The Overcoming Solar Barriers for Multifamily Housing project was selected as a Grand Prize winner for the 2023 Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar, an initiative of the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP).
NCSP, a program of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 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: Overcoming Solar Barriers for Merritt Manor Multifamily Housing
- Location: Olympia, WA
- Project Size: 124 kW DC
- Project Subscribers: 82 housing units of Merritt Manor apartment building
- Year Energized: 2022
- Lead Organization: Olympia Community Solar
- Partner Organizations: South Sound Solar, Reliable Electric, Prime Locations, Washington State Department of Commerce, Glenn Wells Architecture.
- Business Model: Non-Profit
- State Incentives Leveraged: Washington Department of Commerce Low Income Community Solar Deployment Grant
- Bill Savings: 33%
- LMI Access: 100% low-income subscribers
Meaningful Benefits Best Practices
The Overcoming Solar Barriers for Multifamily Housing community solar project in Olympia, Washington, provides over 30% bill savings to all residences of the 82-unit Merritt Manor apartment building, which provides housing for families that qualify as low-income. Olympia Community Solar, in partnership with South Sound Solar, developed a solar proposal and interconnection solution for a rooftop community solar system at Merritt Manor and received a grant from the Washington Department of Commerce’s Low Income Community Solar Deployment Grant to fund the project’s costs in 2021.
Low- to Moderate-Income Access: The Merritt Manor Solar project serves 100% low-income subscribers. Merritt Manor, an affordable housing community, requires that tenant’s household income is at or below 80% Area Median Income to qualify for a rental unit. This requirement ensures that this project will serve 100% low-income subscribers for the life of the array.
Household Savings: The Olympia Community Solar team attributes the success of the program to its creative use of upgrades to the building’s electrical service to enable the interconnection of the net-metered solar array. Because the project could not be virtually net metered, Olympia Community Solar and its partners led the replacement of the eighty-two residential meters with two commercial meters, sized to maximize the amount of net metering credits each meter could recover. In capturing and distributing these net metering credits across residents and eliminating fixed utility billing charges for each individual residential meter, the project resulted in average household savings of $282.70 per resident.
Over the project’s 25 year life, Olympia Community Solar estimates the project will result in $925,603 dollars of total savings, representing $11,287 dollars per residence.
Community Participation: Before beginning project development, the Olympia Community Solar team invited the residents of Merritt Manor to participate in an interactive survey to share their interest in community solar. The team received responses from 67% of the housing units, representing 82% of the tenant population. The survey results indicated that a majority of the respondents had energy costs that represented a burden to their household and that all respondents were in favor of participating in a community solar project to reduce their household energy costs. The survey results were used to inform project design and were a part of the project’s successful application for funding from the Washington Department of Commerce.
For more information on the Merritt Manor project, visit Olympia Community Solar or contact Mason Rolph at info@olysol.org.