Holly Fletcher

USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

Ben Fischer spends a lot of time on the road or in the air to get to the solar projects that Signal Energy constructs.

The Chattanooga-based firm is one of the busiest solar energy procurement and construction companies in the country, according to industry rankings, but most of its business is in other parts of the country — or the world.

The Southeast, despite ample sunshine, lags other parts of the country in solar development. Solar generation, besides providing clean electricity, also brings local construction jobs and is an increasingly attractive power option to large companies — say Google or Apple or big manufacturers — that are trying to meet high demand.

Solar development in Tennessee is largely driven by companies that want it on their campuses or rooftops or in small pockets, local or university interest. So far some of the bigger projects, some 100-megawatts and above, in the Southeast are outside of Tennessee.

Over the next five years, Tennessee is forecast to have 476-megawatts developed — a fraction of the plans forecast for some other parts of the Southeast. In the same period, North Carolina is expected to see an additional 3,656 megawatts with 2,132 megawatts in Georgia, 2,315 megawatts in Florida, and 1,101 megawatts in Virginia, according to Solar Energy Industries Association.

However, executives of Nashville-based Silicon Ranch Corp., a solar development company that also owns farms, think the falling cost of solar development and the interest from private companies, and some municipal utilities, could propel additional growth.

"It's exciting to see some growth come into our region. We're hoping Tennessee will catch up soon," said Fischer, president of Signal Energy. "We see great opportunity and we love working closer to home."

Over the last several years, utility holding companies based in the Southeast looked west for opportunities in solar development. NextEra Energy, based in Juno Beach, Fla., built a deep pipeline of projects via its unregulated power producer subsidiary, NextEra Energy Resources. Southern Company has amassed a portfolio of 27 facilities.

While development out west, and in parts of the Northeast, took off in the earlier part of this decade, there were small pockets of activity in the Southeast. North Carolina, for example, passed a renewable portfolio standard about a decade ago with separate mandates for investor-owned and municipal utilities. Georgia developed a voluntary program with Georgia Power.

Given its abundant sunshine, Southeast is the second best part of the country for solar development after the Southwest.

But yet solar development in Tennessee is intermittent and not reaching its potential, particularly in the western part of the state.

The state is one of eight across the country that doesn't have a renewable portfolio standard that pushes utilities to develop renewable generation.

"States that have good policies have taken advantage of economic opportunities and then in states that have less defined policies like Tennessee or Alabama you see less solar development," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance Clean Energy Action Fund.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which started with an all hydro portfolio, gets about 3 percent of its generation from wind and solar and 6 percent from hydro.

Demand from private companies is anchoring much of the growth that does happen in the state.

Volkswagen has a 9.5-megawatt ground-mounted solar farm at its Chattanooga manufacturing facility that provides about 12 percent of its power when vehicles are in production and fully powers the campus when the assembly line is idle. Silicon Ranch developed the farm.

HCA has rooftop solar panels on a building in Nashville and Wampler's Farm Sausage in Lenoir City has solar panels, in addition to cellulose-to-hydrogen power energy system, as it works toward generating as much power as it uses.

Companies, usually those with missions to be sustainable or environment friendly, have been working with developers on projects or agreeing to buying the power for years.

The cost of solar generation has decreased in recent years to where it's often competitive with natural gas-fired plants. Companies are looking to it as a long-term investment that helps offset electricity costs.

"What we do is we help utilities and companies with tailored solutions that are cost competitive and provide the environmental benefits that they are looking for," said Matt Kisber, president and CEO of Silicon Ranch. "We recognize that solar energy can't be sold at a premium."

Silicon Ranch, of which former Gov. Phil Bredesen is the board chairman, is taking lessons from HCA's early days of aggregating hospitals to the same with solar farm, Kisber said. Many solar projects are developed and constructed by one company which then sells the farm to either an investor or other longer-term owner.

Silicon Ranch wants to develop and own the farms for the long-term. It's found the falling cost of development as well as corporate and utility interest has allowed it to do business in states that don't have renewable power requirements.

JOB CREATOR

Where it exists, solar development has led to a boom in local jobs. Most people who work on the construction are hired locally so communities get the benefits of a project. Fischer said that about 300 to 500 people, at peak, can work on one project.

There have been ups and downs as the industry pushed toward being price competitive and in lockstep with Congress' decision to extend a tax funding mechanism. In Clarksville, Hemlock Semiconductor walked away from a facility that was slated to make a part for solar panels before it ever opened. Google, which has green energy targets, is in the process of putting a server farm on the Hemlock campus.

Utilities still find connecting projects to the grid a challenge since farms are smaller and more distributed than the baseload coal, gas or nuclear generation.

Yet, the industry has made progress. More than 7-gigawatts, or enough to power about 5.2 million homes, were installed in 2015, according to Solar Industries Energy Association. There were more people employed in the solar industry in 2016 (260,000, according to The Solar Foundation) than in coal, gas or oil-fired plants (187,000, according the U.S. Department of Energy).

Fischer expects Signal Energy to do more work closer to its home base in the coming years as more companies — both power customers and utilities — push for more renewables.

Institutional Investors ranging from infrastructure and hedge funds to insurance companies are looking to invest in solar companies. Silicon Ranch raised $165 million from investors in Canada and Switzerland in 2016.

"People are coming into the industry to make money rather than have green ambitions," said John Marciano, partner at law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C. "That's how you make the industry sustainable."

Reach Holly Fletcher at hfletcher@tennessean.com or 615-259-8287 and on Twitter @hollyfletcher.