Solar Share, a Madison company, makes solar investment accessible - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Solar Share, a Madison company, makes solar investment accessible

This Wisconsin company offers an opportunity to profit from solar energy with an investement as small as $1,000

Donnetta Foxx isn't your typical renewable energy investor, and that's the point of SolarShare Wisconsin Co-op, the company she invested in.

The 61-year-old retired corrections worker and program leader of Dane County Restorative Court is one of 47 people who bought a share of the Madison company's first solar developments under a cooperative ownership model that allows regular people to invest in solar energy production.

Wisconsin residents and businesses can invest in SolarShare's renewable energy projects for as little as $1,000. Its first fundraising round last year raised $455,000 to fund its first two projects in Juneau County. Contributions were capped at $50,000 to ensure that SolarShare attracted more than just a few large investors, said Cory Neeley, SolarShare's executive director.

The average investment was $10,000. Neeley proudly points to the diversity of the investors: rural and urban, they come from all walks of life and include women, people of color and veterans.

For Foxx, who is Black, Neeley's invitation to invest in the then year-old company came at the right time and at the right price.

She'd already been working with her credit union to diversify her investments, including moving some money into renewable energy, and saw SolarShare as an opportunity to invest in something "supportive of the environment and something that's trying to do some good."

She also approached it as a way to test the waters as a way for people of color to be involved in a predominantly white industry.

"Normally, people of color, they're not invited into these kinds of circles, whether it's investments or things like this, and that was another reason — to kind of open the door," she said. "And if it works for me, and looks good for me, then maybe I can bring other people in and tell them, hey, this is a good idea."

Investors are paid a 5% annual dividend and can renew their investment after five years or get their money back.

A second fundraising round is underway with a goal of $1 million.

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SolarShare was incorporated as a standalone cooperative in late 2021 by RENEW Wisconsin, a Madison-based renewable energy advocacy group, and several Wisconsin-based solar companies as a way to advance construction of smaller solar farms. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. provided a $265.000 grant in 2022 to get the project off the ground.

The concept resembles, but is significantly different from, community solar, where a group of customers pool resources to finance a project and receive a credit on their utility bills based on their share of the energy produced by the project. What makes SolarShare unique is that each an investment is a chance to own a share of solar energy production and get an annual return on the investment.

The ownership arrangement gets around a significant barrier to community solar projects in Wisconsin — they are regulated as a utility, which creates a financial impediment to their development. As a result, community solar projects are only offered in Wisconsin through utility companies and electric cooperatives.

"Traditionally, the only stakeholders that could invest in solar farms were accredited investors, banks and utilities," Neeley said. "In essence, our cooperative brings membership together, pooling resources to take the place of the accredited investor, utility or bank."

That approach was rewarded earlier this month with a $100,000 Energizing Rural Communities grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. The $15 million grant program provides funding to "develop partnership plans and innovative financing strategies to help rural or remote communities improve their energy systems and make progress on advancing clean energy demonstration projects."

Neeley said the proceeds will be used to hire staff and to cover other administrative costs that will help the company grow.

A third solar farm is in the works

The solar farms that are under construction along Highway 12 between Mauston and New Lisbon were chosen for their proximity of transmission lines and an electric substation, and the willingness of landowners to sell a portion of the land, said Eric Udelhofen, a founder of SolarShare. Udelhofen is also vice president of development for the Wisconsin office of Seattle-based OneEnergy Renewables, which is building the solar arrays and will lease them to SolarShare.

OneEnergy is one of six Wisconsin solar companies that paid a one-time fee of $500 to be members of the co-op.

The Juneau County solar farms will produce 4.5 megawatts of electricity, which will be sold to the local utility, Tomah-based Oakdale Electric Cooperative. The projects' electric output can power about 1,000 homes.

Up next will be a 5-megawatt solar farm near Eau Claire, where SolarShare closed on a 33-acre land purchase on Thursday.

Larry Marquardt, a 71-year-old farmer in the Chippewa County town of Hallie, said he and his wife, Dianne, were first approached about selling the parcel by OneEnergy about three years ago. The time is right, he said, as he and his wife are nearing retirement and want to downsize the family farm.

Part of their payment is a $50,000 stake in SolarShare.

"We're supporting it," said Marquardt, who as a former chairman of the Hallie Town Board and a member of the Chippewa County Board had been involved in the development of other energy projects.

"I know quite a bit about energy and zoning and things like that and I think, to me, this is one of the safer renewable energies," he said. "It's quiet. This field owner I worked with before ... you don't even know it's there. You see it, but there's just there's no noise to it."

Neeley sees such deals to develop small solar farms of less than 5 megawatts as a way to overcome the resistance often faced by the massive utility-owned solar farms that can cover thousands of acres. The co-op approach, something that's already well established in rural Wisconsin, allows community residents to feel connected to the solar farm rather than feeling it was forced on them, Neeley said.

"I think it's important that people stop looking at it like us versus them," he said.

Neeley said he hopes to grow membership from about 80 people today to 1,000, a scale that could open opportunities beyond solar power.

"This is co-op investing," Neeley said. "We're building solar farms but there's no reason we couldn't pivot to other things like net zero (emissions) housing. Small investors doing things together can build much larger things."