How Can I Sign Connecticut Banking Presentation

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all right let's get started good morning welcome everyone to the webinar about the green banks solar municipal assistance program this is the green bank's primary resource for supporting towns to go solar and realize energy savings i see we've got about a half a dozen connecticut towns that have joined us today so that's great um hopefully you'll be learning about the program and participate in this year's round i'm emily basham i'm a senior manager at the connecticut green bank and i'm joined by mackie dykes who's the vice president of financing programs at the green bank fiona stewart who is a manager on our finance team and who is our green bank solar ppa expert as well as alan sabins who's a managing partner at csw energy who is our partner for the solar map program this webinar is being recorded and the slides and recording will be posted on our website and i believe emailed to everyone who's registered i believe everybody is muted at this point so if you've got questions as we go through the material feel free to use the chat feature of the webinar platform to ask any of your questions or comments we will definitely leave time at the end to answer those questions and have a discussion so with our time today we've got a 45-minute webinar we'll spend 30 minutes introducing ourselves of the connecticut green bank explaining what the solar municipal assistance program is as well as the green bank's solar power purchase agreement and the next steps for for getting involved in the program and then jump into questions so the connecticut green bank is a quasi-public state agency we were created by the legislature in 2011 to provide financing for clean energy projects so solar projects energy efficiency projects um and our goal is to really help the state meet our state climate goals and provide support to every sector in deploying clean energy the solar municipal assistance program or solar map team is a handful of us at the connecticut green bank and we've also partnered with csw energy to support the solar map program csw energy has a lot of experience working with municipalities to develop solar pv projects and they're supporting us by helping us analyze building portfolios and the solicitation of bids from solar contractors so solar map at the connecticut green bank we've been financing solar pv projects um at municipalities through our ppa for almost a decade so we know that there are a lot of steps to getting these projects done and many of these steps come before there's a project to finance so we really created this project or this program excuse me to make it easier for municipalities to access renewable energy and achieve energy savings by providing the support for every step of the process so through solar map the green bank works to help municipalities develop solar pv projects on their municipal property and we do that by analyzing your portfolio of buildings identifying where the solar opportunities exist connecting you with a qualified contractor through a competitive process and providing you with attractive financing through the green bank solar power purchase agreement and we'll get into more detail about what the ppa is here shortly and i'll just note that this this program um we created two years ago we've had one round um in 2020 and we're excited about round two here in 2021 it's really geared towards municipalities who lack resources or experience for solar procurement internally and would require technical assistance to put solar on municipal sites so that's what we hope to achieve with this program and all the projects um that we're proposing with this this program are behind the meter solar pv projects so they're the installations are located on the sites that they serve so this program is essentially kind of a one-year engagement from uh initial meeting you know here in january through the calendar year to signing agreements um so this gives you this slide kind of gives you a little more detail about what we're doing in that year and how we're how we're providing value um to do these projects so first you know the solar map team will meet with you to understand your municipality's goals we'll gather information like what buildings are suitable and ready for solar and identify any other kind of key stakeholders in your town that should be involved in this process so that might be facilities people or maybe your board of ed and we'll explain you know what the solar map process is in more detail then using the information that you provide our team will perform an analysis on your municipal sites so we'll review energy demand and site conditions we'll identify opportunities for solar projects and we'll work with your team to develop a list of on-site solar projects that would use our ppa um there are really like two pieces that anchor these projects and that's um participating in the utility incentive program which occurs in the summer and securing a qualified contractor to to build the project and that are those two pieces we will you know help navigate you through so we will solicit proposals from qualified uh solar contractors um on behalf of the municipality and we will secure needed incentives and you know once we've got those two pieces in place the solar map team will work with you to execute the ppas including you know supporting you on any council meetings or or any approvals that are needed and then begin construction and so now i'll turn it over to mackie dykes to explain what a power purchase agreement is mackie i think you're muted i was indeed thank you good morning everyone thanks thanks for joining us emily i think the the slides went down i could reshow those there we go thank you um so as emily said at the outset my name is mackie dykes i'm the vice president of financing programs here at the the green bank um as emily was talking about the program clearly a lot of focus was on the ppa so i wanted to spend a few minutes talking about exactly what a what a ppa is so it stands for power purchase agreement and this is the the actual contract that enables us emily sort of went through all the work we'd do uh over the course of the year to design systems and you know find contractors to build them this ppa is the actual mecha both financing and sort of contractual mechanism between us and and your municipality to make the solar happen um and it's a it's a great structure for uh for municipalities to to get solar done as we'll talk