While local governments across the United States have announced 100 percent renewable energy or carbon-neutrality goals for their operations, understanding what these goals entail and how they should prioritize various projects remains a challenge. While many energy models have been developed for utility resource planning, these frameworks are costly and more technical than most cities and counties need.
The goal of this document is to provide local governments with an easily modifiable template, including a suggested structure and example language, to use when developing their own on-site solar+storage request for proposal (RFP) for a community resilience hub. For cities and counties required to use their local government’s RFP template, the material in this template should be easily transferable to your city or county RFP template.
RMI’s report introduces a vision for the next generation of community solar. Community Solar+ is a whole-systems approach to deliberately plan and deploy community solar projects to embrace added value streams, capture greater economies of scale, and advance additional community-wide sustainability and equity goals. Community Solar+ is a way to do more with less by designing projects to also help build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure, align the grid for an electrified future, mitigate urban heat island effects, and more. The report is targeted at state and local governments, utilities, developers, and community members.
PJMCCC statement on the importance of storage deployment in the PJM territory and its role in supporting renewable energy integration, resilience, equity, and clean energy job creation.
This resource focuses on two distinct applications for behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage installations at city/county facilities: 1) peak load shaving or peak demand shifting and 2) emergency power (resilience). It provides guidance for city staff to conduct an initial assessment and investigation of solar-plus-storage systems to determine suitable system size and performance information that could be incorporated into a planned PV procurement for a single city facility.
This pitch deck can be utilized to help secure buy-in from key decision makers for an on-site solar project. It includes customizable slides to calculate or speak to the climate, jobs, health, economics, resilience, and visibility benefits of an on-site project. Additionally, it includes information and case studies for financing and ownership structures.
This short insight brief outlines the value that resilient solar can provide and can serve as a reference when engaging city leadership in the value of pursuing solar + storage projects for resiliency.
This report evaluates the current policy landscape and economic potential for solar and battery storage to provide clean, reliable backup power to critical facilities in five cities: Atlanta, GA; Charleston, SC; Miami, FL; New Orleans, LA; and Wilmington, NC.
This website includes information and case studies examining the technical feasibility and cost-effectiveness of resilient solar and creating plans to implement solar + storage, to help other cities pursue resilient solar systems.
