The 200-mile community solar co-op beat my utility's big project

We put $500 into the co-op last year and got 12% cheaper power than the 80-acre array the utility built nearby. Has anyone else seen smaller local setups outperform the corporate ones?

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dianahayes2mo ago

I bet the co-op's size lets them skip all the red tape the big guys get stuck in.

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kevin_west2mo ago

Wait, is that actually how it works for them though? Funny you mention that @dianahayes because my buddy runs a small food co-op up in Vermont and he told me the opposite story. He said the state inspector showed up three times in one year for stuff like a sticky door handle and a label that was slightly crooked. Meanwhile his cousin works for a national chain and they basically get a phone call ahead of time before any visit. The co-op guy spends half his week just filing forms and proving he checked the fridge temps. Big guys have whole teams for that, so it's not that they skip rules, they just have people to deal with it. Small co-op means one person wears ten hats and the paperwork still piles up faster than the produce. So I dunno, maybe the size helps in some ways but it sure didn't help him. He said the only thing that saved him was having a buddy on the town board who told him which boxes to tick first.

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