Opt-Out Community Choice Solar For Upstate New York
Several communities in upstate New York are now part of an opt-out community choice program that will allow their residents to enjoy clean, emissions-free energy and lower utility bills. What does opt-out mean? It means everyone who lives in those communities is automatically enrolled but those who do not wish to have lower energy bills can choose to exit the program at any time.
The program is run by Joule Community Power, the first renewable energy aggregator licensed by the state of New York. On its website, Joule explains, “Approximately 50% of all homes are unable to host solar panels. Community solar brings the benefits of solar — including guaranteed electricity bill savings — to homeowners, renters, and small businesses who don’t have their own solar panels. In exchange for supporting energy generation from local solar farms, community solar subscribers receive guaranteed electricity bill savings in the form of solar bill credits derived from NY State incentives for renewable generation.”
Credit: Google Maps
The Finger Lakes Community Choice program includes the town of Geneva and the villages of Brockport, Honeoye Falls, and Lima. Brockport and Lima officially activated their participation this week, making the program available to more than 3,800 households and small businesses. It includes a guaranteed reduction in their electricity bills by up to 10% for the next 25 years.
Those villages have partnered with six local community solar farms that are expected to generate a total of 134.4 million kilowatt-hours of emissions-free electricity annually. As each farm begins to generate power, residents subscribed to that farm will start receiving savings. The solar farms are expected to begin operation in October 2021, with all residents covered by the spring of next year. All eligible residents are automatically enrolled in the program without having to sign a contract, undergo a credit screen, or have solar panels installed on their homes. Should a resident wish to opt out of the program, they are free to do so at any time with no penalty.
This structure enables municipal leaders to expand access to community solar benefits to all their constituents, including the low- to moderate-income residents who have historically been unable to benefit from traditional opt-in community solar or community choice electric supply programs due to state regulation and socioeconomic barriers. Of the 3,800 customers in the Finger Lakes Community Choice opt-out solar program, more than 200 are low-income households and approximately 300 are moderate-income.
In addition to the opt-out community choice solar program, Finger Lakes Community Choice also launched a community choice electric supply program, which will provide residents and businesses in Brockport and Lima with 100% renewable energy for the next two years, powered by New York State run-of-river hydropower. As with community solar, customers can opt out or leave the electricity supply program at any time with no penalty.
“Our mission always has been and continues to rest on empowering municipalities to have a say in the origin of their energy supply. This groundbreaking program will benefit nearly every resident in Brockport and Lima,” says Jessica Stromback, CEO at Joule Assets. “Unfortunately, a pending regulatory proposal, ‘Expanded Solar for All,’ puts the future of similar projects in jeopardy. If passed in the fall, the proposal would grant National Grid a de facto monopoly over the community solar market, effectively diminishing the power of local municipalities to drive renewable energy growth from the ground up.”
“Community choice aggregation has long been our goal, and through this partnership with Joule, we finally have a program that will benefit our residents with guaranteed savings and help New York reach its clean energy goals,” says Lima Deputy Mayor John Wadach. “The fact that our residents will be able to reap both financial and environmental benefits without having to take any action makes our efforts worthwhile. We hope that other municipalities will also have their voices heard and can offer similar programs to benefit their residents.”
“Our constituents have experienced first-hand the financial benefits that come with community choice aggregation, and we’ve eagerly awaited the opportunity to participate in an opt-out community choice solar program that would benefit a large portion of our residents,” adds Brockport mayor Margaret Blackman. “Community solar is the future of clean energy and it’s critical that municipalities be heavily involved in the process of serving their residents to make community solar possible.”
Opt-In Versus Opt-Out
The Expanded Solar For All program sounds a lot like the Community Choice program, but there is one important difference. It requires people to sign up, whereas the Community Choice program includes everyone right from the start. The difference may seem unimportant, but it comes down to who controls the electricity market.
Joule explains, “By participating in community solar, you are instructing your utility company to purchase solar energy from a local solar farm. In effect, you are requiring they add to the power grid an amount of solar energy that is equivalent to what they deliver for your consumption on an annual basis. In exchange for supporting clean generation, you receive a solar bill credit (typically up to 10%) that reduces your electricity bill. Participation in community solar has no impact on your electricity supply, it only affects from where the utility purchases electricity.”
