After advocating for local ballot initiatives that did not pan out, Mason Rolph looked for a more fruitful and tangible advocacy space. In 2018, he had the idea to put solar panels on the Olympia Hands On Children’s Museum. When other environmental groups failed to see potential in the project, he co-founded a 501c3 to move forward.developed was a 117-kilowatt array on the children’s museum.
“Our proposal is acknowledging that barriers prevent most Washingtonians from accessing the benefits of rooftop solar.”circumvents those individual barriers, but Washington policy does little to support community solar. As it stands, Washington community solar developers need utility cooperation to credit subscribers for the remote solar generation they have subscribed to. None of the state’s utilities have volunteered to do so, says Rolph.
“Unless every customer in Washington has access to solar, reaching that goal is going to be next to impossible.”Olympia Community Solar and their allies have introduced community solar bills in Washington’s last two legislative sessions. Despite broad coalition support, utility companies have lobbied against it and the bills did not pass. Rolph says Olympia Community Solar will try again in 2022.
Washington’s utilities claim that applying credits to customer electric bills is too complicated. However, utilities in the, which charts the growth of four leading state community solar programs.Washington’s community solar program, as proposed by Olympia Community Solar, would carve out a portion of the program capacity for projects that serve low-income customers.
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