It is no secret that solar power has increasingly become one of the cheapest ways of generating renewable energy, making it accessible for communities to generate their own electricity by utilising their surroundings. Despite such progress, there is a large part of the population, even in well-developed countries, where communities cannot harness their environment due to unsuitable roof orientation, heritage listing, shading, space, or structural issues. Such conditions contribute to differences between electricity costs as well as other social and economic benefits for households within the same community, leading to division.
Enter “solar gardens”: a common strategy to tackle this aspect of community division. They are a business model that allow households with obstacles to electricity self-generation to receive the benefits of producing their own electricity through off-site solar power plants. In a solar garden, the community members can purchase a plot and then receive a credit on their electricity bills. Such solar gardens with active community member involvement are well-developed in the EU and in Australia. But how do these projects lead to other tangible community advantages?
One of the world’s most successful models of solar gardens is in Spain. From its inception in 2010, Som Energia has been a citizen-participation project aimed at creating a cooperative and putting energy in the hands of citizens. The success of the cooperative was driven by its low-cost start-up model and its financial scheme, Generation kWh, which is based on direct investment through a one-time, refundable contribution of at least €100 from member households. The development costs were driven downwards because most of Som Energia’s operations are web-based—they don’t have a traditional media budget, and spend no money on advertising. Social media has proven effective, both as a low-cost medium to reach new members as well as a communication tool.
Through the Generation kWh investment programme, community members are providing a zero-interest loan to the cooperative to build the solar plants; instead of financial interests, the participating households receive a discount on their energy bill for 25 years. Additionally, the members can share their membership with friends, family, and neighbours; this allows them to sign up for green energy contracts without paying the upfront fee, hence lowering the barrier to entry for lower-income households. A case study conducted by Transformative Cities reported that the cooperative works with 300 local municipalities, identifying at-risk households and providing electricity at no charge for a year. The cooperative operates on the principle of “One Member, One Vote”, regardless of the member’s investment, giving each member an opportunity to participate in local groups that decide on local projects, advocacy efforts, and education workshops. Community participation and co-ownership increase the members’ sense of agency over energy, creating a psychological link to energy production, as well as raising awareness about how the market works. According to reports, such community member involvement leads to behavioural changes, including a 10–15% reduction in overall consumption.
These and other tangible community benefits are also visible in the Australian case, where Haystacks Solar Garden represents Australia’s first large-scale solar garden, which evolved only six years after the inception of the Spanish Som Energia cooperative and became fully operational in 2024. Nearly 35% of the population is locked out of rooftop solar opportunities, unable to harness its surroundings for self-generation of electricity via solar means.
Haystacks Solar Garden adopted a cooperative-debt model, which is designed to mimic the experience of owning solar panels on one’s own roof. Each plot in the Haystacks Solar Garden was sold for a one-off payment of $4,200 and is estimated to generate an average annual credit of $505 on the household’s electricity bill for ten years. Haystacks additionally utilises Cooperative Capital Units (CCUs). The community members purchase a CCU when buying a plot, acting as a loan to the cooperative. These funds raised through CCUs are then used by the cooperative to help finance the construction of the solar farm.
In addition to the economic benefits of annual electricity bill credits to the members, the cooperative also impacts the energy and environment sectors. Haystacks Solar Garden’s estimated annual generation powers up to 700 households. Additionally, through steady lease payments, the cooperative is able to provide an income guarantee for the local landowners. Utilising renewable energy opportunities reduces the New South Wales region’s carbon emissions by approximately 2,700 tonnes of CO2 annually.
One of the most important benefits of the solar gardens project is the increased clean energy accessibility for the respective communities, enabling a significant number of community members who face market barriers to benefit from clean energy technologies, and achieving this in a cost-efficient way. By enabling households to benefit from distributed energy technologies while maintaining a degree of grid utilisation, the solar gardens initiative creates a win-win situation as it ensures cheaper access to electricity for the households and network revenue from existing infrastructure for the state. Furthermore, solar energy cooperatives create technical efficiencies. Firstly, they reduce the possibility of infrastructure duplication. Secondly, the relatively larger size of the solar array in the solar gardens compared to commercial and residential behind-the-metre models creates the opportunity for better cost reduction, as it is able to capture the advantages of economies of scale. Such tangible community advantages brought about by solar gardens make it evident that the initiative can be greatly useful for community self-determination and empowerment.
Written by Mariami Gaveshelishvili, Edited by Raleigh Kuipers
Photo Credit: “A large solar panel with mountains in the background” by Michael Pointner (2023, September 10) on Unsplash.
