Port, Clark PUD celebrate Community Solar East

Port of Camas-Washougal officials, along with Clark Public Utility (CPU) leaders, local and regional dignitaries, and community members, gathered at the Port’s industrial park March 27, to celebrate the completion of the Community Solar East project, which provides residents with opportunities to benefit from solar energy without installing rooftop systems at their homes or businesses.

“We think this project really is a great example of what can be achieved when two public agencies work together on a common goal,” Matt Babbitts, the CPU’s clean energy program manager, said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the industrial park’s Building 20.

“We couldn’t have developed this project without the Port of Camas-Washougal’s partnership, and I think the Port would agree that they couldn’t develop this project without (our) partnership. But when we worked together, we were able to bring a great resource to our community, providing the opportunity for all our customers to participate in a local clean energy project, and that’s a pretty cool end result.”

Port Chief Executive Officer David Ripp said that the project will benefit east Clark County in several ways.

“The energy is going to benefit our community,” he said. “It’s helping us to meet the increasing demand that we’re having on our grid, and it’s also adding to our capacitor system. I’m always talking about the sustainability benefits (of the project), but it also is helping the utilities as well. I’m very excited to be a part of this partnership because of what it’s doing for our communities.”

Port and CPU commissioners approved an agreement in January 2023 to install a 799-kilowatt solar system at five of the buildings at the Port’s industrial park. The agreement states that the CPU is responsible for designing, facilitating, constructing and managing the project while the Port hosts the panels.

“It really did start a couple of years ago when Port of Camas-Washougal Commissioner Cassi Marshall reached out to a few of us at CPU and explained that the Port of Camas-Washougal is an organization that’s really focused on sustainability across all of their operations, and they were looking for an opportunity to partner with CPU on some kind of renewable energy project,” Babbitts said.

“And as we went through the objectives that the Port had and the objectives that CPU had, we realized that a joint partnership on a community solar project would check a lot of boxes for both organizations.”

The project, which started to generate solar energy in January, prevents the need for residents, governments, nonprofit organizations and businesses to purchase and install solar panels on their homes and buildings, according to the CPU’s website.

It has various buy-in options for residential, business and government customers, as well as 199 kilowatts reserved for CPU’s Operation Warm Heart fund to benefit low-income customers.

“It’s going to produce about 230,000 kilowatt hours (for low-income residents),” Babbitts said. “Our residential retail rate is around 8.8 cents, so it works out to about $20,000 in annual revenue that’s going to flow into the Operation Warm Heart program. It really is a substantial amount of money that’s going to be impactful to those customers that are in need of the most assistance. And since the project has a 25-year lifespan, it will generate about $460,000 in new energy assistance funds (for low-income residents during that time).”

Babbitts said the project will provide energy to customers at to $1.70 per watt, lower than a residential rooftop system that averages between $3.30 and $4.50 per watt.

“To give you some perspective on that, the typical residential rooftop system in CPU’s net metering program is usually somewhere around $3.50 per watt,” he said. “So when a partnership can come together and develop a community solar project and achieve those economies of scale, we can really bring a cost effective solution to all of our customers and get that cost down to about half of what it would be to install a small solar array at your home or small business.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said that he was “thrilled” to see the project when visited the industrial park in January.

“You’re using a tremendous, almost infinite resource of solar energy,” he told the gathered crowd. “You’re doing it on a financially sound basis. And, what is most impressive to me, you’re making sure that everybody in the community can access it, including people who are low-income, people who might not own their own roofs.”

Even though the project is “nearly sold out,” mini-units are still available for purchase for residential customers, according to the CPU’s website. For more information, visit clarkpublicutilities.com/community-environment/what-we-do/green-pro grams/community-solar/community-solar-east.