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Hey guys, this is Dakota Malone, I co-founded Community Solar Authority. We’ve unlocked access to $22 million plus in future electricity savings. And we made these videos and this podcast as a way to explain our business in an easy to digest way.
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Today, I wanted to share my screen and walk through a business case study that we just completed with the city of Fulton, New York, but essentially this article just really serves as some PR talking about how we work together and we help them unlock access to $90,000 plus every single year using Community Solar. Again, if you don’t know who I am, my name is Dakota Malone. My company, Community Solar Authority works with large users of electricity.
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So municipalities, investors, big businesses, corporations, and more. And we help them enhance sustainability and improve operating profit using Community Solar Rollouts. So diving into the city of Fulton, I actually grew up 15 minutes down the road from this city, has approximately 11,000 residents, many utility accounts, and they have been awarded a Clean Energy City Certificate from NYSERDA, which is the governing body of energy in New York state.
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And doing Community Solar together just helped highlight their initiatives to promote sustainability and help lower electricity costs. Some of the key challenges we face working with Fulton and just municipalities in general is really a lack of municipal resources. And funnily enough, this actually overlaps into private clients and public sector clients that we work with, because the reality is, is that not everybody has these giant sustainability teams to give these types of initiatives to, and if they do, they don’t necessarily have the expertise or knowledge base to go and actually maximize the execution of Community Solar.
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So the problem is, is that large users of electricity need to find ways to become more sustainable, and they obviously want to lower overhead costs, electricity being one of the main ones for commercial properties, but they don’t necessarily have the resources to do it, and that’s where we come in. So when we were working with the city of Fulton in this case, there were multiple initiatives that they were working through, including, again, we had to organize over 80 electricity bills for the city, review all 12 months billing for all of those accounts, organize it in a way that made sense, and as a bonus for them, we actually gave them this piece of data so that they can make smarter energy decisions in the future. They now have access to all of their data in aggregate on their electricity spend, and this allows them to pursue additional sustainability opportunities and figure out how to save even more.
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We also were integrating around other energy efficiency partnerships that the city had. So they were working with Siemens on lighting and solar and other initiatives that we had to be cognizant of as we built our community solar rollout for them. And lastly, they are a state agency.
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They’re a city, a municipality, and so they have certain purchasing requirements, and using our team talking to the Office of General Services, New York Conference of Mayors, and other organizations, we were able to seamlessly deliver community solar by winning an RFQ. So with those things kind of in mind, I want to jump into the actual need for change and the objectives for the city. And so again, large users of electricity period need to continue to enhance sustainability and address rising electricity costs.
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We actually found a community solar authority on an idea that the more sustainable you are, the more likely you stick around and stay in business. And obviously a municipality is here to stay, and it’s also important for them to figure out how can they become more resilient. Next, we have some key objectives we were aiming to achieve in implementing community solar, including enhanced sustainability practices.
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So side note, community solar is a business sustainability practice. It is the art of spending $0, helping support clean energy legislation, and in exchange, receiving a bill credit on utility costs that are designed to improve operating profit. You don’t need to install any solar on site.
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You are not directly impacting your environmental sustainability goals, unless you are including things like SREX, which is a different conversation. And this is really a paper only transaction aimed to improve operating profit via lower electricity costs. So we were also solving for hedging against electricity inflation without CapEx expenditures.
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And overall using community solar to create a bank of savings so that they can invest into further sustainability projects. So again, we were able to unlock access to $90,000 plus for them every single year, meaning they can take that $90,000 and potentially use the data that we organized for them and figure out where can we spend this $90,000 to continue to improve sustainability and resiliency in the municipality. Now they don’t have to do that, but that was the opportunity and one of the objectives that we created for them.
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Next, I want to talk about the impact. So by doing community solar, they were able to improve their clean energy commitments, continue to display environmental stewardship, save the city money on electricity costs for years to come, and of course, sustainably work towards a more profitable organization. And lastly, I want to talk about the city of Fulton’s commitment to this project.
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So they were already taking steps towards sustainability. They’ve already been recognized as a clean energy city or clean energy community. And the mayor has the sustainable initiatives where he wants to be able to support the municipality further.
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And so with the city of Fulton’s commitment, they allowed community solar authority to deliver turnkey access to the community solar program. While meeting all of their municipal purchasing requirements. Now I want to talk about implementation, and this is no different.
