Solar Workgroup of Southwest Virginia
Workgroup Meeting

Monday October 7th 2019
Oxbow Center, St Paul, VA

The Solar Workgroup is a group of nonprofit and community action agencies, colleges, state agencies, planning district commissions and other interested citizens and businesses seeking to develop a renewable energy industry cluster in the seven coalfield counties of Southwest Virginia. The workgroup is co-convened by the UVA-Wise Office of Economic Development & Engagement, People Inc. and Appalachian Voices, with facilitation assistance from Dialogue + Design Associates.

paleBLUEdot was asked to present solar project delivery innovations at the Workgroup’s October 2019 meeting. The innovative project delivery approaches presented were:

Mobile Solar for Community Disaster Recovery: A concept developed and advanced by the Footprint Project, these mobile and re-deployable solar+storage projects can provide day-to-day solar power to community assets like schools, city halls, or police stations, but when disaster stikes, these units can be rapidly re-deployed within the community or surrounding region to support disaster recovery. The concept is an advancement in both clean energy as well as community energy resilience.

Crowd Equity Funding for Solar: The Lake Superior Solar Finance company has developed an on-line funding portal for crowd sourced financing of solar projects. The portal takes advantage of the Securities Exchange Commission’s Regulation Crowdfunding law as well as State level laws such as the State of Minnesota’s MNVest law. These laws enable equity and debt solicitation from the general public for small scale investments. The funding mechanism will enable sites interested in “going solar” to access funding support from a broad base of supporters. Meanwhile, the concept enables individuals with an interest in advancing solar invest small quantities to help support solar projects while still making a return on their investment.

Resilience REC Marketplace: paleBLUEdot and Footprint Project are teaming in the development of a marketplace for the sale of Resilience Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). The marketplace’s concept is to help support community energy resilience and emergency preparedness through monetizing those investments within a Renewable Energy Credit. The Marketplace will launch in 2020.

Download presentation slides here.