In Boulder, community members with low incomes often spend more than 8% of their incomes on energy costs to heat their homes and provide electricity to their households. The City of Boulder and partners are developing solutions for income-qualified participants to bring down energy costs through subscriptions to community solar gardens.
A solar garden is a large solar system that is connected to the electrical grid. The system can provide energy bill credits to individual customers that are subscribed the garden.
Community solar gardens allow more people to access renewable energy without the need to install equipment at home. They help renters and others to benefit from clean, low-cost solar energy.
The city built a community solar garden in 2021 that is dedicated to income-qualified customers of Xcel Energy who reside in Ponderosa Manufactured Home Community. The goal of this project is to subscribe participants, free of charge to the customer, and participants will receive discounts each month on their electric bills.
The city's Energy Impact Offset Fund is providing funding for this project.
In addition to this city-owned garden, the city is also making investments in other local solar gardens to expand the benefit of solar gardens to other low-income community members throughout Boulder.
Ponderosa Resident Kathy Schlereth talks about the benefits of the solar garden.
