In a bid to cut energy costs by tens of thousands of dollars, the Fairfax County School Board finalized a deal with a local solar developer last month to outfit nine elementary schools across the county with 250-kilowatt (kW) solar panels.
The solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) comes years after the school board approved a series of much larger solar projects that were halted after Dominion Energy introduced new interconnection rules that substantially increased project costs, rendering the projects economically unfeasible.
Expected to reduce annual energy costs by about $190,000, or nearly $4.74 million over the panels’ 25-year lifespan, the agreement advances FCPS’ efforts to become carbon neutral by 2040. However, solar industry experts argue the savings could be greater if not for Dominion’s strict standards for mid-size solar projects seeking connection to the power grid.
“School facilities can typically accommodate anywhere from 500 to 750 kilowatts on average,” Virginia Distributed Solar Alliance (DSA) co-founder and chair Tony Smith told FFXnow. “[Dominion] is probably foreclosing at least the difference between 250 and 750 [kW] as an average number that would otherwise be possible. So, they are reducing the potential savings to the county by a third, which is huge.”
Terms of the agreement
Under the agreement, Charlottesville-based developer Sun Tribe Solar will design, engineer, finance and install under 250-kW solar panels at the nine elementary schools:
- Annandale Terrace
- Cherry Run
- Franklin Sherman
- Lutie Lewis Coates
- Mount Vernon Woods
- Newington Forest
- Olde Creek
- Silverbrook
- Waynewood
In exchange, FCPS, which spent roughly $2.7 million per month on average in electricity costs across all its facilities in 2023, will buy the generated electricity at a fixed rate between 5.2 cents and 7.8 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). For comparison, the average residential electricity rate in Virginia is roughly 15 cents per kWh, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Additionally, Sun Tribe will be responsible for operating and maintaining the panels for the duration of the 25-year contract, after which the school system has the option to purchase them. An FCPS spokesperson told FFXnow the new solar arrays could tentatively finish installation within 18 and 24 months.
Impact of Dominion’s new regulations
To date, FCPS has installed rooftop and ground-mounted solar arrays at 10 schools. The school board approved a separate PPA in 2022 with D.C.-based solar developer Ipsun Solar for 600 kW solar arrays at Annandale High School as part of a pilot program.
However, just two months later, Dominion instituted new regulations requiring developers to install a high-speed fiber optic communication line — referred to as “dark fiber” or “direct trip transfer” (DTT) — for all solar projects that will generate between 250 kW and 3 megawatts (MW) of electricity.
Worried the rules could hinder Virginia’s solar industry and endanger future projects, the Distributed Solar Alliance lodged a complaint in June 2023 with the State Corporation Commission (SCC), urging the utility oversight agency to suspend the interconnection requirements.
In response, Dominion argued that it had received a “significant growth in interconnection requests” from smaller energy distributors over the past five years. It said the dark fiber cables would reduce the risk of power outages and increase safety for its workers by providing a quicker and more reliable means of communication between energy sources and the power grid compared to cellular lines susceptible to mixed or missed signals.
The DSA has countered that placing the full cost of adding dark fiber cables on smaller energy providers creates an unnecessary barrier that discourages investments in smaller solar projects — an argument that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors also raised this spring in a letter to the SCC.
“This is an industry where margins are measured in pennies,” Smith said. “It costs $2 a watt to build a solar array, and then you suddenly discover that, ‘Oh, it’s now going to cost $2.80 a watt to build that same solar array under these new interconnection parameters.’ So, you’ve increased the cost by 40%, but you cannot possibly afford to deliver that project at a price where the customer can afford to pay.”
FCPS recently joined the battle with its own letter in March to the SCC, stating that the dark fiber requirement could raise the cost of each solar project by over a million dollars, potentially topping $2 million for larger installations.
“Given the constraints, FCPS would likely be limited to smaller, less advantageous installs with the current DTT requirement and would impact work on many of our larger schools,” the letter states. “These added costs threaten the viability of these investments and threaten the resulting savings of taxpayer dollars and associated jobs.”
FCPS Facilities Services and Capital Programs Chief Janice Szymanski acknowledges the difficulty of meeting the interconnection requirements but believes the school system has devised a creative strategy to maintain progress toward its green energy and sustainability targets.
“If anything changes in the future, we can always add more solar or move on to bigger roofs and bigger installations, but for us, it’s kind of a win-win,” Szymanski told FFXnow. “It’s a good way to start getting our efforts ramped up, still working with these moving targets to a viable path and we’re really excited to get that work started.”
Legislative efforts and political pushback
The timeline for the SCC’s ruling on the injunction filed by the DSA remains unclear. In the meantime, local state lawmakers have started taking matters into their own hands.
During the General Assembly’s 2024 session, Del. Rip Sullivan (D-6) and Sen. Suhas Subramanyam (D-32) introduced nearly identical bills to split the costs of connecting solar systems between customers and utilities. Dominion Energy has pushed back against the idea of cost sharing, claiming that such measures would place an undue financial burden on ratepayers, who traditionally absorb such costs through utility rates.
However, Sullivan argues that this perspective overlooks the long-term economic benefits that accrue to all ratepayers.
“We need to be moving more towards solar,” he said. “Distributed solar is not [Dominion’s] favorite because they’re not their panels.”
While Subramanyam’s bill is slated for reconsideration in the next legislative session, Sullivan’s has stalled in the House Subcommittee on Labor and Commerce following a party-line split vote.
Despite his frustration, Sullivan, who sponsored the Virginia Clean Economy Act in 2020, says he’s committed to working across the aisle and with Dominion on legislation, fearing an existential threat to the state’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.
“I’ll be back next year trying to try to ensure that we can continue to make progress and try to remove some of these roads blocks,” he said.
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