This post explores how a community can put together a model solar ordinance. One example is Stearns County, Minn., whose solar ordinance protects pollinator habitat and ensures benefits to the wider community.… Read More
In this testimony sent to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, John Farrell explains why the state’s 2001 distributed generation tariff has come up short and deserves an update.… Read More
This report explores the undercounting of customer-sited and non-utility solar in utility distributed resource forecasting. It finds that Xcel Energy’s forecasts for distributed solar in Minnesota are strikingly low.… Read More
With financial rewards tied to building big, utilities overlook distributed energy resources like rooftop solar. This essay, written to advise utility regulators in Michigan, has implications for utility resource planning nationwide.… Read More
In these comments, John Farrell outlines how Xcel Energy should improve its 2019 Integrated Distribution Plan to best serve the needs of Minnesota customers: increased access to distributed energy generation and a fair analysis of the benefits these systems provide to the grid.… Read More
I’m writing this piece from my living room couch, my kids out of school and doing a “home school” schedule while my wife and I try to work. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts about how decentralized and democratized energy systems might help us weather things like the current COVID-19 pandemic.… Read More
Host Jess Del Fiacco talks with ILSR’s John Farrell and Chris Mitchell about the power outages in California and how a distributed energy system could avoid future outages and detrimental fire damage. … Read More
In this May 2019 interview, ILSR’s Director of Energy Democracy John Farrell, and Ingrid Vila – an engineer and director of Cambio, a Puerto Rico based nonprofit – discussed the enormous opportunity, and the pitfalls the island must avoid, to seize the island’s chance for energy democracy.… Read More
In this episode of Local Energy Rules, Energy Democracy Initiative director John Farrell speaks with Marcel Castro Sitiriche about the challenges Puerto Rico faces in building a local, clean, and resilient energy system in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.… Read More
