By Bryce Oates for Resource Rural.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Resource Rural-Public News Service Collaboration

At the end of each growing season, Grand Rapids, Minnesota berry farmer Stuart Lavalier is ready for cold weather to set in, exhausted from the long hours and hard work required to grow high-quality strawberries, blueberries, cherries, and apples for local customers.

Lavalier uses the off-season to rest and recuperate, finding that, “somehow over a mostly, restful winter, the excitement of another year comes back like the first warm day of spring.”

The berry grower added an additional crop recently to his family’s farm when he installed a 27.3 kW solar array. In its first year of operations, the financial benefits are clear.

“We’re seeing a negative number on our electric bill,” Lavalier said. “We don’t have a huge electricity bill but the solar covers it. . . .We’ve been getting a check back each month of about $300.” 

Lavalier’s decision to add solar to his farm began a decade ago while attending a statewide growers conference. He went in thinking about finding solutions for the usual farm production challenges in the Upper Midwest: drought, insect and pest damage, changing weather patterns, hail, wind, and more. 

But along with valuable production-oriented information from the conference, he was inspired by a fellow berry grower to consider a different set of issues related to his farm’s future: the option of installing solar panels.

“That grower talked about how he wanted to give back, to do what’s right, to grow more on the farm than just berries,” Lavalier said. “People at that time were saying you’re never going to get your back, you’re never going to get the payback. But he said I want to make a difference. He talked about how we need to be thinking about the future. I thought that was a good answer.”

Doing something positive for the future spoke to Lavalier, who spent 32 years teaching elementary students. Installing a solar array didn’t just impact the farm’s bottom line: it provided a way for his operation to be more self-reliant. After seeing the benefit over time, he got involved with the Iron Range Solar Co-op, organized locally by Solar United Neighbors. 

When he learned about a potential federal grant that could help cover 25-50% of solar array costs, Lavalier decided the time was right to go forward. Through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), farmers and rural small businesses like Lavalier can receive grants and loans to support clean energy systems and energy efficiency projects. 

Lavalier was awarded a REAP grant for his solar project, providing a substantial financial incentive to help meet his values for local, non polluting, decentralized energy production. “Once I knew I wanted to get solar on our farm, I found out about the REAP grant,” Lavalier said. “It made a difference. It made me feel comfortable going ahead, because then I knew I had that additional support to make it work.”

Lavalier, who received critical grant application and installation assistance from the local business Real Solar, hopes that his participation in REAP could help other people apply to the program. “Go ahead and go for it. There are great rebates and incentives. I’m looking forward to getting an EV (electric vehicle),” Lavalier said. 

The berry farmer’s only regret is that he didn’t maximize the size of his solar array.
“I kind of wish we would have went bigger,” Lavalier said.


Bryce Oates wrote this article for Resource Rural.


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The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation has been awarded a grant to cut climate pollution.

It is part of the Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Pollution Reductions grant program. The funding will be spent on installing electric vehicle charging stations at government buildings around the reservation.

Raheim Eleazer, environmental liaison for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, hopes to install at least a dozen charging stations. He said the funding will help reduce emissions in other ways.

"We're also hoping to electrify some of the governmental fleet vehicles," Eleazer explained. "We're hoping to do 13 of those whether it's hybrid or fully electric vehicles."

Another project for the grant funding involves helping 34 people living on the reservation convert or support their gas-powered cars through a rebate program. He pointed out reducing pollution from transportation has substantial health benefits. Connecticut's worsening air quality has increased asthma rates for Mashantucket Pequot Tribe members. While the grant runs for five years, each project has its own timeline.

Feedback to the grant has been resoundingly positive. Eleazer pointed out electric-vehicle charging stations are a big focus for the community. He thinks the new charging stations will encourage people to buy electric vehicles and added it is only the start, since the comprehensive climate action plan outlines plans for other renewable energy projects.

"The possibility or the interest of producing or generating energy from renewable resources such as solar," Eleazer suggested. "I know I have personally been looking into potentially thermal networking for the reservation."

