A new group in San Juan County seeks to make it easier for people to install solar arrays on their houses.
This cooperative is known as San Juan County Solar, Storage and EV Charging Co-op and is part of a larger nationwide organization known as Solar United Neighbors.
This group was born out of a lawsuit that Farmington residents including David Fosdeck filed against the city-owned electric utility in 2019 alleging that the entity was charging fees to discourage rooftop solar. That eventually resulted in a settlement and Farmington Electric Utility System removed the standby service charges from their billing.
As the lawsuit worked its way through court, Fosdeck met the founder of Solar United Neighbors through an email exchange. He’d already known about the organization and had been following their work for years.
SUN set up an organization in Colorado and has state directors that work to start programs.
Fosdeck kept in contact with SUN even after the lawsuit was settled and he noticed an uptick in the number of rooftop solar installations in Farmington.
He sent in an Inspection of Public Records Act request to many interconnections the utility has approved and discovered that consumers installed approximately 165 solar arrays in the last year in the Farmington Electric Utility System service territory, which includes most of San Juan County outside of Navajo Nation. The City of Aztec has its own electric utility that split off from the Farmington system around 1950.
In comparison, during the entire five year period when FEUS charged a standby service rider, there were less than 100 systems installed.
At the same time, Fosdeck said there are concerns about predatory practices of solar companies. He pointed to an incident when New Mexico Solar Group closed without any warning leaving customers uncertain about whether they’d get the array they’d already paid for. The Albuquerque Journal also reported that some companies were convincing low-income residents to buy underperforming arrays at high prices.
“It gives solar a bad name,” Fosdeck said.
SUN is a cooperative that works by having a group of people who want solar arrays installed on their houses come together and send out a request for proposals. That provides a solar installer with potentially dozens of clients and brings the benefit of lower installation costs to the members.
Nationwide, Fosdeck said SUN has helped more than 9,300 people go solar. It operates in a dozen states as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Fosdeck now works as the New Mexico Program Consultant for SUN. This came after kicking around the idea of starting that type of co-op in San Juan County.
Initially, he said, they considered a co-op serving the entire Four Corners region. But the logistics of that, including various utility and state jurisdictions, made that difficult.
To gain members, the co-op is hosting events and engaging in various outreach activities.
The members will largely be Farmington Electric Utility System customers, although Fosdeck said they are also hoping to help people on the Navajo Nation and the Jicarilla Apache Nation who do not have access to electricity install solar arrays to power their homes.
In one community in the Front Range of Colorado, the SUN cooperative signed up 310 members and sent out a request for proposals.
Fosdeck doesn’t expect that type of numbers from San Juan County. Instead, he said the group may initially get 20 members.
That still is 20 customers that the solar installers do not have to go out and find on their own or through advertising.
Those solar installers could even be from the Albuquerque area. Having multiple customers lined up would make it more competitive for out of county installers to consider traveling up and installing the arrays.
