The area’s first community solar array is up and running in Johnsonville in Rensselaer County. Some of its customers came to the project through Helderberg Community Energy.

“We’re mostly happy,” said Russell Pokorny, one of the founders of Helderberg Community Energy, a group of volunteers that formed a decade ago to seek renewable energy for the Hilltowns. “We really wanted one right up here,” he said of a community solar farm in the Helderbergs. “The reality is it’s hard to find land someone wants to sell.”

Monolith Solar, a nine-year-old company based in Rensselaer, activated the community shared solar farm last month, serving 26 families. “They will start to see credits this month,” said Jennifer Amerling, sales director.

Helderberg Community Energy was first centered on wind energy. A tower was erected to measure wind on property owned by Russell and Amy Pokorny. Russell Pokorny is the Knox assessor and Amy Pokorny serves on the town board. The couple use renewable energy to power their own home.

“Wind didn’t turn out to be economically feasible. We were competing with wholesale prices and had loud opposition,” said Russell Pokorny.

In 2014, the group started lobbying state legislators and went to the Public Service Commission, too, in hopes the state would allow cooperative solar projects, which it has.

The group’s goal then became signing up individuals and businesses in Albany County to use solar energy from a shared solar farm to power their homes and offices. They joined with Solarize Albany in the effort.

“Solarize Albany looks for people to put solar panels on homes. When they find people without [appropriate] roofs or yards, they could join our community array,” Russell Pokorny explained earlier.

Monolith first signed up customers for a 2-megawatt solar farm that was to open in September. The current farm, on Route 7 in Johnsonville, is a tenth of the size, at 200 kilowatts.

Amerling said, as this was a first-ever community farm, Monolith faced a number of hurdles. The first hurdle, she said, was finding a site, and then approval was needed from the town of Johnsonville.

“The biggest challenge,” Amerling said, “was the interconnect.”

Commercial solar farms are generally connected to just a single utility company, she explained, whereas the the community farm has groups of panels connected to various “offtakers — all that energy goes to 10 to 30 meters instead of one or two,” she said.

“With the new community farm option,” the Pokornys explained in an email, “residential electricity consumers who buy into a solar project don’t directly use the electricity generated at the remote solar farm. Instead,, the electricity generated is sold to the local utility (in this case, National Grid), and the solar members’ electricity bills are credited based on the farm’s production.”

“We had a long list of people who want to go solar,” said Amerling. “We had to go by who signed up first.” Those who signed on with Monolith will, in order,  be served by the company’s next solar farm, Amerling said, which will likely be another small one.

“We found the smaller farms were easier to get approved,” she said.

Part of the long wait, Amerling said, was “because of the cue” — that is, the line of other companies waiting for approval. “Land-acquisition companies put fictitious requests into the roster,” Amerling said. “They go out to farmers and say, ‘We want to rent land for a solar farm and pay you.’ They don’t really have the capabilities — the off-takers, the materials. Now they’re subcontracting to solar companies.”

She said the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority recently adopted a time limit to fulfill proposals, which should help the cue move faster.

Monolith plans to have eight community solar farms built this year across New York State.

“We’re really excited we have our first farm up,” Amerling concluded. “It opens up opportunities for people who couldn’t have panels on their properties or homes.”

Editor’s note: Melissa Hale-Spencer and her husband, Gary Spencer, are on the list to own solar panels in Monolith Solar’s community project.