The utility industry is desperate to control the supply of electricity. It’s all a result of policy decisions made a century ago when electricity was still new technology. Communities didn’t want competition, which would have meant multiple generating facilities and a welter of poles and wires, and so the decision was made to grant utilities a monopoly. They would not be allowed to compete with one another, but in exchange they would be guaranteed a certain rate of return on their investments.
The upshot of that policy is that utility companies want to hang onto their monopolies at all costs. The idea of having to accommodate the output of local solar farms threatens that model and sends them into a panic, so they bombard local and state governments with lobbyists to create roadblocks. Some would say the Expanded Solar For All sounds like a good thing, but it may be just an appealing label for a scheme designed to solidify National Grid’s control in a changing marketplace.
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LiveWire, the electric motorcycle brand spun out of Harley-Davidson, has just given us a closer look than ever at its upcoming lower-cost, smaller-format electric motorcycles ahead of their larger unveiling at the Milan Motorcycle Show (EICMA) next week.
While we got our first glimpse of the new machines earlier this summer, spotting a street and trail version of the smaller electric motorbikes, now we have a name for the models and a few more details.
Officially called the S4 Honcho, the new model will be a 125-cc equivalent that will be available in both a street-legal version capable of being operated by riders who possess a moped/light motorcycle license in Europe or a motorcycle license in the US, and a license-free off-road version.
“The S4 Honcho Street will qualify for A1 licenses in Europe and the UK and M-endorsement in the U.S., offering lightweight, urban-friendly electric mobility with intuitive performance and removable batteries,” explained the company.
The bikes appear to be powered by a centrally-mounted, chain-driving electric motor and a pair of removable batteries accessed by flipping up the seat.
LiveWire has remained fairly tight-lipped regarding the major tech specs for the bikes, as well as the price, but we do get a look at the dual removable batteries thanks to a new image posted to the company’s website.
There, we can see what appears suspiciously similar to a pair of KYMCO Ionex batteries, which would make sense given LiveWire’s close partnership with the Taiwanese scooter giant.
A couple years ago at EICMA I had the chance to check out KYMCO’s new Ionex batteries and e-scooter platform firsthand, which you can see in the video below.
While excitement has been building for LiveWire’s smaller electric motorcycles, the full unveiling of the bikes’ performance figures as well as the price tag will prove critical for gauging whether or not the mini-bikes could be a major turning point for LiveWire’s elusive profitability.
But the company isn’t betting it all on one horse, or one Honcho. Also in attendance at the show will be LiveWire’s full-scale concept of an electric maxiscooter built on the same S2 architecture that powers the company’s currently best-selling models, the S2 Del Mar, S2 Mulholland, and S2 Alpinista.
That scooter, built in partnership with KYMCO, will leverage the company’s fully developed S2 platform to create a more comfortable, high-performance urban and suburban-oriented model.
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Tesla is talking about finally bringing the next-generation Roadster to production in new job listing.
However, you shouldn’t hold your breath.
The prototype for the next-generation Tesla Roadster was unveiled in 2017 and was supposed to enter production in 2020, but it has been delayed each year since then.
It has become a running gag in the Tesla community and an example of CEO Elon Musk’s tendency to stretch the truth about timelines.
Since missing its original 2020 production timeline, Musk has given six updated production timelines for the new electric supercar, and each has been wrong.
The latest timeline hasn’t even been about producing the vehicle. It has been about the unveiling of a new version of the next-generation as the last prototype of what is supposed to be a “next-gen” car was unveiled almost a decade ago.
Musk has been talking about an unveiling and demonstration of the New Roadster by the end of the year.
This week, Tesla has posted a new job listing for a ‘Manufacturing Engineer, Roadster‘. In the job description, Tesla mentions working on battery manufacturing equipment for the Roadster:
Tesla is looking to hire a Manufacturing Engineer to contribute to the concept development and launch of battery manufacturing equipment for our cutting-edge Roadster vehicle. In this role you will take large scale manufacturing systems for new battery products and architectures from the early concept development stage through equipment launch, optimization and handover to local operations teams. Battery development is at the heart of our company, and this is an exciting opportunity to work directly on the central challenges for the all-new Roadster product architecture while still in its early development stages.
