SolarShare Wisconsin’s mission and goals:
The mission of SolarShare Wisconsin Cooperative (‘SolarShare’ or ‘the Cooperative’), is to allow for broader participation in the financial benefits of community scale solar projects throughout Wisconsin, while providing a forum for solar developers and contractors to collaborate for the benefit of all. The Cooperative changes public perceptions of community-scale solar projects; democratizing investment opportunities and committing to extensive outreach and communications in rural communities about the benefits of community scale solar. By opening membership to all in Wisconsin, we allow more people to participate in community-solar investment, building more projects. Our cooperative approach is unique among our community solar investment peers and we bring a unique model of community solar investment to the competition.
SolarShare is the first cooperative in Wisconsin devoted to investing in community scale solar energy projects. Existing utility-scale solar projects in Wisconsin are owned and financed by corporate investors or utilities, meaning that most of the financial benefits accrue to a few large financial institutions. We pool our member investment to buy land for solar farms or purchase equity in solar projects. SolarShare allows investments as small as $1,000 from members which increases access to clean energy while providing dependable financial returns to low and moderate income individuals (hereinafter ‘LMI’) and businesses throughout Wisconsin. These community-based solar projects increase the resilience of the electrical grid as they are sized to the load on the nearby substation, meaning energy created will be consumed locally, reducing the need to purchase energy from distant fossil-fuel power plants.
In its first year of operation, SolarShare signed up five Class A Contractor members and 80 investor members, from whom the cooperative raised approximately $460,000. This money was used to buy property for the development of two solar farms in rural Wisconsin near Mauston, WI. Both projects will break ground in April 2023 and are being developed by one of the cooperative’s Class A contractor members. Together, these projects will produce 4.5 MW of electricity for rural Wisconsin residents. These projects will also provide job opportunities for local residents, along with providing its members reliable financial returns previously available only to large investors.
SolarShare plans to recruit more investor members over the next three years, with the objective of raising $3.5M and beginning development of 15 MW of solar projects around the state. A third project, located in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin and with a capacity of 5MW, is slated to break ground in late 2023. Again, we plan on purchasing the property for this project. This project will also help to stabilize rates for LMI individuals while providing solar industry skill-building and jobs to local residents and increase the resilience of the local grid.
With nearly 9.5 MW of solar electricity expected to be produced when the first three projects become operational in 2024, we are well on our way to meeting our objective of building cooperatively-funded solar projects totaling 15 MW of capacity in the next three years.
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