Called It: Self-Storage Goes National, Jersey Makes It Permanent

Ray: Welcome to Community Solar News! Della, I've got three stories for you today, and not one of them needed a heads-up slot to go with it.

Della: Three wins? No footnote, no fine print to watch out for?

Ray: None. Clean sweep. And two of these connect straight back to stories we've already covered on this show.

Della: Okay, now I need to know which two.

Ray: You'll see soon enough. We're starting small though. Literally, four hundred kilowatts small, because this first one is just a nice story and I want to sit in it for a second.

Della: You've earned it, we've had some heavy weeks lately. Fine, small first. Snohomish County PUD, up in Everett, Washington, just opened a new community solar array on Casino Road. And here's the part I love, they let the neighborhood name it.

Ray: What did they land on?

Della: El Sol al Alcance de tus Manos. The sun within reach of your hands.

Ray: Okay. Huh. That's genuinely nice.

Della: Four hundred kilowatts, sitting on about an acre and three quarters of city-owned land right next to Walter E. Hall Park. Expected to serve somewhere around thirty homes a year.

Ray: Thirty homes. That's a rounding error compared to some of the portfolios we cover on this show.

Della: Sure, but look at how it actually got paid for, because that's the part worth stealing. Over eighty percent of the project came from state and federal money. Washington's Clean Energy Fund, the Community Solar Expansion Program, and the federal investment tax credit, stacked with the bonus adder on top.

Ray: That's the real takeaway if you're building something this size right now. Stack every adder you qualify for, layer in a state fund if your state has one, and the private capital you actually need to raise shrinks down to almost nothing.

Della: A hundred megawatt platform runs on a different playbook, obviously. But for a utility with an odd little parcel and a park it wants to do something with, this is basically the whole recipe.

Ray: There's a version of this for a lot of small munis and PUDs sitting on odd little parcels they don't know what to do with.

Della: And it's a park-adjacent lot, which matters. Nobody's fighting a siting battle over a community solar array next to a park that already gets used by the neighborhood it's serving.

Ray: That's underrated. Half the fights we cover on this show are about where a project gets sited. Put it somewhere people already gather and half the objections just don't materialize.

Della: There's a mixed-media art installation going up on site too, work from three local artists, and the PUD's throwing a celebration on the nineteenth.

Ray: What'd their CEO say about it?

Della: John Haarlow called it a shining example of what's possible when public and private entities actually work together. Corny as that sounds out loud, the funding stack backs it up.

Ray: Worth circling back once that celebration actually happens on the nineteenth, just to see how a neighborhood reacts to a project with its own name on it instead of some utility's project number.

Della: Agreed. And if another small PUD copies the naming-contest idea, that's a pattern worth tracking too. It's cheap, and it clearly buys goodwill.

Ray: Cheap and effective is basically the whole story here. No mega-deal, no headline megawatt figure, just a utility, a park, and thirty households who'll actually see it on their bill.

Della: Small project, big lesson, and a name I'm going to be mangling in Spanish for the rest of the episode.

Ray: Moving on, because this next one, Della, I've genuinely been waiting weeks to bring up.

Della: Oh no. Is this the self-storage thing?

Ray: This is the self-storage thing!

Della: I knew it the second you got that look.

Ray: Back in August, when ComEd, Solar Landscape, and Public Storage announced that whole rooftop portfolio deal in Illinois, forty-four megawatts across sixty projects, I said on this show that other big-box operators would copy it before the year was out. You made me say it out loud as an official, on-the-record prediction.

Della: I remember. I was fully prepared to hold that over you forever if you were wrong.

Ray: Well. Prime Group, a different storage operator, over three hundred thirty facilities, something like seven billion dollars in assets under management, just partnered with Wunder. More than a hundred projects in development, across nine states, more than thirty-eight megawatts of solar total.

Della: Slightly smaller than the ComEd and Public Storage number, but spread across nine states instead of one.

Ray: Different shape of the same bet. And this one's actually leaning on community solar specifically, rather than net metering to just cover their own load.

Della: That's the part I wanted to check. Go on.

Ray: Their own release says a lot of these projects run through state community solar programs, so the power coming off Prime Group's rooftops gets delivered to local residents at a discount to utility rates, with additional savings carved out specifically for low and moderate income households.

Della: Same structural play as Public Storage and ComEd, then. Big landlord, roof they already own and already pay to maintain, and instead of that roof just sitting there, it becomes a subscriber base.

Ray: First four states going live are Rhode Island, Connecticut, California, and Maryland, with the rest of the nine states following as projects come online.