about here uh over the course the next few minutes so how does it work um so the uh green bank is the actual owner of the system so the panels will be on the you know the roof of your buildings or you know covering your parking lots uh but we will actually own that system uh and sell you the electricity uh that's produced by the system uh and you will uh so you'll you'll benefit instead of buying that electricity from your utility you'll instead buy it from us so you will you know you'll still get an electric bill from your utility it'll just be a lot less than it would have been otherwise and you'll separately get a bill for us for the power from the solar system and us is the the owner uh we're responsible for you know everything that comes with uh with owning a solar project and so all that responsibility the the development the construction uh and the the operations and management over the term of the ppa all falls on us next slide so why why do this um i mean the the first clear benefit um is as the electricity cost savings so on the left this is the scenario you're all in now you get a an energy bill from your utility either eversource or ui for all the electricity you consume in that building after we do the project that energy bill will go down because you're not buying as much electricity from the utility instead you're getting a good portion of your electricity from that solar system and the price for that electricity from the solar system is much cheaper as we'll talk about here in a little bit from our first round of solar map it was uh either a range of 20 percent uh just to above 50 percent cheaper than the electric utility rate so you're buying the same amount of power it just cost you less from the solar system uh and you know you're able to realize the the pink box here in this drawing uh savings um along with all the you know the great environmental benefits of of going solar next slide um additionally in addition to that uh you know that that cost benefit uh or the savings benefit you get there's other benefits of utilizing this structure there's no upfront cost so the green bank is the owner of the system is responsible for all of the development and construction cost you're locking in a a a steady and predictable electricity rate as you're all probably aware utility rates can fluctuate uh pretty widely over time go up go down the long term trend is for them to to go up but with a ppa you're locking in that rate for for 20 years um so it's it starts lower and it remains uh what we can certainly expect to be lower over the course of of 20 years uh your cash flow is positive from the beginning again you have no capital outlay here you just immediately start saving money by by from the benefit of the lower cost of electricity and we bear all the um all the headaches of ownership all the o m cost uh all the responsibility is is on us and the risk is on us as opposed to you um if that system doesn't produce we don't get paid so we have every incentive to to make sure that it's it's up and running we are constantly monitoring the systems we're doing preventive maintenance uh and and making sure that it's performing up to expectations and again our you know our incentives are to make sure that's the case um and you know one other thing worth mentioning you know the other option for for you is instead of going solar through a ppa is to just buy the system yourself um but you know most municipalities uh most of our non-federal tax paying customers nonprofits the state of connecticut uh choose to go the ppa route just because a lot of the incentives for solar are available through federal tax credits you don't pay federal tax credits or you don't pay federal taxes so essentially money left on the table and the economics just aren't as good for purchasing the system versus uh versus doing it through a ppa we with our our private partners are able to monetize those tax credits and pass the benefits on to you through the lower ppa rate so with that i'm going to hand it over to fiona stewart to talk uh talk about some of the the towns and municipalities we work with in connecticut great thank you um hi everyone so uh we haven't finished a case study for round one yet but uh we did want to present uh our kind of flagship town coventry uh when we created the the solar ppa product here at the green bank it was created back in 2014 and our first town projects were completed with the town of coventry in 2015. they took took a took it to heart with um eight eight systems in total um they split it between both their town buildings and their municipa and their uh board of education buildings um there are eight projects in total um and you can find out more about this case study on our website it's on the the solar map uh it gives a breakdown of the amount of solar the expected savings and we just like to highlight that and we're looking forward to to bringing around our case study after solar map round one here you can see the number of uh board of education and municipal projects that we've done with a number of municipalities throughout connecticut um we encourage you to reach out to your your fellow fellow towns to to get their experience um and great oh we're on to the next slide uh in terms of round one we had five municipalities uh participate with a total of 17 projects those 17 projects account for 3.5 megawatts of solar and in terms of what we're able to offer for just discounts to the current utility rates it's uh 22 between 22 and uh 59 and i that's it for me you're muted allen yes thank you fiona allen savings here csw energy good morning and thank you for attending uh i am here to go over some of the simple deliverables as part of the solar map program go to my next slide so one of the first steps is the ability to obtain addresses for municipal and board of education facilities that would be under consideration for the solar map program and what we do at csw energy is we take the address information in and we correlate the address with a number of criteria for a desktop review that desktop review starts with looking at the facility itself and looking at the applicable roof to determine if there's a minimum geography or square footage for a system along with looking at that roof to determine if there are any obstructions which would be hvac units high parapet walls etc in addition to any impact of shading from trees in the relative area if in the event the roof does not look like a suitable location for a project installation then we'll look at the applicable