Landfill Solar: Community Solar Success Story with Scott Tess, City of Urbana, IL | EP210

In this episode of the Clean Power Hour, host Tim Montague is joined by Scott Tess, the Sustainability and Resilience Officer for the City of Urbana, Illinois. They discuss the 5.3 megawatt community solar project that was developed on the city’s closed municipal solid waste landfill in Urbana Illinois in Central Illinois (home of the University of Illinois). This episode holds a special place in Montague’s heart because the landfill was the very first solar project he walked back in 2016 when he we just getting into the PV industry full-time.

Scott provides an in-depth overview of the project, explaining how the City initially identified the landfill as a potential site for solar development and went through a competitive procurement process to select a developer (TotalEnergies is the ultimate developer/owner-operator). He highlights the challenges and uncertainties they faced, such as determining the commercial viability of the site compared to open farm fields and navigating the state's incentive programs.

The conversation delves into the benefits of repurposing brownfields like landfills for solar projects, including generating revenue for the City through lease payments, reducing maintenance costs, expanding access to renewable energy for low-income residents, and putting the property back on the tax rolls.

Scott also shares insights into the development process, including the importance of properly locating inverters to minimize noise disturbances, the use of a ballasted racking system to avoid penetrating the landfill cap, and the potential for incorporating pollinator-friendly vegetation in the project.

Scott also discusses the City's involvement in the Solarize Urbana-Champaign program, which competitively selects a single solar installer and offers bulk pricing and community education to encourage residential and small business solar adoption.

Overall, the episode provides a comprehensive look at the challenges, opportunities, and benefits of developing solar projects on brownfields, as well as the role municipalities can play in supporting and promoting renewable energy initiatives within their communities.

Social Media Handles
Scott Tess
City of Urbana

Transcript

Scott Tess: 0:38

I tell people about this process is it's a request for qualifications. Scoring those proposals on a predetermined rubric, entering into a lease option to give the developer control the site. The developer goes out and gets, you know, engineering, design off takers, finance, and as you mentioned the incentives from state and federal.

intro: 1:07

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Tim Montague: 1:35

Today on the Clean Power Hour, brownfields solar, this is a homecoming episode for Tim Montague. I walked a closed landfill in Urbana back in 2016, with my buddy, Scott Tess, who's my guest today. And that was the very first solar project I ever walked. So that project is now in lovely 5.3 megawatt community solar array, and there's an expansion in the works. Welcome to the show, Scott tests, sustainability and resilience Officer for the City of Urbana.

Scott Tess: 2:05

Thank you, Tim. Good to be here.

Tim Montague: 2:07

This is wonderful. I'm really pumped to bring you onto the show. Scott, before we geek out on landfill solar, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get interested in sustainability? And how did you become such a great advocate for solar PV?

Scott Tess: 2:24

Yeah, thanks. I've, I've been, I've been working for the city of Urbana in this role, more or less the same role for 11 years now. My My educational background is in environmental science and urban planning. I worked in Florida for about a decade doing a couple of different things, and mostly in the environmental field, environmental protection in the public sector, and just wanted to expand my impact and get into bigger, broader issues with sustainability. And when I came to Urbana, you know, one of the first things they put on my plate was, you now buy all the electricity for all the residents in the city of Urbana, and how that doesn't make any sense. You don't own a utility. I knew nothing about what some states called Community Choice aggregation, what we in Illinois call Municipal Electric aggregation. And all of a sudden, I had all this, all these kilowatt hours that were, you know, on my responsibility, and that really kicked off my interest in converting as much of that as we can, from old dirty fossil fuels to new clean, renewable energy.

Tim Montague: 3:33

Yeah, Community Choice aggregation. I mean, many, many residents of Illinois don't realize that they are part of a program probably or could be part of a program. And it gives, what it does is give cities, you know, collaborative buying power, your bulk buying energy. And, you know, here in Illinois, we have a deregulated market, there are over 70 energy suppliers. And so there's a lot of competition. And there's a lot of variation. And it's kind of primarily

Scott Tess: 4:07

we're primarily pushing, putting downward pressure on prices for consumers. Yes. But when we create that market, that margin, that incremental savings, we're capturing some of that to buy renewable energy credits. And that's how we bring it's how we leverage our Municipal Electric aggregation program to support clean energy. Yep.

