In 2007, Ann Arbor was designated by the US Department of Energy (DOE) as a Solar America City. The resulting Ann Arbor Solar City Partnership received $200,000 in DOE funding and an additional $200,000 in technical assistance. Add in $232,000 in matching funds from partners and Solar Cities is a two-year, $632,000 project to integrate solar energy throughout the Ann Arbor community.

The first year of the project will be spent identifying barriers and developing and recommending strategies to address those barriers, all of which will be published as an Ann Arbor Solar Plan. The second year of the project will focus more on implementing the plan's recommendations.

Ann Arbor Solar America Cities Partnership

If Ann Arbor, a city known more for clouds than sunshine, can become a ʺSolar Cityʺ and demonstrate that solar energy can provide a positive contribution to the community in jobs and clean, renewable energy, then any city in the US can follow our lead.

Accomplishments to Date

Thanks to this Solar America City Partnership, our residents can now look up information about their propertyʹs solar access and estimated solar energy production on the cityʹs website. The database was built with help from University of Michigan students. Also helping to get the word out to residents about solar energy is a new 10 kW photovoltaic (PV) system at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, which serves as a flagship installation for the community, visible to thousands of market‐goers every Saturday. The system was funded by local matching funds from the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority.

 

And making sure we continue to lead by example, Ann Arbor utilized technical assistance from Sandia National Labs and CH2M‐Hill, to assess the feasibility of installing solar energy—both PV and thermal—at five city facilities. During the assessments, a local nonprofit energy auditor was trained in the assessment process to build local capacity and complete future assessments at a reduced cost. The city facility assessments will be used to make a decision regarding the location of the cityʹs next major solar demonstration project. Additionally, our project partner Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association held solar energy informational workshops, continued the Go Solar Ann Arbor aggregate purchasing program, and trained Ann Arbor teachers on solar energy curricula. These education and outreach efforts are vital to increasing the awareness and acceptance of solar energy use in Ann Arbor.

 

Finally, another project partner, Clean Energy Coalition, has been conducting market research, including focus groups, interviews of key market actors, and a review of the relevant literature to provide background for the city of Ann Arbor Solar Plan, which is currently under development.

 

Future Plans 

All of our work to date points to the need to continue offering assistance—both financial and technical—to residents and businesses to encourage the use of solar energy. There is still work to be done in education and outreach, and there is still a financing gap that must be covered before solar can go mainstream. We are beginning to develop financing strategies that can assist our residents, but we will have great difficulty in following a program through to completion without assistance above and beyond the existing Solar America Cities program. 

Solar City Partners