ground space such as carports and or ground mount space worth mentioning all of this is meant to correlate to meet the minimum system size threshold which is 50 kw ac and once each of those that desktop review criteria has been met looking at each address then there's a determination whether or not it would pass or fail the desktop review criteria for solar map once that is complete then we would take the list of sites and the results and meet with stakeholders once again to review this and work toward getting an on-site visit in place next slide please once that on-site visit has been conducted we then gather all the applicable information which would include electrical room access prospective roof access and or a sitewalk in general on the grounds we then compile all that information and provide that to the green bank from there we also put together a conceptual design which is here on the right with that we provide a prospective system size along with the anticipator or forecasted production in kilowatt hours and then also in reviewing the utility bills we're able to come up with a an effective utility rate or an avoid an avoided cost rate and that is then compared against the results of the green banks ppa pricing modeling and really the the hurdle is whether or not there is an ability to offset a minimum of 10 of the effective utility rate as referenced above in the table and then we also illustrate what the forecasted offset will be from the prospective solar that would be installed on site next slide please essentially all of that information then makes it into these tables here which is meant to illustrate the preliminary savings based on the minimum threshold which is that ten percent so you'll see that there in the savings calculation as well as the assumptions on the right in terms of how a forecasted preliminary ppa rate correlates with the effective utility rate and this is meant really as a starting point because once we have this information available and we talk through it again with key stakeholders and we're able to receive authorization to move forward then the green bank will go out and secure those relative incentives being primarily direct through the xerox program [Music] then we would facilitate a competitive rfp process as emily mentioned in the outset to identify that contractor once that has been done and their pricing has been updated into the pricing model through the green banks ppa program then there's an ability to refresh the uh really that hurdle rate again that 10 discount from the ppa which uh the expectation and goal would be that that ppa rate would come down through that competitive rfp process identifying the contractor um and that's what we have in terms of the deliverables from the program i'll hand it over to emily to further discuss and go over the benefits of the program thanks ellen so we've provided a lot of information about um the program steps how a power purchase agreement works um highlighted some of our case studies and some of the benefits that have come out of round one of the program as well as the sample deliverables that alan covered showing just our minimum savings thresholds and how we how we provide value along along the way to each town that's participating um and we're we've got a couple more slides here so i want to encourage you guys to use the the question feature to go ahead and start entering and any questions you have on what we've covered we'll take questions here shortly and before we do i just wanted to highlight a few of the program benefits that we've come to really realize through the first round of the program there's a lot of different ways that you can go solar as mackie mentioned and a lot of different partners so we offer ourselves as a quasi public state agency to be a trusted partner in helping you explore the opportunities in your town um this year marks the final year of the incen utility incentive program that we mentioned so we want you to be able to take advantage of those incentives to really get the best energy savings out of a solar project as we mentioned there's a handful of towns that are on this call we'll be doing a lot of outreach to other connecticut municipalities that we identify as you know being good good candidates for for this type of support and we walk all of these towns through the solar map process concurrently so that as we enter into an um an rfp process to find a construction partner we're actually bundling everyone's projects together um so your town participating in going solar through the solar map program you would benefit from being part of a larger group of projects that receive kind of economies of scale we did see in our last year's rfp process as mackie mentioned we were able to further drive down the construction costs by offering a larger portfolio of projects so we want to be able to help you receive that competitive pricing and really this whole program from start to finish is just trying to provide provide you and your town support to to really look at solar opportunities identify them and move them through the process to the finish line to go solar and one one final slide in terms of next steps and what the timeline looks like we'd really like to get in touch with all of you after the call to set up a one-on-one meeting with our team we'd be happy to to review this this program overview and talk about the opportunities in your town or your city and another way to kind of jumpstart this process would be to submit a list of your municipalities addresses we saw that in the the desktop review deliverable that that allen covered that's a good way for us to take a first look at what opportunities are in your town if any to do a project it also helps to identify who might need to be in an initial meeting and we can usually do that kind of initial review and 24-48 hours with a list of addresses so that's another idea that can come before after a one-on-one meeting so those are kind of the short-term next steps on the slide you'll see a number of the longer term steps so i'll just kind of gloss over this we have initial meetings here in in january and the first quarter of this year we'll be working on you know doing the analysis and identifying what projects could be real projects that you'd like to move forward the only commitment we ask of is a letter of intent after we've developed those projects um intent that you're you're serious about moving forward that enables us to enter those projects into the incentive program and secure incentives and