Tenn. community solar project challenges TVA control

A startup community solar cooperative in western Tennessee said it will break ground in March while continuing to fight claims from the Tennessee Valley Authority that the co-op's 16.5-MW project is illegal.

The Tennessee Public Utilities Commission asked parties to the case in late December 2021 to informally resolve "discovery disputes" before regulators take another look at the Jackson Sustainability Cooperative's community solar petition filed in May 2021. However, the commission did not set a deadline for those talks, leaving the project in limbo for now. (Docket 21-00061)

"TVA can't stop us from starting," Dennis Emberling, the cooperative's CEO, said in a Jan. 4 interview. "We have all the permits from the Jackson [Tenn.] planning department ... and the money to start ourselves. We could start today but have to wait until March when the mud clears."

Long-term, the co-op, known as the JSC, needs the commission's approval to keep tax equity investors confident that the $67 million project will not be held up by a "big political, bureaucratic squabble that could go on for God knows how long," Emberling added.

The Jackson Energy Authority, the local city-owned utility in Jackson, to which the federally owned TVA sells electricity, contended that the solar co-op is prohibited by state law from servicing retail power customers within the TVA's territory.

By siphoning off lucrative business customers, the cooperative would also affect revenue for the incumbent power players while shifting costs to remaining customers, the incumbents said. The JSC wants to be recognized as a nonprofit electric cooperative exempt from regulation as a utility under Tennessee law, which would allow it to set up solar microgrids throughout the TVA's territory.

The Jackson Energy Authority, or JEA, has told regulators that the proposed "facility will have enough capacity to temporarily impact JEA's entire system-wide peak demand by 12.9%." The solar co-op countered that the loss to the city utility and the TVA would be negligible or nonexistent because by reducing peak energy demand, the utilities would need less of a reserve capacity and reduce cost.

The JSC's initial project would be built on a 34-acre lot in the city of Jackson, located halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It would include more than 33,300 SunPower solar panels, 46 MWh of battery capacity and 3.5 miles of underground wiring connecting "several commercial facilities," according to the co-op's testimony before the commission.

Emberling's team received initial legal and technical help from a law firm specializing in renewable energy and public utility law, free of charge via the U.S. Energy Department's National Community Solar Partnership. The federal initiative is seeking to expand solar energy access to "under-resourced and over-burdened markets" while creating jobs and economic development.

An economic analysis commissioned by the JSC showed the Tennessee project would create 670 temporary and 28 permanent jobs in Jackson and bring $231 million in total economic impact over the first decade along with clean and reliable service.

But TVA spokesperson Jim Hopson said low-cost clean energy and job growth are exactly what the TVA is already offering by working with local state and regional development agencies and growing its renewable energy investments. The utility's portfolio is already 60% carbon-free, which helps recruit large employers such as Ford Motor Co., which is building a large manufacturing complex for electric pickups and advanced batteries about 30 miles from Jackson, Hopson noted.

"That gives you some indication of how local power can draw in that kind of business even while we're still dealing with the aftermath of the COVID pandemic," Hopson said.