Tim Montague: 4:27

So let's talk about your role regarding sustainability. What what are the what are the major buckets that the city is looking at regarding sustainability and resilience? Yeah,

Scott Tess: 4:42

we spend a lot of our time on renewable energy development. Most of that is helping others not city facilities, but helping others get into renewable energy. But we we you know, right when I came here and started getting active in renewable energy, it was clear we had this closed landfill and it's a liability for the most part, we're just mowing the lawn fixing erosion, pumping, leach a monitoring wells. And and there's acres upon acres that are not being used. And they're not on the tax rolls either because it's a city owned landfill. Now we have a couple of things that we're doing with a landfill for a long time, police firing range, Fire Department training range, and the landscape recycling center, and that's really excellent reuse of that space. But we still had 40 5060 acres that were just mowing the lawn, it's all liability. And of course, Coming from renewable energy perspective, sustainability perspective, the first thing you think of is, well, let's just cover it with solar panels. But what's not quite that easy, we've got to sell that power to somebody. And in in the before times before the future energy jobs act in Illinois, our only opportunity would be to either be a power plant, and we weren't going to be big enough to be, you know, a cost effective power plant, or directly plug into someone's building and provide electricity. Well, there wasn't really anybody nearby that was big enough and interested enough to take this amount of power that we could produce from a closed landfill. And so we were stuck for a couple of years. And that's when you and I started talking about this property and what we could do with it. But then the future energy jobs jobs act comes in, and it creates the framework and the utility billing obligation for community solar market. And that changed everything. Now we, you know, we were monitoring the development of fija future energy jobs act. And as soon as it was signed, we were, you know, running, we were writing our request for qualifications for a landfill solar developer. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like two months later, we had our RFQ published, and we were soliciting vendors. And I think we were pretty early in, in terms of of soliciting vendors, and getting that project going, we might have been one of the first projects actually energized in the community solar program. Yeah,

Tim Montague: 7:12

it certainly pays to be proactive. If you're a city manager or sustainability officer listening to this episode. And you have land that could be used for some other purpose and can't be developed into a higher use than renewable energy, you should look at solar landfill solar is a thing check out episode 199 With Annika Colston of AC power, they are a developer that does nothing but brownfield solar, largely landfills, but but all types of brownfields. And, you know, you can think of a landfill as a bathtub in the ground that has a lining, and then you put a pile of trash in it, and then you cover it, and you grow grass or, or you know, some low growing, cover ground cover on top of it. And that's what the landfill that I recall, I'm going to show a photo of the solarized landfill, I couldn't find my photos of that day we walked around the landfill. But it's basically just a hill with grass. And in your case, you had some some trees and shrubs growing on it. That had to be cleared off, of course, to put the solar around there. But it's a great, it's a great repurposing of brownfields, because otherwise they're just sitting there. You know, you have to do some maintenance. Maybe you're collecting landfill gas, and converting that to energy. You know, and that has a lifespan. I don't know what maybe you know more about that than I do. But, you know, 20 years, 30 years, how long does landfill gas last?

Scott Tess: 8:54

I don't know the length. But I know that produces most of the landfill gas early in its closure life and less and less over time. So by the time that was a thing happening at landfills, our landfill had been closed for decades. We're not really capturing or producing any landfill gas. Yeah. Make it you make a great point. There's a lot of these properties that municipalities own out there. And they're they're not sure what to do with. I've talked to a lot of municipalities over the years. And what I hear is a lot of folks saying, Well, I don't what about this? And what about that, I don't know everything. And what I always encourage them to do is use the procurement process, the procurement process that they already use in their town, village, city, county to learn. So if you don't know how things proceed with a landfill solar development or any type of large solar development, ask them that question in your request for proposal in your request for qualifications, and get responses back from developers. And if after reading all those responses and getting those proposals, you're still not comfortable, you don't have to move forward with the procurement, you can cancel the procurement and reject all bids, and spend a little more time investigating. But what's most important is to get moving on this process to start your procurement. And of course, those of us like urbanna that have done this a few times. We've got the documents, it's all in the public domain, just email us we'll share it. You

Tim Montague: 10:22

do not have to reinvent the wheel in terms of developing a robust RFQ and that's the good news because those documents are very important actually in order to secure qualified bids and a process that is good going to lead to a development, there are many RFQs RFPs I've seen, that I can tell are not going to lead to a project because they're not written well enough, specific enough, et cetera. It's easy to have unrealistic expectations, Scott about what you can do with solar on a vacant lot. And, you know, it's not it's not simple community solar in Illinois is great, but it is complicated. And the stars do have to align, right, you have to get through permitting and interconnection, and you have to win a rec award. In order for these projects to pencil in the first place. You can't just willy nilly go, Oh, here's a field that's built with solar, and we're done.

