Groundbreaking on Jack's Solar Garden imminent

Here is a ray of sunshine in these dark times; a ray of sunshine, shining on a solar panel, producing energy locally in Longmont for residents of the Left Hand Valley.

Jack's Solar Garden, the community solar project created by Byron Kominek on his farm in south Longmont, is on track to be built, connected, and producing power by fall.

In early April, Kominek signed a contract with Namasté Solar to build the panels. Namasté is a local solar developer, and as Kominek pointed out, also a certified B Corporation. B Corps prioritize equity, environment, and people as much as they value profit, the primary metric used for most for-profit companies.

Namasté is set to begin construction of the 1.2 megawatt (MW) solar installation in June, with the goal of completing interconnection with Xcel Energy's electricity grid by September.

Kominek points out that all of this depends on the situation with COVID-19 remaining stable, however, all indicators at this time are positive.

Namasté has given the project a green light and a timeline. Critical infrastructure, including construction and electricity generation, are on the list of essential businesses under the current rules in Colorado, so workers can build the system.

The installation will be similar to the Namasté installation that went up last year at IBM near Niwot, with a smaller footprint and capacity. It has a different tracking system, and Kominek will be elevating the panels to two different heights, six feet and eight feet, "simply to give researchers the opportunity to study growing crops underneath the both and see how the microclimate changes between the two elevations."

While one obvious goal of the project is to produce renewable energy for local consumption, that's only a small element of Kominek's plans.

"To me, the idea of community solar is not just providing solar back into the community, but getting the community involved in production of the solar," said Kominek.

"What we want to accomplish here is being able to bring folks out on a regular basis, to come out to the farm, see the solar panels, see what's going on, see how energy is being produced locally."

To achieve this goal, Jack's Solar Garden is partnering with a variety of researchers, nonprofits, and other regional organizations. These plans are barrelling forward, as well.

"If you've driven by the farm in the past couple of weeks, you'll have seen that the Audubon Rockies has already started their work on the pollinator habitat that'll go around the perimeter of the solar array," according to Kominek.

There are plans in the works for a community planting day in late May, depending on current COVID-19 rules and restrictions.

Some other organizations involved include NREL, Colorado State University, Sprout City Farms, and Arizona University.

Boulder County has committed to purchase 10% of the energy produced, and Kominek is negotiating with a handful of other local businesses to come on board for more.

Anyone can take part in the program, whether an individual, household, business, or other organization, and Kominek says they are still signing up new subscribers.

The hope of the project, according to Kominek, is to take the idea of agrivoltaics, or the practice of co-developing land for both solar production and agriculture, to create a body of research that others can follow. Kominek is hoping researchers will learn things like "how moisture content is stored, or how temperatures are different" under solar panels, in order to help others "figure out what they want to do on their land.

"We're bringing the idea of agrivoltaics here in Colorado to scale."

Read more background on the project in LHVC articles here and here or visit Jack's Solar Garden online.

Editor's note: an earlier version of this article mistakenly compared the size of the Jack's Solar Garden installation to the IBM installation as similar, when in fact the IBM installation is much larger, 1.2 MW at Jack's versus 10 MW for the IBM installation, and 5 acres versus around 20 for IBM. The error has been corrected.