Della: Did either of them say anything worth quoting, or is it all just press-release math?

Ray: Prime Group's CEO, Robert Moser, said on-site energy infrastructure has emerged as a compelling value creation strategy. Wunder's CEO, Dave Riess, said solar gives self-storage operators a way to accelerate clean energy adoption while potentially cutting their own operating costs.

Della: We don't know the other five states yet, do we?

Ray: Not from what they've published. Worth a follow-up once more of those hundred-plus projects actually get named and sited.

Della: Put it on the list. And fine, you called it, I'm saying it on air so it's official for the record: Ray called it.

Ray: Thank you. I'm framing that clip.

Della: Don't get used to it, this is a one-time thing. And honestly, if a second storage REIT does this before the year's out, I'm calling that one first.

Ray: Deal. And zoom out for a second, because this is bigger than one self-storage deal. A seven billion dollar real estate platform deciding distributed solar belongs on the balance sheet is another data point for something we've been tracking all year, capital showing up at every size, from small development loans up to platform-scale raises.

Della: Sure, except this is a different flavor of capital. A fund can pull back whenever the math changes. A landlord that already owns the roof isn't going anywhere.

Ray: Which honestly might be the more durable version of the trend.

Della: Alright, last story's mine, and it's actually the one that changes what gets built.

Ray: This is the New Jersey one?

Della: This is the New Jersey one. Governor Sherrill signed S-3939 this week, and it permanently opens the community solar program to dual-use solar projects.

Ray: Wait, permanently? Didn't New Jersey already have a dual-use pilot running?

Della: That's exactly it, and I'm glad you remember. Lightstar, a few weeks back, through its subsidiary NJ Solar 2000, picked up eight conditional awards, about twenty-seven megawatts, out of the state's first Dual-Use Solar Energy Pilot Program.

Ray: The one where only three developers got picked out of thirty-three proposals.

Della: Right, that was a pilot. A capped test run to see if the model worked at all. This new law takes dual-use out of pilot status entirely and folds it straight into the regular community solar program, going forward, no cap, no waiting for a special window.

Ray: I know you're excited right now. I can hear it.

Della: I have never once made it a secret that dual-use and agrivoltaics get me going. Sheep grazing under solar equipment in Warren County still lives in my head rent free.

Ray: It really does, we all know.

Della: So if you've got a dual-use design sitting in a drawer somewhere, solar over farmland, grazing underneath, whatever the co-location looks like, you don't wait for New Jersey to open another pilot round. You just apply through the regular program.

Ray: That's the whole point of graduating it. And New Jersey is not exactly a small market to unlock for that project type.

Della: This is genuinely good news for anybody who's been sitting on a dual-use project waiting for a state to make up its mind about whether it counts.

Ray: It's also just a good sign in general. A pilot program that actually graduates into permanent policy instead of quietly expiring on schedule. That happens less often than it should.

Della: I want to know how many projects actually file under the new rule in the first year, versus how many sat around during the pilot phase waiting for exactly this.

Ray: That's a real number to chase down. Put a pin in it, we'll check back.

Della: Alright. Three for three, clean sweep, no heads-up needed this week.

Ray: Della, before we go.

Della: Before we go, quick word from our sponsor. This episode's brought to you by Our Power Co.

Ray: Their whole pitch fits in one line, and it's a good one: you build the solar, we bring the community. If you've got subscriber capacity to fill, that acquisition work is the entire job they do, full stop, nationwide.

Della: And if you're listening as a homeowner or renter rather than a developer, this read isn't really built for you, but there is a door. Go to join community dot solar if you want to subscribe yourself and knock some money off your own bill.

Ray: One more thing on Our Power Co. This show is made almost entirely with AI, and we picked our tools on purpose. Companies that cover their own energy and water costs instead of pushing those costs onto the grid, and onto somebody else's utility bill.

Della: On a show about energy, that felt like the bare minimum, not a bonus. Responsible AI and responsible energy, on both ends of this show, is the actual bar, not a talking point.

Ray: And every number, every quote, every dollar figure you heard today is sourced and linked in the show notes. Nothing today came from anywhere but the record.

Della: And hey, if three stories a week isn't enough solar for you, we also put out something called The Solar Docket now. Free, daily, a quick read on whatever actually moved that day, capacity block changes, filings, deals. It's at community solar dot news.

Ray: Find us wherever you get your podcasts, Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or on YouTube now if you'd rather watch than listen.

Della: And head to community solar dot news for the newsletter and the full show notes on everything we covered today.

Della: That's the community in community solar. We'll see you next time.