Solar companies Pivot Energy and Standard Solar have expanded their partnership to co-develop five more community solar sites across Colorado. The portfolio of projects, all ground mount arrays, will total approximately 8.9 megawatts. The first two projects in the expanded portfolio will begin construction at the end of summer with all five expected to be completed by summer 2020.
Standard Solar will finance, own and maintain the community solar arrays that Pivot Energy will develop and construct. Once the arrays are live, customer enrollment and subscriptions will be managed through SunCentral, Pivot Energy’s proprietary community solar customer management interface that provides users with a seamless and enjoyable community solar experience. Together, the projects are expected to produce 17,791,770 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy annually.
In October of last year, the two companies partnered on 13 community solar sites totaling 10.3 MWs along the I-70 corridor in Colorado – including several towns, school districts and housing authorities (low income residents). One of the projects in this initial portfolio, the Garfield County Housing Authority (GCHA), was selected by the Colorado Solar & Storage Association as its 2019 Community Solar Project of the Year. The first 10 projects in the original portfolio have completed construction and are operating today with the final three under development.
Colorado installed 20 MWs of community solar last year, bringing its total installed base to about 55 MWs and placing it fourth in the country for cumulative capacity, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.