He emphasized creating a microgrid is also an option with interest being shown by the community in diversifying energy generation, because he argued using one renewable energy source is not sustainable in New England.


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Alternative energy advocates say Iowa is making significant progress on reaching its green power goals by 2035.

The state has become a national leader in wind production. The Iowa Environmental Council took the unusual step of hosting a "Condition of the State" webinar to announce the areas where Iowa is making progress on reaching its alternative energy goals.

Steve Guyer, energy policy counsel for the commission, said solar and wind top the list.

"Overall, in 2019, we actually started generating more wind in the state than we actually got from our coal plants in the state," Guyer pointed out. "That actually is continuing, where the coal plant generation is going down and wind is going up."

Iowa is among the nation's leading producers of wind energy, despite pushback from some farm groups. Guyer added beyond the economic benefits of alternative energy, there are air and water quality implications too, both of which he said have improved with the increase in green power.

Guyer noted reducing emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants has a dramatic effect on crop production in Iowa. He cited a 10-year study showing the effects of closing specific coal-powered facilities.

"Some of those plants were actually Iowa-based plants," Guyer emphasized. "They saw a marked increase in production after the closure of those plants. The theory is that the sun basically is being blocked, and so, if it had the sunlight that wasn't being blocked, it would produce more. So yes, coal plants definitely are impacting corn production."

Iowa is getting help from the federal Inflation Reduction Act to invest in alternative energy sources. However, the report said none of the utilities in Iowa are taking what it calls "adequate steps to achieve a carbon-free energy sector by 2035."


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By Kari Lydersen for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

An ongoing billing snafu in ComEd territory in northern Illinois has some solar companies bracing for turbulence.

When the problem is remedied, community solar subscribers will see a backlog of credits on their utility bills, but also accumulated charges for participating in the project. It’s the kind of surprise that can sour customers on community solar and cause them to unsubscribe from a project. 

A new tool being marketed to community solar developers promises to use artificial intelligence to help intervene before such customers drop out.

Subscriber turnover is known as “churn,” and it can be a major headache for owners and managers of community solar projects. Frustration with billing is among the main reasons people withdraw from projects. Others might leave if they are moving, or if a project takes longer than expected to come online. 

Churn is “a huge issue in the community solar space,” said Sam Van Dam, director of asset management for the solar developer 38 Degrees North. “It’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about.”

The stakes include lost revenue and added uncertainty. In areas where community solar is already popular, it can be challenging to find customers still looking for subscriptions. In places where it hasn’t been widely embraced yet, it can mean hours of additional work educating potential subscribers before convincing them to sign up. 

Solstice, a solar company that works with developers to enlist and serve community solar subscribers, is hopeful that artificial intelligence can help companies identify and intervene with customers at risk for churn, and also make community solar more accessible and inclusive in the process. 

Solstice has developed an AI tool — now in testing — that predicts when certain subscribers may be vulnerable to churn, based on data from 15,000 accounts that the AI machine learning model has been trained on. The insight allows Solstice to proactively reach out to subscribers who may be distressed, making sure they are comfortable with their subscription and allaying concerns or confusion. 

If a subscriber is likely to leave, advance warning also helps Solstice more efficiently manage a waitlist of aspiring subscribers, getting them more quickly enrolled. 

Promising numbers 

Solstice spokesperson Mary Jackson said the AI tool was especially useful when 38 Degrees North transferred management of several thousand subscribers from another company to Solstice, a transitional period when customers might have dropped away. 

“Using our churn intervention strategies and high-touch customer service, we kept a staggeringly high number of those subscribers onboard” — 96% of them, Jackson said.

Van Dam called the AI tool “a fantastic idea.”

“It becomes particularly challenging when you have hundreds of residential customers on a single project,” he said. “There’s a lot to getting everyone signed up and making sure they keep paying their bills if they are replaced. When they have to be replaced, that potentially costs money and potentially results in lost revenue. Avoiding that is the preferred approach.” 

During a pilot program, Solstice saw churn reduced from 48% to 8.3% among a targeted segment of at-risk customers who had a greater than 89% chance of churn, according to their predictions, the company said. A customer’s length of time as a subscriber, and whether a project has consolidated utility billing, are among important predictors of churn. 

