Wells College
IN-27: Innovation D

Wells College has been the only non-public, non-municipal partner in a large-scale regional procurement aggregation for solar energy, with the potential to install up to 40MW of solar generation within the five-county Central New York region - tripling the amount of installed solar. The College played an active role in project development and implementation, as well as in advocacy to potential municipal partners in adjoining communities. This large-scale regional solar aggregation project was the largest such effort undertaken to date in the U.S. - covering municipalities in five upstate NY counties, encompassing over 3,600 square miles and home to nearly 800,000 residents. This project was supported by the Solar Roadmap Initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority as a model for how to implement successful regional solar aggregation projects. Wells College's active participation moved this project from its initial presentation as a public municipal aggregation project to a multisector project (private/public, institutional/governmental), demonstrating that such multi-sector partnerships around renewable energy aggregation can work well and be additionally beneficial for all parties. Other institutional representatives and municipal planning organizations in New York State are reviewing the CNY Solarize multi-sector aggregation model program materials to assess its applicability for their regions.