The comment does point to Tesla starting to set up manufacturing for the production of the new Roadster.
Since this does sound like early manufacturing development work, it would be optimistic to hope to see new Roadsters rolling off the production line by the end of next year. More likely to be in 2027.
In its updated annual installed production capacity chart, Tesla listed Roadster production as still being in the “design development” phase as of last week:
The location of Roadster production is also listed as “to be determined.”
The new job listing for a manufacturing engineer on the Roadster program mentions being based in Fremont, which could mean Tesla plans to launch production at its California factory.
Tesla next-gen Roadster
As unveiled in 2017, the new Roadster was supposed to get 620 miles (1,000 km) of range and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.
It was listed for $200,000, and a “Founder Series” was also offered for $250,000.
At the time, Tesla used the Roadster as a prize for its referral program when it badly needed to generate sales. A few dozen Tesla owners referred enough new sales to win one or two free new Roadsters each.
Some have suspected that Tesla didn’t want to bring the vehicle to production because it would have to deliver over 30 of them for free and hundreds more at heavy discounts due to its original referral program.
Others believe that updates to the vehicles have led to delays.
Shortly after the unveiling of the next-gen Roadster in 2017, Musk discussed adding cold-air thrusters to the supercar to deliver unprecedented racing performance and possibly even allow it to hover over the ground.
The CEO referenced demonstrating that the “Roadster can fly” on several occasions in the last few years.
Electrek’s Take
It looks like we are talking about the Roadster possibly coming to market in 2027—maybe late 2026 at the earliest.
That’s roughly 10 years after it was unveiled.
I’ll believe it when I see it. And if it does happen, I might have one or two flying Roasters for sale.
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Just like it says on the tine: TV brand SHARP is following Sony into the automotive space with the new LDK+ concept that transforms into a mobile movie theater. It’s a type of concept we’ve seen before – but not like this!
The SHARP LDK+ promises to be a Living room, a Dining room, and a Kitchen on wheels – and more (the plus, obviously), building off the decidedly more blobular™ concept first shown back in 2024. This updated version, however, takes the LDK concept and brings it significantly closer to reality by basing it on Foxconn’s “Model A EV by Hon Hai Technology Group” chassis.
And, now that it’s a little bit closer to some kind of reality, it might be time to climb on the SHARP hype train and take a minute to genuinely enjoy the movie/gaming environment the company is promising to deliver with the LDK+ concept.
Get hyped, kids
Not to be overly crude here, but if you roll in a van with a sliding projector table, opaque windows, and fully reclining seats, you probably hit the “family planning” section of your local Walgreens on a regular basis. Similarly, as more and more young people find themselves struggling to afford their own space, offering a vehicle that delivers a little privacy. And even if that’s more Netflix than chill, I think it’s bound to find a few buyers.
Whether I’m right or wrong about that will remain to be seen for a while, however. The official press release is light on specs, offering the following description of the LDK+ concept …
The second iteration of “LDK+” retains the original concept while featuring both high maneuverability with its compact body and a spacious, relaxing interior. Developed based on the“Model A” EV by Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn), this compact minivan model offers an expansive cabin layout.
When parked, the vehicle can be used as a theater room or a remote workspace. A console box equipped with a table and projector is placed between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. By swiveling the driver’s seat to face backward, it creates a living room-like atmosphere where you can sit around with the rear seats. Pulling down the screen installed above the rear seats allows you to enjoy movies or conduct online meetings on a large display. Through Sharp’s AIoT platform, which connects AI and home appliances, the vehicle links with household devices such as kitchen appliances, air conditioning, and laundry systems. The AI learns residents’ lifestyles and preferences, creating personalized new ways of living. In addition, the system can connect with V2H (Vehicle to Home) solutions, enabling efficient energy management by integrating solar power generation and residential storage batteries.
SHARP
… but skipping automotive basics like battery capacity, anticipated driving range, and the usual horsepower and torque figures. Pricing and, perhaps most importantly, when the vehicle might see the light of day weren’t revealed, either.
SHARP LDK+ concept
All of which is to say: they’re probably never going to actually build something like this – and that’s too bad, because a new-age Honda Element/Nissan Cube-style boxy little EV would absolutely sell like hotcakes.
SOURCE | IMAGES: SHARP, The Japan News.
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