Solar Power
Powering us all to a more sustainable life
Solar Power
Solar generates positive change by integrating solar power, capital management, education, community engagement and more. Consider on-site solar to reach your sustainability goals and show community leadership. Investing first in energy efficiency addresses your least-cost alternative to reducing your environmental impact. Locking in a low price for solar power now for the next two decades or more is a smart way to make your energy cost more predictable, taking some of the guesswork out of budgeting.
See what makes Secure Solar Futures an industry leader in making solar power affordable:
Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)
Power Purchase Agreements (PPA), service agreement or solar lease Secure Solar Futures can help you avoid the high upfront cost of purchasing your own equipment, making solar power affordable. Each need and client can be a little different, so we take the time to understand where your organization fits best.
Solar Self-Generated Agreement (Solar SGA®)
Solar Self-Generation Agreement (Solar SGA®) is our proprietary alternative to a Power Purchase Agreement for customers located in utility territories that disallow PPAs. The Solar SGA® is a performance-based agreement to monetize the federal Solar Investment Tax Credit and pass the savings along to our customers, even if they are public schools, non-profit colleges or other non-taxable entities that are unable to use the tax credit in their own right.
Solar Investment Tax Credit (Solar ITC)
The Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) was significantly increased with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. For projects up to 1 MW (AC), many of which fit the profile for net-metered rooftop solar solutions, such as on public schools, it provides for an automatic 30% ITC, plus adders for domestic content and energy communities. These ITC adders build towards Secure Solar Futures’ longstanding history and commitment to building solar projects with American-made equipment and investing in SV VA and WV coalfield communities.
S3: Secure Solar Savings
When it comes to solar, more is often better. But not always. Sometimes a school, hospital or business can actually save more money by installing fewer solar panels. For customers whose incumbent electric utility levies a demand charge on top of their base power rate, we undertake additional analysis to optimize the solar peak demand contribution, which we call S3: Secure Solar Savings. We employ a proprietary three-step process to build a solar power system that will give you the most economic benefit:
1. Physical Design — Optimize a solar array for the rooftop or ground space available
2. Electrical Usage — Analyze in detail your electrical usage including peak demand patterns and utility rate tariff
3. Economic Analysis — Integrate physical design with electrical usage to give you the right amount of solar capacity to save you the most money
This process yields projections of solar energy production for our customers’ projects that have proven 97% accurate.
Resilient Solar + Roof Renovation™
Our unique Resilient Solar + Roof Restoration® offering provides a 20- or 25-year solar Power Purchase Agreement or Solar Self-Generation Agreement® combined with a roof restoration carrying a warranty that also lasts 20 or 25 years. Combining these two services makes more of our customers’ roofs ready to host solar panels, which in turn, gives our customers the ability to get started with solar more quickly and to install more solar panels on their roofs.
Published Research on Money Savings
Want to dig deeper? Read our research on how to maximize money savings with rooftop solar power in the February, 2024 issue of Solar Energy Journal: “Optimizing solar capacity for commercial-scale PV systems: An empirical cost-benefit framework for all stakeholders” by Andre M. Eanes and Anthony E. Smith.
Highlights
- Actual operational data from nine commercial-scale solar PV systems in Virginia over single- to multi-year periods are used.
- Facilities analyzed encompass four different end-use categories with summer- and daytime-peaking (SDP) electricity demand.
- Granular performance analyses demonstrate a consistent potential to reduce peak demand for individual SDP customers and coincident peak demand for regional grids.
- Properly sized systems (large enough but not oversized) can maximize financial savings for commercial solar customers.
- With proper scale and policy support, solar PV can provide financial savings to solar customers, utilities, and utility ratepayers alike.
Sample Projects
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Four Seasons YMCA
Heavy Energy User Covered 97% of Power Needs with Solar
487 kilowatts
The Four Seasons YMCA had a big electric bill. Through a solar PPA with no upfront cost, the Y now covers 97% of its power from clean energy at a much lower cost.
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InterChange Group
A path to a greener delivery of logistics
4.2 Megawatts
Producing solar energy on site helps reduce the amount of power purchased from the local electric utility, especially at times when energy demand is highest.
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Prince William County Schools
Leading The Next Generation to Renewable Energy
3.8 Megawatts
Going solar will save Virginia’s second-largest school system $7.8 million in energy costs over 25 years and provide students with hands-on learning opportunities.
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Roanoke City Public Schools
With 17 Locations, One of the Largest K-12 Solar Projects in Virginia
7.3 Megawatts
Roanoke Public Schools will save $46.5 million through 7.3 megawatts of solar at 17 locations, including 7 buildings with roofs restored at no capital cost.
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