Scott Tess: 11:31

Well, they tell people you know, and I give some talks at, at some conferences, what I tell people about this process is, it's a request for qualifications. Scoring those proposals on a pre determined rubric, entering into a lease option to give the developer control the site, the developer goes out and gets, you know, engineering, design, off takers, finance, and as you mentioned, the incentives from state and federal. In here, it's really the federal you get afterwards. But the state you need to get before you start the project. The developer puts those pieces together and comes back to you as the property owner and converts a lease option to a long term lease. That's that's how we view that this whole process,

Tim Montague: 12:21

right, the developers just leasing the land. And that's true for brownfield or Greenfield solar, generally speaking, the developers just want to lease the land for 2025 30 years, and have the right to develop it. And, you know, if the stars align, and they win rec awards, I mean, interestingly enough, Scott, there is now a phenomenon of solar happening outside of the ABP where the Illinois shines program where developers are driving forward with construction on community scale, renewable energy projects without racks, but that's a minority of the projects. And it's a higher risk phenomenon. So anyway, what else I guess I'm going to put some more photos, I showed a few drone photos there of the of the built facility. And now I've got some photos from the ground where you'll see the ballasted racking, this is fixed tilt ballasted racking ballasts blocks are just big concrete blocks that the ballast is anchored in, and then those are sitting on piles of gravel that have been laid to, you know, as a foundation, so that the blocks don't sink into the landfill cap, you don't want to damage the landfill cap. There's a lot of you know, engineering that has to go into this. And but it is doable, and the result is good. I would like to shine a light. Scott on your project in particular, the from the outset the intention was a LMI project, or was that was that something that emerged later on

Scott Tess: 14:09

that emerge? So we didn't there's a lot of things we didn't know when we first wrote this request for qualifications were the primary thing we didn't know was a Do we have a property that is commercially viable when you compare it to a flat farm field that has no environmental liabilities, has no has no monitoring on it, no garbage underneath. We didn't know we didn't know if we would just be out competed with all the other farm fields. So we that's one thing we learned we do have a viable site. So other things that that we learned, we knew that we wanted to balance the solar panels as you see in the photos. We didn't want penetrations through our clay cap that sheds water off of our landfill rather than letting rainwater go in and intermix with the garbage. We knew we wanted it ballast, so we asked for that specifically, we weren't sure about ballasting about what we're going to do with the fence. All these projects are fenced in, we told the developer look, you can you can have some shallow ground penetrations with the fencing. But then when they came to build the project, they actually ballasted the fencing too. So that's something we learned that ballasting the perimeter fence is also viable in terms of cost benefit for the developer. Other things that we weren't sure about, you know, that was a time when developers especially In Minnesota, and then later other places, we're starting to use a pollinator seed mix to grow pollinator supportive plants underneath the panels. We didn't know is this a surplus costs and excess costs that developers can bear? Is that something they can bear in our market? And so we didn't ask for that. We kind of hinted around that that would be nice, but we didn't, we didn't require it. And in the end, they came in and they did just a standard kind of do tea grass mix under the panels, but did some pollinator mix around the edges. And so you know, that's growing our confidence that this is something that developers in this area have experience with, and is not a to too much extra cost, that's going to kill a project. That so that's all that's all really interesting things to to learn as we develop these projects.

Tim Montague: 16:29

Now, the project has been built for a few years, when was it energized? Anyway?

