How One School Became a Power Plant for Its Community

A Baltimore community will see discounted electricity bills thanks to new solar panels on a local school and Inflation Reduction Act incentives.

Students at Baltimore’s Elmer A Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School (Henderson-Hopkins) are getting more than just educational opportunities to learn about the new solar panels adorning the roof — they’re also first in line to get a discounted electricity bill due to the panels. This is a bit unusual for solar on a school; instead of powering the building below, this is a community solar project, where students’ families, staff, and the wider community will have the chance to subscribe to the project and take advantage of both clean energy generation and discounted electricity for their homes.

One million in cost savings, and other benefits

Providing power to benefit approximately 150 low-to-moderate income households, the Solar4Us @ Henderson-Hopkins project will offer subscribers a 20%–25% discount on electricity bills from Baltimore Gas & Electric, the local utility. It will save subscribers an estimated $1.1 million over the lifetime of the panels, or more than $200 per year per household. For these low-income households, these cost savings could be the difference between the lights being on or not.

The project will have benefits beyond just cost savings as well. The 808-kilowatt array — more than 1,600 solar panels — will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 27,000 metric tons of CO₂e over 35 years, the equivalent of nearly 6,000 cars driven for a year and about 3 million gallons of gas consumed.

Solar4Us @ Henderson-Hopkins also offered job training and local hiring opportunities, including partnering with a local nonprofit, CivicWorks, to provide on-the-job experiences to individuals in solar installation occupational skills training programs. In addition, the project will provide clean energy education opportunities for students, building upon Henderson-Hopkins’ state-recognized Green School efforts.

How a small nonprofit, a technical assistance cohort, and an innovative financing model brought this project to life

The Henderson-Hopkins solar project is the first project in the Solar4Us campaign from the Climate Access Fund (CAF), a nonprofit that develops and finances community solar projects in Maryland. With a mission to reduce energy burdens for low-income households, they’re helping make solar more accessible and positioning community solar as a vehicle for economic development.

CAF has been working with RMI through our Renewables Investment for Social Equity (RISE) cohort, which brings together communities to pilot a new project finance model. Tax-exempt financial institutions (e.g., community development financial institutions [CDFIs] and green banks, like CAF) own the solar and storage systems and leverage federal incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act to pass on savings to subscribers.

This financing mechanism will be utilized at Solar4Us @ Henderson-Hopkins: CAF will own the panels, take advantage of federal incentives, like a 50 percent Investment Tax Credit via Direct Pay, and pass on the savings from the tax credit. Subscribers not only enjoy lower monthly bills from these savings, but because they don’t own the panels, there are no up-front costs associated with accessing solar. In addition, if the panels yield revenue, it will be put back into the project as an additional bonus for subscribers who pay their bills on time.

Urban community solar projects can lead the way to accessible solar

RMI provides technical assistance, tools, and resources to communities hoping to use this financing model, but it’s organizations like CAF that are bringing it to life, like at Henderson-Hopkins. And CAF hopes to take this even further by dispersing project data and best practices to spur other investment into small community solar projects. While much of community solar is ground-mounted on larger areas of land, CAF intentionally focuses its efforts on rooftop and parking lot arrays. This minimizes the ecological impact of solar development and maximizes access and local benefits to community stakeholders such as low-income households and job-seekers.

From the families who will find relief in lower energy bills to the students who may develop a passion for solar from experiencing the array on their school’s roof, this project shows that clean energy can have far-reaching benefits for all.

For more information about RMI’s RISE cohort, contact Yuning Liu at yliu@rmi.org.