North of Sunnyside Elementary on the Florida Mesa, a pump jack bobs in mechanical rhythm. The army green infrastructure is a jarring juxtaposition to a clean, navy blue array of solar panels protruding on the plot of land between the wellpad and U.S. Highway 550.

It would be hard for an observer to avoid the feeling that the poetic contrast was anything but intentional (it wasn’t).

The natural gas sucked out of the ground by Simcoe’s Lyle Short A 3 Well is still an important resource – one American, on average, uses 261 cubic feet of it each day.

But the world is undergoing an energy revolution as leaders attempt to reduce fossil fuel emissions and halt the rapid warming of the earth’s climate. And reliable alternative energy sources are needed to facilitate that transition.

In La Plata County, the region’s power cooperative, La Plata Electric Association, has taken its first concrete step to bring that revolution into the backyard of its customers.

The Sunnyside Community Solar Garden, LPEA’s 1.7 megawatt solar array along Highway 550 south of Durango, is expected to be electrified in May and should be providing power to customers sometime over the summer.

The garden is LPEA’s first solar project.

“It’s a big, big milestone for us,” said LPEA Executive Vice President of Grid Solutions and Special Projects Dan Harms.

The project does not have battery storage, and will dump power directly into the grid via a nearby substation. It is expected to generate 4,643,000 kilowatt-hours annually, which is enough to supply approximately 600 homes, according to LPEA statistics.

The garden occupies 9.4 acres of a 55 acre property, making it the largest array in the county at the moment. A planning application was approved by La Plata County in June, and construction began in October.

Sunnyside solar by the numbers

• 3,627 bifacial panels over 9.4 acres
• 1.7 watts of generation
• 4,643,000 kilowatt-hours annually, enough to power 600 homes
• 41 rows of panels mounted on 800 piers
• 17 100-kW inverters
• Estimated 40% of cost to be covered by federal tax credits
• 25-year site life span

The exact plans detailing to whom the power will be sold have yet to be finalized by LPEA’s Board of Directors. But Harms gave La Plata County commissioners insight into the co-op’s aspirations during a discussion Feb. 7.

The solar garden model operates like a cooperative and can provide access to green energy to individuals for whom rooftop solar is not an option.

Renters rarely have the opportunity to install solar panels on their homes and the cost of the initial investment can exclude low-income customers. And just last month, LPEA announced a moratorium on applications for rooftop solar for areas in and around Durango in which solar generation has met load capacity.

Harms said the co-op hopes to sell about 25% of the generated power to general members, with a 5% premium relative to standard power rates. Membership in the project will be sold as a unit of the garden’s overall monthly generation, which will vary depending on the weather, meaning customers will purchase a percentage of its total generation.

Pending board approval, Harms proposed to sell about 50% of the power to income-qualified LPEA members who make less than the 80% area median income. Those members will receive a favorable power rate that is 20% cheaper than standard energy rates.

La Plata County is poised to become the “anchor tenant” for the project. A $2 million upfront investment would entitle the county to approximately 28% of the solar garden’s power, which is expected to be 1,300 MWh annually.

The agreement between the two entities, which is being drafted, comes at a fortuitous time for the county. Not only will the agreement save the county an estimated $39,000 on electricity over the next two decades, but the county owns eight properties that are subject as new building performance standards that went into effect last October.

Those efficiency standards may be hard to meet in certain buildings, such as the La Plata County Courthouse.

“Our courthouse really gives us fits,” said La Plata County Manager Chuck Stevens. “… We’ve done windows, we’ve done lights, we’ve added insulation. We’ve done what we can do without this major reconstruction effort.”

Barring an all-out renovation, which would displace all court operations making the endeavor all but logistically impossible (not to mention costly), Stevens said the county had largely run out of options. Although the county explored the possibility of rooftop solar, the age of some roofs and the expenses associated with upgrades would drive cost too high.

But allocating the county’s share of the solar garden’s production to some of its larger buildings will help it meet the state’s energy reduction goals.

“It’s one of those rare projects that, I think, just checks a lot of boxes,” Stevens said.

The project aligns with the county’s strategic plan, he said, as well as county commissioners’ goals to increase partnerships and reduce the cost of homeownership.

“I wish that every month we had a project like this,” he said.

The county has set aside $2 million in the 2024 budget for the project.

LPEA is running, not crawling, toward local green energy production, Harms said.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that LPEA would receive a $13.4 million partially forgivable loan to build a another solar project that will be nearly three times the size of Sunnyside.

Under the terms of LPEA’s contract with its wholesale energy provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the co-op cannot generate more the 5% of its total needed power on its own. In 2017, LPEA first began discussions around a potential partial buyout that would allow it to generate more green power locally.

If the negotiations with Tri-State are considered a proverbial prerace rally, the completion of the solar garden could be considered the first pace in a race toward a greener energy future.

This is possible, in part, thanks to historic investments by the Biden administration in green energy. A tax credit program included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act means that LPEA could receive a federal tax credit reimbursement covering up to 50% of the cost of the project (Harms said a 40% credit is more realistic).

LPEA has not released the total cost of the project.

With more steps anticipated in the near future, LPEA is using Sunnyside as a sort of smaller-scale pilot.

“It’s a very important step to take and see how the tax credits work,” Harms said.

The subsidies for Sunnyside most directly benefit the purchasers of the power, although taxpayers will see an indirect benefit through the county’s cost savings.

However, if and when LPEA is able to add more solar generation into its broader portfolio, those projects will likely reduce the cost of power for all LPEA members. And with federal tax credits making these sorts of projects increasingly realistic, LPEA is looking for ways to bring more affordable, local generation to the region.

“We're stacking the opportunities up for ourselves,” Harms said.

rschafir@durangoherald.com