Scott Tess: 16:34

Um, I just looked at the this the other day, it's I thought it was I think it was almost four years from when we started. So it was it's been operating about two years, whatever you have is a really long development timeline. And that says, just seems like forever. For a lot of people who don't do long term projects like myself, I'm really on a on an annual year to year basis for most of what I'm doing. So that was what

Tim Montague: 17:02

is and what is the what is the developer doing for vegetation maintenance. So

Scott Tess: 17:09

they come they hire a vendor, and they come in a couple of times a year and get in there and mow you can see in some of the pictures there that the wiring is suspended in some racking, so it's not laying on the ground. But it's a it's not easy, it's a probably a high labor thing. You can't just run a big lawn mower through there because of all the equipment and wires that you have to work around. But that's, you know, one of the benefits. I mean, there's there's stacking of benefits for this in this project. So one we're expanding clean, renewable energy to it's a low income community solar array. And we didn't plan for that we left it really open, we're just like, make a project that solar. And they ended up going for the low income, community solar incentive. So too, we're expanding access to community solar to more households. Three, the city's getting lease revenue out of this property that we were just mowing the lawn on for, we don't have to mow the lawn on everything inside the fence row. That's their lease hold. We don't want to be near their equipment, they don't want to be near our equipment. And then five, this property is now no longer a nonprofit government use. It's a leasehold for a for profit enterprise. So now that property is back on the tax rolls, the operator pays the taxes. So we're getting paid twice, reducing maintenance, expanding renewable energy for low income households, it just stacks a ton of benefits. Indeed,

Tim Montague: 18:37

indeed, that's what we love about solar. It's good for reducing our carbon footprint. It's good for reducing air pollution. And it's great for reducing people's cost of energy. Ultimately, so you know, photons are free, you have to build the solar array to collect those photons. But once that's done, the photons the fuel for the solar array is free. Oh, one of the

Scott Tess: 19:08

things I really like to share and you know, I say don't worry about knowing everything, right questions in your RFP, RFQ and learn. One thing that I like to share with with property owners who are moving into this, to get right on the first try, is to take care of where they locate the inverters. The inverters have fans that have a constant hum, because they're cooling electrical equipment. You know, one of the benefits I had was, in developing this project, I had the support of one of the city planners, who does, you know, planning zoning permitting Marcus Ricci, and we were talking about different issues and the noise of the inverters came up, I said, That's a great idea. Let's move those to the interior of the project. Now an engineer working on a computer in a different state is going to put those inverters close to the gate close to the front door, whatever to make it convenient for the electrician coming in to do service. But we didn't want that because that's going to put it near, you know, our retail facility, the landscape recycling center, it's going to put it near our shop where our landscape recycling center folks are working on equipment. We wanted to push those into the interior of the project. So by the time anybody got close to the exterior of the project, they couldn't hear those inverters have you had to go all the way in?

Tim Montague: 20:28

Yeah, the noise from inverters is really trivial compared to the background noise of dogs and sirens and wind Though and of course, that's only during the daytime, right? The inverters are not working at night. And so there's absolutely no disturbance. Even if you were just a couple 100 feet from an inverter, it would not be a big deal.

Scott Tess: 20:52

It's not much it's the level is less than a car passing you and 45 miles per hour, the tire noise Exactly. But if you have the opportunity to work with the the design engineers on where those go put them on the interior of the project.

Tim Montague: 21:08

Yeah, and interestingly, they did use central inverters on this project. You don't see central inverters a lot in you in community scale solar, but that's what they did here. So what else should our listeners know about this project? And your perspective, I guess, on brownfield solar in general, you know, and in case your you listeners are wondering, would he do it? Again? The answer is yes. Because you have another yet another project that you are in the process of developing. I mean, this was a two, this was a, I don't know if you call it two phase, but there were two parts to the original project to two megawatt projects, basically. Right. And and now you're doing yet a third project. Why? Why are you doing that? Why wasn't it all done at once.

Scott Tess: 22:01

So what we've done in every phase is we write an RFQ. And we give, you know, we publish a map and that request for qualifications that says, here's the here's the area that's available. And we basically draw a line around everything on our closed landfill that we're not using. And the developers come in, and they say, well, we just want to do this part. And so we move forward, we give them a lease on that part. And then there's a bounce on land left, well, I still don't have anything to do with that land, except mow the lawn. So we just, you know, dust off that request for qualifications. republish it with the new area that still that bounce on land that's leftover on our closed landfill, and sign up another developer. So that's what we've done. And we're in at lease option phase right now, our developers out there, putting together a project financing off takers, and most importantly, waiting on incentives from the state. They're pursuing a market rate community solar array, that's the incentive, they're going forward with the state. So we're running that process again.

