Minnesota Community Solar Gardens Forecast: Partly Sunny with a Chance of Rain

Within days of its open on December 12, 2014, Xcel Energy’s Minnesota Community Solar Garden (CSG) Program had well over 300 MW worth of CSG applications submitted and by this writing nearly 430 MW.  The rush of significant application creates a question of “who’s in line first?”  That was the question before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (Commission) today.

As noted in our prior coverage, the Commission instructed the program to be “first-ready, first-served” and laid out specific instructions on the steps developers would need to take to complete applications and develop a garden in compliance with the program. These instructions were the result of substantial deliberation with interested parties and reflected in Xcel’s shiny new Tariff Section 9 governing the CSG Program.  The problem, however, is that any CSG  needs to interconnect to Xcel’s distribution system, and that process is governed by Xcel’s existing Tariff Section 10.  The interplay of these two tariff sections complicates the “who’s in line first?” issue by adding the question “which line?” Importantly, over 100 MW of applications destined for the CSG program were in line in the Section 10 interconnection queue before the CSG program opened last month.  A developer sought resolution of the two-queue issue from the Commission.

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