Flexera Installs Ground Breaking Common Area Solar Power with RATE - X System at Forest Reach Community in Ocean View, Delaware

Flexera breaks through gridlock to help Forest Reach Community save with an uprecedented solar energy installation:  Forest Reach project opens the door to energy buybacks in First State
 
 
OCEAN VIEW, DE – In a groundbreaking collaboration, Flexera has found a legal way to enable Delaware homeowners and businesses to sell solar energy back to the Mid-Atlantic power grid.
 
A solar panel system designed and built by Flexera Inc. for the Forest Reach community near Bethany Beach has just become the first small scale solar power plant in Delaware to sell energy wholesale to the PJM grid.
 
The 15,000-watt system, which pays for running the 58-home Forest Reach community’s street lights, pool, pool house, irrigation and pond pumps, sets a an important precedent, says Ben Farr, vice president of Flexera.
 
 “This opens the door for all kinds of commercial and residential applications that were not possible in Delaware until now,” says Farr.
 
 Unlike power companies in neighboring state Pennsylvania, Delmarva Power was not set up to convey excess energy produced by customers’ renewable energy systems to the grid. In Pennsylvania and other states across the country, solar energy “farms” are being set up to sell energy to wholesale power buyers, who in turn sell this clean, renewable energy back to customers.
 
 Farr, whose company designs and builds state-of-the-art clean energy systems and works through legal issues and grants for customers in four states, says within five years the whole face of energy production will have changed in the U.S. and projects like Forest Reach are the beginning.
 
 “We will have small clean energy power plants selling to energy wholesalers throughout country and making a major dent in fossil fuel consumption.”
 
 Negotiations between Delmarva Power and Flexera for the Forest Reach project began about a year ago after Forest Reach HOA President Mike Ball read about energy grants making solar installations affordable.
 
 “We’re just Joe and Bob Homeowner here. We didn’t know anything about how to go about this. Flexera worked the whole legal thing out, from design to (revenue producing) energy certificates and grants to finding a way to work with Delmarva Power to pay for the streetlights.”
 
 The Forest Reach project is divided into two sections, one that meters energy to pay for the pool, pool house, irrigation and pond pumps and another that pays for the community’s street lights.  The metered section earns energy credits against future bills from Delmarva Power.
 
 The precedent setter is the street light system, which wholesales energy directly to the grid, generating funds, not credits, to cover Forest Reach’s streetlights lease.   The system, in accordance with current Delaware law, produces within a few percentage points the same amount of energy dollars that the streetlights cost.
 
 Flexera’s engineers, legal team and regulatory specialists worked with Delmarva Power and the state to devise a special “Rate X” system to do this, paving the way, Farr says, for more communities to do this type of project.
 
Farr estimates the first section will pay for itself in approximately 3.5 years and the second section within about 5.5 years, making use of current Federal and state grants, government-required buybacks of Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs) and by wholesaling to the PJM grid —all of which the design company handles for customers. When the systems are paid for, they will generate funds through market trades of the SRECs.
 
 “It is an advantageous time for people and businesses to set up renewable energy systems. Right now, before the grants phase out, there is a 20 to 30 percent return on investments and you can’t get that kind of return in too many places,” said Farr.
 
 A ribbon cutting for the Forest Reach project will take place on Monday, June 7, at 10 a.m. at the system site, on the corner of Parker House road (Rd 362) and Beaver Dam Rd (Rd 368), Ocean View. The public is invited to come and talk to the officials involved and learn more about renewable energy possibilities.