ICAST was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) to implement a national initiative to overcome the hurdles of deploying solar energy for low-income populations living in multifamily affordable housing (MFAH). Working closely with stakeholders representing utilities, MFAH owners and investors, ICAST is completing its first 18-month phase of this three-year project. Critical deliverables for Phase I included feasibility studies for low-income community solar projects in differing utility and third-party markets. ICAST focused on markets that do not have high state subsidies and Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) to build an approach that can scale nationally, in locations without access to such subsidies.

ICAST’s feasibility studies produced many key insights on the current barriers and potential solutions to developing and financing low-income solar projects and other distributed energy resources (DER), including:

• How Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) and Green Banks can deploy new finance instruments for low-income solar programs.
• How to include battery storage to take advantage of various utility tariff structures.
• How Time-of-Use (TOU) and other on- and off-peak tariffs impact the financing of low-income solar projects.
• How Community Solar Tariffs are used by utility administered solar programs to provide bills savings to low-to-moderate income customers.

Over the next several months, ICAST will present papers and case studies on these and many other topics relevant to the efforts of the national stakeholders working to increase access to low-income populations for solar and DER programs. This work will be published on ICAST’s website, with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Community Solar Partnership, and with the Smart Electric Power Alliance.

“ICAST is grateful to the support we have received from the DOE, our Solar Advisory Group, and the numerous stakeholders who have contributed to the success of this project to date,” said Ravi Malhotra, ICAST’s president and founder. “We look forward to the next phase of this pioneering project and sharing what we have learned and developed with others.”

News item from ICAST