Renovus launches community solar initiative

By Eric Banford
 
Saturday at the Ithaca Festival was a bright and sunny occasion, perfect weather for Renovus Solar to launch its community-wide solar initiative. The company’s goal is to sign up 1,000 new customers to use the energy produced by the new solar farms it is building.
 
An enthusiastic kickoff at Bernie Milton Pavilion featured Seneca Lake defender Sandra Steingraber, Renovus President and CEO Joe Sliker and Tompkins County Area Development’s (TCAD) Heather McDaniel.
 
“This program allows anyone who wants to go solar, to go solar,” Sliker said. “It doesn’t take any up-front investment, it doesn’t take tax liability, it doesn’t require good credit, it’s just if you want to choose solar then you can choose solar. That makes it a benefit for everybody. As more people do that, we have more work to do, we employ more people, everyone benefits. We hired 50 new people last year, and we’d love to hire 50 more this year.
 
“This is really the evolution of what solar wants to be,” Sliker continued. “We can do things with solar power that we never thought were possible just by tapping into the strength of the community, and the strength in numbers when we come together and do something different.”
 
Renovus currently has two solar farms up and running in Enfield, and just finished construction of a new facility in Ulysses. Plans are in place to build solar farms throughout the county, with the ultimate goal of having solar arrays throughout New York State. There are now eight new solar farms currently before planning boards around the state.
 
“The advantage of distributed power generation like this is that it produces power where the grid needs it,” Sliker explained. “We’re trying to strategically locate these farms to benefit the utility grid, and if everybody benefits, then the change will occur.”
 
“For a long time we have wanted to bring solar to everyone,” shared Keith Liblick, a Renovus sales representative who was busy signing people up at the Renovus booth on the Commons. “People in all economic situations, people of all credit situations, whether people are renting, whether they live in an area where there are trees. Whatever the reason that they couldn’t go solar, it’s been our single-headed mission to bring solar to them, too. Pay-as-you-go solar is our way of building a bunch of solar arrays and having it cost the customer 10 perent less than their current electric bill. It’s now that easy,” he added.
 
“Response at Ithaca Festival was overwhelming,” said Jon McNamara, general manager for Renovus. “We had a dozen signup stations with lines at them at various points, and we signed up hundreds of people over the weekend. We anticipate bringing our new solar farms online in the fall, and will honor signups in the order that they come in. We’ll keep going down the list and get people into solar.”
 
At the festival launch, TCAD’s McDaniel cited the Tompkins County’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. “There’s a delicate balance between reaching those goals and allowing businesses to operate in a manor that creates jobs and strengthens our economy. I think we’d all agree that community solar is one of those actions that we can take to reduce our footprint and save our planet for our kids,” she said.
 
Ecologist and author Sandra Steingraber then reflected on the simultaneous approaches needed to move away from polluting our planet: saying no to fossil fuels and saying yes to renewable energy. “I’m known as someone who says no, and I mean it,” she said. “I go to jail if no one listens. But today I’m here to say yes because this is the other half of our fight. We have to shut the door on fossil fuels and open the door on renewable energy.”
 
Steingraber added that she “sometimes wondered in these big human rights struggles like the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, the Stonewall riots, or the Greensboro lunch counter, if the people who participated in those iconic moments were aware while it was happening that everything was changing, and they were that agent of change. Because I think we are those agents right here and right now in the Finger Lakes, in New York State, saying no to the fossil fuel industry with all the success and resolve that we have, and saying yes to Renovus and community solar. We’re becoming an incubator for new, just ideas for how renewable energy can provide jobs, can save our environment, can save public health, and make New York the kind of place that not only Mexico but the whole world is looking to.”
 
Since the beginning of 2014, Renovus has added more than 50 new jobs, bringing the company’s payroll to over 70 full-time, living wage positions. And their commitment to having a positive impact doesn’t stop at the products they sell, as each employee gets a CSA share, their vehicle fleet runs on biodiesel, their new headquarters is a net zero (creates more energy than it uses) facility, and they have a free mobile solar power station available for community use at many of our local festivals.
 
To sign up for solar energy go to http://renovuscommunitysolar.com or call (607) 277-1777.