off Reservation, never to be circulated in the local economy.

Through a 2016 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Indian Energy, the Tribe installed 5.8-kW solar PV systems on 10 income-qualified homes on the Reservation. A total of 28 participants from the community logged more than 690 hours in hands-on training. These 10 systems have largely performed as estimated, lowering the aggregate kW usage to 43,654 kWh in 2018. This saved Sicangu Wicoti Awanyakapi (SWA Corporation), Rosebud's tribally designated housing authority that pays the electric bills, $8,122.00.

This project to install solar generating systems at the Sicangu Village is a significant next step toward the Tribe’s long long-term goals of a energy sovereignty, a green economy, and job creation.

The project aims to install an approximately 149-kW AC ground-mount solar PV energy system south of the Sicangu Village subdivision along with rooftop residential solar PV for 13 homes in the Sicangu Village subdivision. The community solar system is expected to offset roughly 50%–55% of the electric bill, providing an estimated savings of $23,770 annually. The 13 rooftop units are sized at approximately 5.8 kW DC and will produce an estimated 7,547 kWh per year for an annual savings of $862 per unit.

In addition to providing the Tribe and its newly formed tribal utility, RESCo, with a better understanding of the basic concept of a distributed energy system, this project will build capacity within the tribal housing authority and among members of the Tribe. This project will also provide hands-on training to Sinte Gleska University students, SWA Corporation employees, and future RESCo employees.

Most importantly, this project will demonstrate to the Tribe the benefits of solar PV as a viable means of sustainable economic development and job creation. Through these installations, RST expects to reduce energy costs for the Tribe and its members, as well as advance the Tribe’s energy sovereignty goal. Energy sovereignty will enable the Tribe to circulate money within the tribal economy and reduce dependence on foreign entities.

Through this initiative, RST will realize many benefits related to its current energy use and expenditures. The project will help the Tribe advance its long-term goals of energy independence and sovereignty, which in turn will help grow its economy, producing jobs and creating awareness.

The project will save RST an estimated $603,375 in electricity costs over 25 years—money that will not be spent off the Reservation but rather saved locally and thereby used to boost the local economy. The project will also avoid 314 metric tons of CO₂-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.

Through this installation, the Sicangu Nation Training and Employment Program will commit to providing two summer youth participants for the duration of the project to gain valuable work skills and construction experience. In addition, four local job trainees from the Rosebud Sioux Nation will be employed for the duration of the project.

The project will also include a 5-year operations and maintenance (O&M) plan, which will be developed and implemented by a vendor who will train two to three SWA Corporation staff members to perform long-term O&M. The O&M training is intended to build local capacity and create one or two local part-time jobs to carry out this work.

RST hopes to use this project as a scalable model for the approximately 25 other housing clusters on the Rosebud Sioux Nation.

RST is centered in Todd County in south central South Dakota, with trust lands scattered in a checkerboard fashion in four other counties to the east and north, totaling more than 900,000 acres. The Rosebud Sioux Tribal Nation Reservation is the sixth-largest in the United States. This project will take place on the Reservation. The 149-kW AC community solar PV project will be installed in a field south of Sicangu Village, and the 13 rooftop PV systems will be installed on homes in the Sicangu Village subdivision.

The project was competitively selected under the DOE Office of Indian Energy Fiscal Year 2018 funding opportunity announcement “Energy Infrastructure Deployment on Tribal Lands - 2018” (DE-FOA-0001847) and started in March 2019.

The project in complete. View the final report and project status reports for more information.