First off, I would like to recognize and thank Bullfrog Power for their support early on in this project; they contributed towards the research and development costs, and then an additional amount once we knew that we were proceeding. With Bullfrog Power, you can reduce your emissions footprint and support the growth of renewable energy in Canada. Today I will discuss how we engaged with our customers through a conversation café. But first I would like to share with you what lead up to this… The City of Nelson signed onto the Climate Action Charter almost 10 years ago, since that time they have reduced corporate GHG emissions by 25% through things like boiler upgrades and other conservative measures. Nelson Hydro, the cities owned and operated hydro electricity company managed the 5 year plan to do this. Nelson Hydro, Then EcoSave. I was contracted. EcoSave is… Pilot 2012/2013 200 target We won an award for communications through the NWPPA, which is when I first heard about the CSG concept.
what. Size This will be built on the same property where we have our power plant, where we are already generation eletricity 2
According to the National Renewable Energy Lab as much as 75 ‐ 80% of consumers in the US cannot access solar due to unsuitable roofs, they rent, or cannot afford to pay for an individual installation. We can assume the same would be the case here in Canada, so a project like this would provide better access to solar. 3
‐ city’s goals of developing local renewable energy ‐ it’s timely for Nelson Hydro as distributed energy is becoming a part of electrical grids and will continue to ‐ gets Nelson in the game of distributed solar generation, providing an excellent opportunity for first ‐ hand experience on both the business and technical aspects of solar PV, which positions the electrical utility better to adapt to a change to the business model in the future and makes it possible to capitalize on new opportunities (like installing solar gardens in other areas) and, It is an excellent customer service opportunity, Nelson Hydro strives to be a utility that not only services the needs of its customers but is also viewed as a good corporate citizen – the solar garden is another opportunity for delivering a good program that goes above and beyond offering pure electrical energy to its customers. So with the benefits being there for both the customer and the utility, I started engaging with customers early on, using other events that I hosted through our regular EcoSave program to introduce the concept of the solar garden, this lead to collecting names and emails on an interest list. 4
Together with a well known community sustainability organization called the EcoSociety, we hosted a conversation café to assess the community’s overall level of interest in the community solar garden as well as certain aspects of the project. This was also to provide information on the proposed project. The panel consisted of myself, who spoke about the concept in general, an expert in renewable energy and governmental policy who spoke about the shift towards a renewable future, an electrical engineer who we had contracted to provide an analysis of solar production for our area, and Alex Love who spoke from the utility side of things. Once the panel was completed, the moderator opened it up for a Q&A, out of that we had almost 30 questions, from when will it be built to how does this affect the rate payers who don’t invest. The event ended in breakout sessions where folks discussed various ideas about the project as well as other renewable projects that may work well in Nelson. There was a strong show of support at the cafe, approx.100 people attended the event. Prior to this event I already had 120 people on that list of interest just from mentioning the concept of the project at a few events that were held over the past year. After the event I had 175 on the list. In order to gauge the level of interest, I circulated an opinion poll to those on the interest list as well as at the café. I received 85 completed polls from those who were there and over emails from those who could not attend.
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This was an important question, we have been upfront about the costs of solar compared to todays conventional hydro rates, so we needed to make sure our customer knew this information and then we needed to know if they would still be interested. 10
Now just like you wouldn’t build a high rise without having most of the units pre ‐ sold, we felt the same about this. It was one thing that the community was interested but we needed them to show us how serious they were. We decided that we would need a 75% commitment in order to proceed with construction. We proposed to build a 50 ‐ 100 kW array which is 200 ‐ 400 panels. The 75% commitment was of the 50 kW size, which was 150 panels that we needed to pre ‐ sell. We set a 4 week time frame and started it with a kick ‐ off event which is featured here, it was a well attended event with people lined up at the cashiers before I even began my presentation. We ended up meeting this target within 3 weeks, and at 4 weeks we had sold more than the minimum 50 kW size which was about 200 panels, so we decided to go with 240 panels which is approx. 60 kW. We only have 15 unsold panels remaining. What I really liked about this was that the community really stepped up and did this, I was prepared to market this as needed but I waited a couple of weeks and held back from going and knocking on doors of businesses etc…. 11
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