Tim Montague: 23:04

Yep. And, and so you have received bids, and you're in the process of selecting a winner is that what's going on? Now we

Scott Tess: 23:13

already have we've selected total, we're working with total, okay. And total renewables their renewable section, and they're in a lease option already. And so the lease option, the purpose is one, they need site control to be able to apply for the incentives. So it's a temporary, you know, two year lease. And that gives them an option to convert into a bigger, more thorough long term lease later on. And the other purpose is, they're paying a very, very trivial amount of money to have site control. The point isn't to make money on the lease option. The point is, that it's just enough obligation to make sure that they're staying interested in moving forward on that project. And of course, we've got great developer partners, and they're always working on on moving these projects forward. A lot of the a lot of the you know, the waiting is really waiting on the state incentives, there's a lot competition for those incentives, timelines are long, you asked what people should be thinking about, if you're a property owner, just be prepared that if you don't hear from your developer for stretches of time, it's not because they've lost interest. Usually, it's just they're waiting on the next phase with the state incentives. Right? It is a very much a hurry up and wait game. You know, as soon as the new round of incentives get published, I want to get an RFQ and vendor selected immediately, so that they can get in whatever the queues are, or whatever the lines are right away, so that we can have the best chance of getting our project built. But that also means that I'm waiting a long time. I mean, the the first one was four years, I'm hoping we can cut that development time on this one. I'm not in control of that development timeline. The developer doesn't control everything in that development timeline, paying for an error connection studies and other part of that piece of the puzzle that the developer will do. That takes time and money. But I My suspicion is that the the state incentives are really the big drawn out timeline.

Tim Montague: 25:21

Sure. Yep. That's a it's a variety of things. But but certainly getting the incentives is is vital. The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, the maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter With over six gigawatts shipped in the US, the CPS America product lineup includes three phase string inverters ranging from 25 to 275 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS, 250 to 75 is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts, the 250 to 75 pairs well, with CPS America's exceptional data communication controls and energy storage solutions, go to chintpowersystems.com. To find out more. This project, the original project, solar star, I believe it's called was developed initially by SunPower. And then that was transferred to NEC Sam who's the long term asset owner, or HELOC a little bit about that experience, because that's also I think, something that people don't quite understand. There are different types of developers. Some developers will also oversee construction, some developers will also be long term asset owners, but many are just develop to a certain stage and then they flip it to somebody else. Correct.

Scott Tess: 26:45

So SunPower, which later on became totaal renewables. At the at the time, we've started working with SunPower, they were majority owned by totaal, but but kind of operating independently. And then their commercial and industrial business was brought into totaal more formally and rebranded to renewables. But we selected SunPower, and worked through all these development phases that we've described. And at the point of bringing in financing, that's when SunPower brought in next amp and SunPower remained, you know, tangentially involved in the project long term. But But next, amp has really taken over the lion's share of the work. And this is something that, that cities and municipalities should expect when they when they move into these these deals. You know, cities like to retain control of, of, you know, the name of the company they're working with, but it is extremely common. That one, Project One, one name, one entity, when LLC develops a project, and then the project is at least moved into its own standalone LLC. So these projects both have their own standalone LLC s. And then those LLCs are our own invested in by neck, Sam. So this is very common, and you want to have an understanding of that's going to be likely, and have a way of managing that in in your long term lease contracts. And these are things that your city attorney is familiar with. But as long as everyone understands that this is a typical of this business. I think they'll be able to work that out in their lease contracts.

Tim Montague: 28:32

I dug up the slide that you sent the slides that you sent me. So here's a nice aerial of the 5.3 megawatts, that's 40 acres approximately, and then this this new phase that you're doing, which is 10 acres, and I don't know, how many acres? Yeah. 10 acres? Something

Scott Tess: 28:53

like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The part on the south, which in this angle would be to the left of that circled area is is exactly 10 acres. And then there's sort of some scraps to the to the north of that. It's got trees on it. And I'd love the first solar developer, at least that portion, because it's really shouldn't have trees on it, and they'll they'll remove those. But I think our developer to tall was really focused on that, that area to the to the left, which is to the south. And that's a closed landfill cell. It's got elevation, but much of it is actually sloped to the south. So that's not bad. Yeah. And this site is you can kind of see it's located on a closed landfill, next to a wastewater treatment plant next to a bumper factory next to a landscape recycling facility next to an interstate. So there's there's a lot of adjacent uses that are that are not going to be harmed. There's some residential to the south of us, you can see but there's there's a tree line there. And they're not really affected by the development. Yeah, they're