Solstice data engineer Jake Ford explained that the machine learning tools analyze the training set of data using “advanced algorithms, including deep learning neural networks to detect patterns between variables, gradient boosting classification algorithms and other tree based models, along with other traditional regression techniques.”

“All of these models are designed to learn patterns and relationships from large datasets,” he continued. “This dynamic nature of machine learning is what differentiates these approaches from traditional computer modeling, in particular static algorithms that were often hard-coded, meaning little to no flexibility to adapt to new inputs and data. This is critical, as often the inputs or customers we wish to analyze in our machine learning applications are different – locationally, demographically, behaviorally – than those we trained the models with.” 

Redefining risk 

Solstice is also hopeful that AI can provide a more accurate and fair way of vetting potential solar subscribers. Typically credit scores are used to decide whether someone is likely to pay their bills, but that means people with poor credit from past financial struggles, or lower-income people in general, may be left out.

Ford said their AI-based model known as EnergyScore appears to show that customers who might otherwise be sidelined by a poor credit score are actually good fits for community solar, since data shows people are likely to pay their energy bills, even when finances are tight. This might help the households who most need energy savings access community solar. 

“When we’re talking about low-income participation in community solar projects from the perspective of a developer or financier, their concern comes down to risk — revenue risk, churn risk,” said Ford. “The perception is: risk is too high, so let’s not include any low-income customers. Our data is showing the perception of risk is greater than the real risk. There haven’t been that many efforts in the energy industry to measure what the real risk is.” 

Solstice developed EnergyScore “in partnership with The Department of Energy and data scientists at MIT and Stanford using more than 800,000 individuals’ data across 5,000 variables,” the company says. Testing of the patent-pending product has shown that it is more accurate than FICO scores in predicting default rates on solar payments.

While Solstice is using AI tools to combat marginalization, Ford said they are vigilant regarding the well-known risks of discrimination, racism and other unintended consequences being generated by AI.

“It’s about being aware and continually reviewing what your model is doing, being cognizant of how it’s impacting real individuals on the ground, not just rows on a spreadsheet,” he said. “It’s important to be nimble and flexible in your methodology.” 

Increasing equity 

Solstice CEO Steph Speirs said AI tools could be especially useful as community solar blossoms in popularity and companies strive to manage larger subscriber bases in an equitable way. 

“We’re at an incredible inflection point in the energy transition,” she said. “There’s been focus on the supply side, but there’s a lot more technology that could be applied to the demand side to improve both the customer experience and the perception of projects in the community. We wanted to apply machine learning lessons around customer behavior and start to improve the metrics that developers care most about for community solar projects.” 

Metrics around churn, subscription levels and collection rates affect a solar developer’s ability to get financing for community solar projects. 

“If those metrics get diminished, the project’s viability is threatened,” said Speirs, who co-founded the company in 2016 with the goal of increasing low-income participation in community solar. “We need to really make sure these projects have low churn rates, and high subscription rates and collection rates.” 

Speirs said that currently, only about 10% of community solar subscribers are low-income. While that is changing thanks in part to equity incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act and state solar programs, “we have work to do as an industry.” 

“The beauty of these machine learning and AI models is we can use data to rewrite the historical exclusion that has existed in this industry, and improve financial viability of these projects so we can build more of them faster,” Speirs continued. “That helps both sides of the marketplace. It helps developers and financiers building projects at a cost of millions and billions of dollars, and it helps low-income customers access these projects.” 

Solstice isn’t the only company in the space. Erik Molinaro, senior vice president of customer experience & operations for solar developer Nexamp, said developers and brokers across the board are using advanced technology and artificial intelligence to facilitate community solar recruitment and retention. The company uses AI to create personalized videos that walk customers through the line items on their bills, he noted. 

“Any time you have something a little out of the ordinary, it triggers a customer, it’s a pain point,” Molinaro said. “We’re looking at that data, leveraging things like ChatGPT to understand why our customer is calling us, things we can do to create a better environment.”


Kari Lydersen wrote this article for Energy News Network.