Definitions
Through community solar, a multitude of households share in the electricity output from a nearby solar array (usually called “solar garden”) in the form of credits on their electricity bill or other revenue. Community solar is an umbrella term that encompasses many different models. The community solar featured in this chapter is different from “community solar installations” that are owned by a utility, or others, where passive participants are consumers without control over decision-making. The passive model is sometimes called “shared solar.” This chapter sets a preference for community ownership, what some jurisdictions refer to as “community-owned solar gardens.” A community solar garden is an example of a distributed energy resource (DER), a device or asset largely on the customer side (behind the meter), consisting of distributed generation, energy efficiency, voltage and frequency control, and storage. Distributed energy resources encourage demand side management...
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McCoy, M., Mommsen, T.P., Farrell, ., Liem, K. (2020). Community Solar: Strategies and Implementation for Sustainability. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Affordable and Clean Energy. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71057-0_148-1
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