Tim Montague: 30:04

not even going to know it's there really with those trees. And yeah, you can see the solar project at the wastewater treatment facility here on the at the top of the screen. There's a approximately one megawatt I believe with the UCSD it's called Urbana Champaign Sanitary District, which is fueling a green hydrogen must project or at least that's the original intent. I don't know if that project is still going. Yeah,

Scott Tess: 30:34

I think that's how it works, which is across the street to the south.

Tim Montague: 30:38

Yeah. Yeah. The last I heard about that they were having some problems charging the Hydrogen buses. But but that's all I know. But good project good, interesting pilot for green hydrogen right here in Little old Champaign Urbana. Pretty cool. Yeah, well, is there anything else I, you know, this is wonderful, great overview of the Urbana solar project, which is giving low and middle income residents a 50% discount off the cost of their power, those who choose to subscribe. And, you know, subscribing in a community solar array is a bit of a lift for consumers, you're taking on an additional bill, but you're getting credit on your Amarin bill, your regular power bill, and, and then paying less for those kWh that you're buying. And so it is a win win. But it's not. It's not easy to get consumers to buy these, these contracts, per se. Well, I say it's not easy. But in general, solar developers are getting all of their projects subscribed. So there's plenty of demand. I mean, if you can reduce your power bill by or your your supply charges by 50%. That's wonderful, right? Every every consumer would want to do that, frankly, if they knew about it.

Scott Tess: 32:00

There's two barriers that I see to getting subscribers to low income community seller in Illinois. One is it sounds too good to be true. And to is, there is a ton of consumer protections that just create paperwork and bureaucracy. Those are both good things, though, in a certain sense. But if if consumers can can see through that, the benefits are huge. So as you mentioned, it's 50% cost of electricity, you income qualify once ever in the course of your subscription. And if your income rises, you don't get kicked out. This subscription is portable to any address within your utility district. So if you're in Amarin, you can move your subscription to anywhere within Amarin. And there's no signup fee, and there's no cancellation fee. So yeah, it really does sound too good to be true. And communicating. You know, with some trust that this is the real deal is a real challenge. But for folks who sign up, they're really enjoying some significant savings on their bill. In

Tim Montague: 33:10

our last few minutes together, Scott, tell us about solar solar Urbana Champaign, you're involved with a group by program that you've been running for the last several years. What is that? And how does that benefit consumers?

Scott Tess: 33:22

Yeah, this is, I think it's our eighth or not, I think it's eighth year of our bookstore purchase program, solar Urbana Champaign, we partnered with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association on that. It's what a lot of places call solarize, what we do is we competitively select a single solar installer, for a limited time program, we put them on bulk and declining block pricing. And then we do a bunch of community education and lead development called solar power hours. And we bring this selected to learn Staller, more volume and exchange, they bring our program participants, bulk and declining block pricing, bulk meaning they're there, they know that we're going to bring them a lot of leads, and educated leads, they don't have to do all the education and be on the phone all the time. We're gonna bring them educated leads, they give us better pricing. And then throughout the program period, which is about nine months, as we expand the the actual signed contract capacity, the prices decline for the consumers at predetermined blocks. So if we set if if we have, you know, 100 Kw sold, price goes down to 50 Kw sold, price goes down, and it goes down for everybody. So if you're the first person that signed up, you already paid for your solar installation, you're gonna get a rebate check at the end of the program. If we hit those price declines, those sales is vertical. And that means the first person signing up isn't just done, they're out talking to their friends, because they want to rebate check, they want to hit those declines. And then what we did three years ago, is we took the exact same program model, which people have been doing all over the country for years, and we added a new technology to it. We added ground source heat pumps, or geothermal, and we created geothermal Urbana Champaign are doing the exact same thing. Bulk and declining block pricing, single vetted selected installer community education, and and we're making huge gains in geothermal here, which is a lot harder because it's this is the thing people don't even know about. They don't even understand what a heat pump is or that they already have a heat pump in their kitchen. It's their refrigerator. That's a heat pump.

