SPI Insights

Virginia – Loudon County is considering options for pursuing renewable energy agreements as precursor to a potential solicitation with power providers with the county’s board of supervisors recently directing staff to assess the merits of power purchase agreements (PPAs) and community choice aggregation (CCA).

Their action followed a county committee recommendation that the board instruct staff to develop a request for proposals (RFP) to investigate renewable energy PPA opportunities on county properties and further evaluate CCA possibilities.

PPAs most commonly involve the construction of a renewable energy generating facility on a property owner’s property by a separate entity to generate power directly for the facility with the excess energy delivered to the grid.

Regarding CCAs, under a Municipal Aggregation model, local governments can purchase and manage their community’s electric power supply from a preferred mix of traditional and renewable energy sources while an investor-owned utility continues to provide distribution, billing services, and outage management.

In two December 2020 meetings, the board expressed interest in investigating the potential for executing PPAs as a potential method to expand the local use of renewable energy sources such as solar, and the ability to sell any excess power generated back to the power supply for the region or grid.

Board members also sought more information on how the county could establish CCA, which would allow the county to aggregate power supply needs and buy directly from power supply providers rather than as a bundled customer of an investor-owned utility.