POWER July 2022 - 30

COMMERCIAL & INDUSTRIAL GENERATION AWARD
the initiative and fund all the development
work to secure incentives, as well
as security entitlement around interconnection,
working with Con Edison,
and structure the project so that we
can maximize capacity, " said Eisenbud.
DSD partnered with Perch Energy, a
firm that pioneered a model of acquiring
community solar " subscribers " online,
essentially to deliver an aggregated
offtake to renewable asset owners
and developers. When the solar power
is delivered to the Con Edison grid as
metered energy, these subscribers receive
utility bill credits that are based
on the amount of energy delivered by
the community solar portfolio, allowing
them to accrue savings on their energy
bills, Eisenbud explained. " DSD has the
incentive to operate these projects efficiently
to deliver as much energy to the
grid as possible. "
As the " anchor tenant, " the City of
White Plains also gets discounts on its
energy usage. However, a " significant
portion " of DSD's revenue generated by
the portfolio is paid back to the city as
host site lease payments. The city anticipates
it will receive more than $20 million
in lease revenue across the 25-year
agreement's term. The city has said it
will reutilize a substantial amount to " advance
additional sustainability initiatives,
facilities, and infrastructure in the city. "
The White Plains portfolio arrangement's
base structure as a community
solar project is typical, Eisenbud noted.
What makes it unique, however, is that
the large-scale solar and energy storage
capacity is distributed within an urban
environment. Community solar, which
is more commonly installed at greenfield
rural sites, often involves a private
landlord, posing real estate ownership
challenges, title challenges, and potential
landlord-versus-tenant issues. " What
we've done at 6.8 MW within a dense
urban space is rare, " he noted.
A Solution Tailored for Urban
Densification
DSD navigated road closure restrictions
and unique equipment for each of the
nine different sites, including installing a
canopy atop a nine-story parking garage
that serves the White Plains hospital. All
garage-top canopies are outfitted with a
proprietary DSD W-shape design, and a
patented integrated water management
system that prevents icicle formation,
and directs the rain and snow melt from
dripping through the surface. It also relied
on engineering innovation to resolve
30
challenges. To install the ground-mount
installation at the recycling facility, for example,
DSD came up with a customized
solution to avoid penetrating the thick asphalt
surface that paves a landfill onsite
managed by the New York Department
of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
DSD's design called for a large canopy of
nearly 700 kW.
" When you build a solar canopy on a
surface lot, the ground clearance must
be high enough to allow snowplows,
emergency vehicles, buses, and trucks
to pass underneath, " said Eisenbud.
Drilled pier foundations are typically
about 3 feet in diameter and about 20
feet deep, depending on soil conditions.
" For garage-top canopies, steel canopy
columns connect to existing concrete
columns, which are typically spaced further
apart requiring more steel-especially
when the canopy is about 100 feet
above ground level, " he said.
On the landfill site, DSD was able to
engineer a unique ballasted canopy that
sits on top of the asphalt area of the
landfill cap. Three big slabs of concrete
uniformly distribute the weight and forces
from the canopy, and one portion is
walled to provide a protected space that
the city uses to store facility equipment.
DSD's efforts to preserve the site's functionality
notably prompted the city to add
another 324-kW canopy to the landfill
site designed to store equipment for the
Water Department.
The second installation features 28
spread foundations, gravel fill, and a full
perimeter enclosure. " The city now has
covered storage. They were contemplating
having to bring in an engineer and
build a separate building, which was going
to cost them hundreds of thousands
of dollars, " noted Eisenbud.
All Degrees of Collaboration and
Engagement
DSD has gleaned lessons from the White
Plains project and applied them to several
large-scale projects. These include the
seven sites it repurposed in Schenectady
County, New York, with solar and storage,
a continuous canopy structure at an
MGM Springfield complex in Massachusetts,
and a suite of canopies still under
development at casinos in Atlantic City.
A key takeaway, according to Eisenbud,
is that complexity requires good management.
Portfolios must be designed
and built simultaneously, at multiple locations,
and within a tight timeline, all
while taking into account multiple users
and stakeholders, he noted. " We really
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POWER POINTS
Winning Attributes
✔ Designing a unique project that
would boost a municipality's
revenue outlook while providing
financial value for its energy-hungry
commercial hub and sustainabilityoriented
investors and consumers.
✔ Engineering solutions to best meet
the needs of each site and optimize
overall energy production, including
preserving site functionality within
the dense urban landscape.
✔ Spearheading a sustainable solution
that fosters consumer engagement,
including community offtake and
incentive sharing.
needed to work around user experience
and take extra care not to disrupt operations, "
he said. " It takes more engagement
and coordination to orchestrate
project delivery. "
Building solar community projects and
C&I projects as portfolios, however, is a
worthy feat, given their myriad benefits
for developers, customers, and energy
consumers. " We can take a holistic
view of the different applications, design
needs, and sites. And from a procurement
perspective, these will move as a
block together even though we set each
one up individually because you never
know the timing behind entitlements, interconnection,
and incentives, " he said.
For the White Plains portfolio, at least,
developing the projects simultaneously
was efficient given collective engineering
work and from a resource perspective.
" We're also able to contain our
costs better, " Eisenbud said. In the end,
the efficiency is part of the company's
service to its municipal partner.
" It's never easy to disrupt operations
that directly serve the public, and I have
a deep appreciation for the city personnel
who embraced this initiative, quickly
learned how a solar project is constructed
without compromising those public
expectations. There were real pressures
on our municipal customer in this case, "
he said, " and I think it was a great partnership
that had communication going
both ways to make sure that the projects
could be delivered safely, look great, and
perform well to serve the public interest
in the long run. " ■
-Sonal Patel is a POWER senior
associate editor.
POWER | July 2022
http://www.powermag.com
POWER July 2022

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