A high-profile Fort Collins solar farm is down, costing the city and solar investors

A highly visible solar array that has been a symbol of Fort Collins' commitment to renewable electricity has been broken down for 10 months, and it could to be eight more months before it's working again.

In the meantime, the outage at the Riverside Solar Farm is going to cost the city $300,000 to repair and leaves its investors without the bill credits they get every month.

During a Fort Collins City Council work session Tuesday night, council members and city staff said the city should better plan for who pays for future failures on this project or others like it.

"I hope we don't repeat this exact model again," council member Kelly Ohlson said, citing a concern he heard: "Why is the city bailing out 100% of this project?"

Ohlson suggested that a 50-50 arrangement might be more reasonable.

The solar farm, which is owned by 207 investors and provides about 500 kilowatts of energy, broke down in August last year due to the failure of an inverter. The city will replace the single inverter with 22 string inverters, which will diminish the future risk of failure.

The restoration will be paid for with $250,000 from the new sales tax that was passed last year and $50,000 from an operations and maintenance fund that is funded by a portion of the site's monthly earnings.

When the array was built in 2015, it was touted as a way for people who couldn't build solar on their own homes to gain some of the benefits of investing in solar.

It helps the city move toward its goal of using 100% renewable energy, said Brian Tholl, energy services manager with Utilities.

Clean Energy Collective built the solar farm through a partnership with the city that allowed residents to invest in it in exchange for credits on their monthly utility bills. The energy goes to the power grid.

The city then bought out Clean Energy Collective in 2020 in the midst of conflict prompted by the city's new time of day rate structure that affected the value of payments, said Leland Keller, energy services engineer with Fort Collins Utilities. The buyout was advantageous to the city because it allowed the city to avoid paying $20,000 per year to Platte River Power Authority, he said.

To fund initial construction, investors paid around $4,300 for a 10-panel share after federal tax credits and local incentives and receive an average of $278 in credits annually from Fort Collins Utilities.

But those payments stopped when the array stopped working, and the 500 kilowatts of electricity it provides stopped flowing to the grid.

Council approved funding for the array repairs in May when it approved spending from the 2024 revenues of the new sales tax to fund programs pertaining to climate action, along with recreation and transit.

But council members said they want to avoid repeating this situation in the future.

Council member Tricia Canonico said when a homeowner's solar equipment fails, the city is not going to bail them out. She said a future model should define ahead of time who will pay if there's a problem.

In this case, the array's operations and maintenance fund, which is funded by a portion of the owners' credits, had only $59,000 in it. The $50,000 coming out of it will cover 20% of the cost of restoration.

Tholl said the city recognizes that the community solar owners are already out money because they are not receiving their credits.

The failure also damaged trust with the community solar participants, Keller said. Now the city is working on forming an advisory committee so the owners and Utilities can better resolve issues.

Tholl said future conversations with that committee could determine what percent of credits should be retained to make operations and maintenance more sustainable for the remaining 15-year life of the site. Plans will also have to be made for decommissioning the site when it reaches the end of its life.

A future strategic funding plan is needed, he said.

Mayor Jeni Arndt disclosed that she is one of the owners of the array.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: A high-profile Fort Collins solar farm is down, costing the city and solar investors