Publication: LAist

UCLA Expert: Robert Cudd: Staff Researcher, California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA; PhD Student and Researcher, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Synopsis: Community solar refers to moderately large solar projects — not “utility-scale,” like those massive solar fields in the desert, but also not rooftop solar. Customers can then subscribe to or jointly own these projects. Unlike rooftop solar, community solar programs don’t necessarily involve a direct connection from your home to the solar power site.

UCLA News: “The cost of doing community solar development in urban areas has been one of the factors that’s driven the development of solar in desert areas,” Cudd said. “You’re not just building new infrastructure. You have to find a place, a property, a location in space where you can actually put these things. That has been prohibitively expensive for private solar developers.”

Cudd said California’s existing community solar programs — the Green Tariff Shared Renewables Enhanced Community Program and the Community Solar-Green Tariff Program — have also largely been geared towards developers rather than communities, which has made it tough for nonprofits to initiate community-driven solar projects.

Read more at LAist.