🌤 Minnesota Installs New Community Solar Garden

A 1.2-megawatt community solar garden located in Makato, Minnesota lets people living in apartments, mobile home park occupants as well as individuals with low credit scores subscribe by paying a monthly fee. By doing that, they own a share of the solar array comparable to up to 120% of the homeowners historical electricity consumption, Environmental Leader reports.

Environmental Leader explains further that when the subscribers share of the garden produces energy, the power is fed into something called Xcel Energy’s electrical grid. After that, Xcel credits the subscriber for the energy production and offsets a portion of the customers regular Xcel electricity bill.

During summer, when the days are long and the solar arrays are the most productive, oftentimes they generate more electricity than the subscriber is consuming. If that is the case, the customers entire monthly Xcel bill is erased and solar credits are stored for the winter months as a way to offset part of the monthly bills when the arrays are less productive.