Tim Montague: 35:33

Yep. So can you give us a quick summary of the last program year, how did that play out? How many kW or how many households bought into the program? And what what is your estimation of the discount that consumers are achieving by participating? Yeah,

Scott Tess: 35:54

so I think we had something like 40 installations last year. And we're down, you know, from from the beginning of this program, when solar, you know, residential solar rooftop small business was, you know,$4, a watt or more, we are getting base prices at $3 a watt, and the actual installed after the ancillary equipment, and you know, particularities of an install, we're still at 315 330, why in most years, so we are, we are achieving significant savings for residents. But really, that's not even the biggest part of our program, the biggest part of our program is peace of mind. People can go get three quotes, they know they can go get three quotes. But you know, they all they look a little bit different, and they don't understand all the language. That's exactly what we teach people in our solar power hours. So we're teaching them to be more savvy purchasers of solar energy systems, even if they go out and get their own quote, and hire a different vendor. But then we're also competitively selecting a vendor, that whole go get three quotes from from a roofer or whatever the thing is, we're doing that for them on the solar side, and providing a qualified, vetted vendor that you know, has a master services contract with mrea, our program partner, so there's two kinds of certainty that we're getting giving people and that's really taking a lot of people off the fence. You know, they're on the fence about getting a solar array, but we want them to get off the fence and actually sign a contract. And removing those uncertainty barriers is really huge for our program.

Tim Montague: 37:31

Yeah, I think that is just an awesome program. And if you don't know about it, just check it out. Just Google Urbana Solr, Urbana Champaign, and in your city, just do a little homework here in the Midwest, we have the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, which is driving these across the Midwest. But East Coast, West Coast, there are parallel universes and you can you can find these programs and I and I do think you're spot on that it gives the consumer a peace of mind and, and savings, but you know, that you're getting a qualified vendor, you know, the solar industry is is a very fast growing industry companies are coming and going. And it's good, bad, ugly. So you just don't want to I mean, this is a long term upgrade that you're making to your facility to your home or your or your business, and you don't want to mess around so well, thank you so much Scott tests, sustainability and resilience Officer for the City of Urbana. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Give us a rating and a review. If you would, if you value this contact content give us a rating on Apple or Spotify that is one of the best things you can do. The very best thing you can do is tell a friend about the show. So please refer a friend to the show and reach out to me on LinkedIn or at cleanpower.hour.com. I love hearing from my listeners. With that, Scott, how can our listeners find you?

Scott Tess: 38:58

Yeah, well, you can find more about our books or purchase program at solarurbanachampaign.com Geothermal purchase program, geothermal UC dot o RG, and I'm on LinkedIn, the city website, if you want to give me a call and talk about how you can get a solar array on your closed landfill, I would love to see that project in your community.

Tim Montague: 39:23

I'm Tim Montague, let's grow solar and storage. Thanks so much. Hey, listeners. This is Tim, I want to give a shout out to all of you. I do this for you twice a week. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving us your time. I really appreciate you and what you're all about. You are part and parcel of the energy transition, whether you're an energy professional today, or an aspiring energy professional. So thank you. I want to let you know that the Clean Power Hour has launched a listener survey. And it would mean so much to me. If you would go to cleanpowerhour.com click on the About Us link right there on the main navigation that takes you to the about page and you'll see a big graphic listener survey just click on that graphic and it takes just a couple of minutes. If you fill out the survey, I will send you a lovely baseball cap with our logo on it. The other thing I want our listeners to know is that this podcast is made possible by corporate sponsors We have cin power systems, the leading three phase string inverter manufacturer in North America. So check out CPS America. But we are very actively looking for additional support to make this show work. And you see here our media kit. With all the sponsor benefits and statistics about the show, you know, we're dropping two episodes a week. We have now over 320,000 downloads on YouTube. And we're getting about 45,000 downloads per month. So this is a great way to bring your brand to our listeners and our listeners, our decision makers in clean energy. This includes projects executives, engineers, finance, project management, and many other professionals who are making decisions about and developing, designing, installing and making possible clean energy projects. So check out cleanpowerhour.com both our listener survey on the about us and our media kit and become a sponsor today. Thank you so much. Let's go solar and storage