then we also put those projects in our rfp pool we anticipate running the rfp process this fall after the incentive program and then we look to actually bring back final final project numbers final savings um after the rfp um to execute the the power purchase agreements by the end of the calendar year so starting in january ending at the end of the calendar year was signed agreements and then construction would begin at the beginning of 2022. so with that we've offered a lot of information again we will have all of this information available to you and i'll just take a moment to look and see if we've got any questions yet in the um in the question queue um and encourage you know anyone to go ahead and either type it in or i believe there is a raised hand feature um where i could unmute you and we'd be happy to to meet you and answer your questions if you'd like to to speak all right see if i can make this bigger we've got one question so far does the solar installation include battery backup to smooth out variances in day-to-day solar energy so i'll open that up to my fellow panelists whoever wants to jump in answering about battery inclusion hey this is mackie dykes um none of our projects so far have included batteries um the the the economics were not there um but when i say that i mean couldn't deliver a um a cheaper ppa rate than uh than your utility rate with the with the battery just because the you know the cost of batteries was has been high and the uh sort of the policy structure the incentive structure for batteries in connecticut just wasn't wasn't there um however really both those things are changing uh battery prices have been uh plummeting um and we're now seeing actually just uh yesterday uh the green bank along with the utilities were charged with creating a residential and commercial uh battery storage incentive program so you know we expect things to start changing for batteries in the in the near future and it's something that if there's interest in that we can we can begin to explore it great thanks macky all right any other questions we have now um be happy to unmute or you can put them in the chat give you guys a couple minutes and to our panelists if there's anything else you wanted to add and let folks know got another question can batteries be added at a later date um and the short answer is yes um alan i don't know if you want to talk about kind of the technical piece of that so i would say uh yes the short answer is yes um we would just want to have an idea of what the facility goals would be and prospectively include that as a reference in the rfp mikey anything to add a batteries at a later date nope yeah i think whether it's an hour in the near future as the landscape around batteries changes it's something yeah i think that's that's kind of one of why the the next step is to start looking at particular buildings and understanding your needs because uh you know we can when we actually get to the rfp portion we can craft each of these projects to meet those you know whether it's bringing batteries later or trying to get them now um you know we can we can sort of personalize each project uh to meet the building's needs right all right we've got one other question does the solar array have to be on the same physical property and tied to an electric service for say a town building i can start with that if others want to add it does so these all these projects are behind the meter projects meaning that the array is installed physically on that property and it's serving the electric meter that's located on that property there are other programs that exist out there to kind of pass along that solar benefit to other to other buildings and other electric accounts that's a separate program and this one specifically looks at each site and what the energy demand is at that site and then we would size the system kind of based on what that need is does anybody have anything else to add to that response this is mackie um yeah i think that pretty much covers it you know it doesn't it doesn't have to be on the roof you know we can do carports or ground mounts uh around around the on the property but it does all need to be on the the prop the solar needs to be on the property that's being served uh the the program that emily is referencing it's a virtual net metering which is a utility uh program that allows you to build offsite solar to benefit municipal buildings uh it's currently full there's no credits available so you know that's why we're focused on these behind the meter projects uh that we can you know we can get done now thank you there's an additional question do the towns receive any credits for excess energy produced on weekends or when the buildings are closed so that's a great question you want to make sure you're taking full advantage when you need the energy and what happens when when you're not using the electricity immediately you do receive credits in the sense that all of these projects use something called net metering where essentially what you're not using instantaneously is credited on your account for use later so essentially you can think of your solar system kind of providing your needs and the excess whether it's at night or um yeah you know during a rainstorm or a very cloudy day that energy will go to the grid and the grid is essentially acting sort of like a like a battery for you so that when you are using the building and you are needing energy you can draw on that credit um when it's needed and that's something that we also kind of take into the accounting of when we're looking at your energy demand we're looking at what that building's usage is over a year so we're we're looking at um you know all totaled up through the year how do we offset that that demand amount all right i think we've covered the questions that have been submitted in the queue so far i've got any remaining questions i think we've got five minutes left in this webinar great all right i don't see any questions now so we'll we'll end a couple minutes early um i want to thank everybody for their um participation today really great questions um you'll see in the chat i've entered in my email address if you are interested in enrolling or have additional questions definitely get in touch and we will provide additional information through your webinar registration including the slides and the recording as well as our website um so thanks everybody for for joining us and we look forward to future conversations with you in your town all right thanks everyone