Can the Whole be Greater than the Sum of All Parts? Market Identification for Public Sector Solar PV Collaborative Procurement Project that Utilizes a Revolving Fund as Leveraging Mechanism

Abstract

Many local governments across the United States are experiencing a new political willingness and drive to create sustainable energy goals. While this marks a very positive shift towards a more sustainable future, those agencies are finding that there still exist many barriers along the path towards meeting their energy goals. This study investigates solar collaborative procurement as a means for local governments to confront the barriers they face in trying to achieve solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption.

Market Identification research conducted in this study was designed to identify future participants of the Sustainable Energy & Economic Development Fund (SEED Fund), a program run by this study’s client organization, Strategic Energy Innovations. The SEED Fund is a solar collaborative procurement program for public agencies that utilizes a revolving fund to offset the upfront costs associated with solar PV adoption.

Employing “lessons learned” from former solar collaborative procurement projects, this study designed a methodology with which market identification research was performed. The goal was to identify geographical regions where SEED Fund might find a receptive market for their services. Four iterative approaches were applied to develop this market research: 1. A literature review on solar markets in the US; 2. A filtering methodology was created to identify regions with the highest likelihood of successful participation in a collaborative procurement effort; 3. Interviews were conducted on public agencies identified by the filtering process; 4. Surveys were sent to additional agencies within counties that the filtering process identified.

This methodology successfully identified regions that have strong potential for engagement in a solar collaborative procurement effort, including Los Angeles and San Diego Counties in California, and Larimer County in Colorado. While these three counties have shown strong interest in the collaborative approach to solar adoption, Los Angeles’ interest was particularly keen. LA has indicated that they may want to move forward with participation in the SEED Fund program much sooner than this study had anticipated. Due to this enthusiasm, work is currently underway to establish Round 2 of the SEED Fund in the Los Angeles area.

This practicum study appears to have been effective at 1) Creating an effective market identification method and 2) using this method to identify market actors for the SEED Fund to pursue in the near future. If acted on, this study could lead to a significant expansion of public solar PV, especially in Southern California. Additionally, the methodology developed in this study has established a durable mechanism by which new regions can be identified for collaborative procurement in the future.