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If you’re a municipality, a private company, family owned business, or otherwise, all of our clients go through this process so that we can support them. Now, the first thing we start with is an energy spend audit, meaning we need to get an overview of all of the electricity accounts into a single data sheet or at least one place so that our team can go through and understand the size of the So the more electricity you use, or rather the more electricity spend you have, the potentially larger savings that you can get from a community solar rollout. Now, of course there needs to be available capacity and other issues that we think about, but the very first step is for us to get an overview, a 10,000 foot overview of what your utility spending looks like.
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Next, we run our version of an RFQ or an internal RFP based on purchasing requirements so that we can help organizations make the easy decision and also streamline the execution of it for them again, because they were a municipality, they needed to put out RFQs so that they could go through their competitive bidding process. Community solar authority has over a half decade of experience going into this, and they were able to easily identify us as the top choice to serve them in executing community solar turnkey. Next, we go through a strategic sourcing process where the city of Fulton was able to maximize their savings by using our access to some of the most significant solar developers in the space.
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So all of this came with four main points. We streamlined offers under one roof, so they didn’t have to go have multiple conversations about community solar to different developers, constantly share their information, and essentially waste a bunch of municipal resources that they did not have. Next, we got them access to our robust community solar pipelines, meaning we were able to get them access to multiple solar projects to maximize the amount of money that they saved, and we optimized the entire process for them.
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So again, by keeping it all under one roof, we were able to source those savings and maximize their opportunity without any waste. Lastly, we were able to capture additional savings from our negotiations that we had with the developer on the city of Fulton’s behalf. So not only did we bring them back a winning proposal, but then we went above and beyond and got them even more savings through our negotiations.
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Just a quick note of timeline and milestones, the city of Fulton was able to complete the entire community solar rollout from first talking about it in a meeting at the city to collecting all of their electricity bills, going through this process in six months, ensuring a final contract was executed by the end of 2024. Now, again, I had mentioned some of the obstacles, and whether you’re in municipality or otherwise, these are all common. Again, there’s a lack of resources.
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The city of Fulton didn’t have time, energy, or expertise to put towards signing up and enrolling into community solar. They didn’t know where to go, who to talk to, who to trust, what to actually do to unlock these available incentives, and they relied on our internal team at community solar authority to get this all done for them. Again, they had multiple initiatives going on from LED and lighting to other sustainability efforts, and we had to work around that with a partner organization of the city, which was Siemens, and we were effortlessly able to tackle that for the city without them having to worry about crossing any wires.
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Lastly, we had to go and meet these municipal purchasing requirements in order to execute community solar. I had mentioned we talked to multiple organizations to be able to get this done. Again, part of the benefit of working with community solar authority is that we’re able to have all of these conversations on behalf of our clients and make sure that they’re involved along the way.
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Now, the results of this, I had mentioned, we unlocked access to about $90,000 a year in savings. This allowed them to not have to make a CapEx investment. They didn’t need to install solar on site, and they were able to start to see these savings in 2025.
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So we closed the deal at the end of 2024, and almost instantaneously, they are going to start seeing compounding savings for years to come. Again, they were able to enhance sustainability practices. I had already mentioned that the more sustainable you are, the more likely you become more resilient and remain in business long-term.
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We use community solar as a way to enhance business sustainability practices at the city to ensure that they improve operating profit. Again, we also hedged electricity inflation. The city of Fulton was able to use the discount provided by their community solar subscription to create a buffer against rising electricity costs that served as a cherry on top to things like their energy procurement strategies.
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Lastly, the city of Fulton can utilize these community solar savings to invest into future sustainable initiatives. They will receive bill credits on a separate statement every month so that they can easily track those $90,000 a year in savings, and again, they can also use the aggregated data from their utility accounts to unlock additional energy insights. Now, if you are watching this video or listening to this podcast, and you think you might be a good fit for a community solar rollout, we would love to have a conversation.
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The case study highlights the importance of enhanced sustainability, improving operating profit, and overall becoming more resilient. The city of Fulton leveraged a community solar rollout strategy with community solar authority to continue building its sustainability roadmap, and we work with large users of electricity to deliver access to the program Turnkey. Again, I invite you guys to connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com slash in slash Dakota Malone.
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You can also check out our website if you are interested in a complimentary strategy call. Again, if you’re a municipality, investor, corporation, big business, energy manager, or otherwise, we would love to see if community solar is a good fit. And by the way, I believe I mentioned this at the beginning, the city of Fulton left us an amazing letter of recommendation we are happy to share, and they look forward to our continued partnerships.
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We always start with community solar because it is one of the most shovel ready U S clean energy programs that easily and simply allows you to step towards sustainability and our suite of consulting beyond that allows our clients to continue to invest into their sustainability and continue to realize more savings. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode. I appreciate you reviewing this.
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If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and I’ll catch you guys on the next episode.
