Solar disarray: Dissatisfied customers seem out of luck

"All I wanted was to generate solar power" exclaimed Thetford resident Kate Cone in her sunlit East Thetford kitchen. A long story belies this simply articulated goal.

Back in the 2010s Vermont was experiencing a wave of renewable energy expansion, most of it in solar  generation. Solar had already taken off with individual residents putting solar panels on their roofs, however the 2010s saw the rise of group or community solar projects. Homeowners whose properties had too much shade to make home solar cost-effective, like Kate Cone and her husband Bill Bridge, could buy into a community solar project instead. State policies at the time incentivized both small and large solar developments through the net metering program that worked as follows: if the owner of a solar panel generated more electricity than they consumed, the excess was purchased by the electric utility Green Mountain Power at a price above the retail cost of electricity.(Subsequent changes to the rules have reduced this price and now forbid anyone except direct abutters from hooking up to group solar arrays.)

In searching for a community solar project to join, Kate and Bill attended a presentation at Pierce's Country Inn by the VT-based company Solaflect Energy, founded in 2007 in Norwich VT. At the meeting they learned of Solaflect's unique, cable-suspended solar panels that are turned to always face the sun, maximizing solar energy collection. This system, dubbed a solar tracker, was designed to generate 40% more electricity than fixed solar panels.  Solaflect was proposing two community solar tracker projects that would be built in Lunenburg VT. 

In 2015 Kate and Bill signed an agreement with Solaflect and purchased a solar tracker at one of the Lunenburg facilities for $20,000. It is located in a solar park housing 45 trackers. Customers receive net metering credits for the electricity generated, that are used to pay all or part of their home electric bills. An added attraction for Kate and Bill was that the net metering credits could be applied to any residence they might own in the future, so long as it was served by Green Mountain Power. The trackers are not individually metered, the total electricity generated by all the trackers is combined and divided by the number of trackers and this figure is used to calculate the net metering credits due to Kate and Bill for their one tracker. Solaflect keeps 20% of the net metering to cover the costs of insurance and maintenance of the trackers.

All went well at first. In 2016, their first year, the tracker generated a healthy 4,749 kilowatt hours of electricity. In 2017 the figure was somewhat lower, at 4051 kwH. In 2018 it was 4007 kwh and in 2019 again lower at 3569 kwh  The accumulated kwh for 2025 was 1912 kwh.

There are many factors that can affect the generation of solar electricity. The number of sunny days is an obvious one. Shade from vegetation or snow accumulation is another. Solaflect trackers are complicated and don't actually "see" the sun. Unlike fixed solar panels, they are mounted on single poles and move via motors controlled by a microprocessor using a site-specific, pre-programmed mathematical model based on centuries of data, informing the tracker of the sun's exact position from sunrise to sunset. The electric motors tilt the panel on two axes so that sun always falls on the panel at 90 degrees to its surface. There is also a sensor that signals the motors to turn the panel horizontal to avoid wind damage to the system. The night time vertical position sheds snow.  However, with these subsystems - electrical, mechanical and software - there are more things that can go wrong compared to fixed panels. 

Separate from the trackers and housed in a shed at each solar park, a bank of inverters convert the direct current (DC) coming from the solar trackers into alternating current (AC) that can be fed into the electric grid. 

The Solaflect Agreement that Kate and Bill signed contains the following Disclosure: "The Agreement involves risks the Customer should be prepared to bear. These risks include but are not limited to : i) changes in the price of electricity; ii) changes to utility policies; iii) changes to Vermont state or local policies (including those of the Public Service Board); iv) changes to Vermont state or local taxes; v) changes to insurance rates; vi) vandalism; vii) hardware or softrware performance; and viii) extreme weather events.

Appended to the Agreement are documents (Schedule A,B,C and D) elaborating on the license to host the customer's tracker, the terms and conditions of business etc. Under D, the Scope of Services reads "Services shall mean a) all operation and maintenance services required to operate the Equipment commencing with the commercial operating date of the Equipment; b) inverters and other equipment required to connect the Equipment to the grid; c) financial management and recordkeeping including billing for net metering group and d) support and maintain project monitoring systems."

Kate and Bill had a chance to discuss their diminishing solar generation with the president of Solaflect, at a Trails Alliance event where Solaflect had a booth. They told him, as Kate recalls "in no uncertain terms" that their generation numbers were dropping and they felt that the trackers were not working properly, but they left the event feeling "brushed off."

Another time they spoke to the president by phone. According to Kate and Bill he acknowledged the problems but said it was difficult to find maintenance staff. However by the end of the conversation they felt assured that "a crew" would go up there next week and work all week to fix things. But Kate and Bill saw no improvement in their kwh numbers. Subsequent attempts to draw attention to their situation by phone were unsuccessful.

In November of 2019 they traveled to Lunenburg and visited the solar tracker park. What they saw dismayed them. The trackers were not all pointing in the same direction, as one would expect if they were to capture sunlight at maximum efficiency. Some trackers were facing in random directions and others were stowed in the horizontal or vertical position. In addition they noticed that the door to the utility shed housing the inverters was lying flat on the ground. Inside the shed red warning lights on the inverters were indicating "Fault." 

Another visit in 2023 revealed essentially the same picture with trackers at skewed angles, some even "turned backwards" as documented in this video. Images on Google Earth support these observations. The inverter shed was now overgrown with vegetation. 

In the meantime Kate and Bill had added electric heat pumps to their home and purchased an electric vehicle.  They tried to sign up for another community solar under construction close to home in Thetford. But they were informed that under VT rules they could only be a member of one community solar project. Being curious as to whether other customers of their Lunenburg tracker park were experiencing the same problems they inquired with Solaflect but were told by an administrator that the company cannot divulge customer information.

It seems that they will continue to get nowhere unless they escalate their complaints. But to whom? One place that they might turn to is the Department of Public Service. Consumers are encouraged to seek help from the DPS before turning to the Public Utility Commission.

Vermont's Public Utility Commission, is a quasi-judicial body with a mission to ensure the provision of high-quality public utility services in Vermont in keeping with the long-term public good. Solaflect had to apply to the PUC to receive a Certificate of Public Good (CPG) that allowed them to build their tracker farms.  Complaints about the potential failure of a CPG holder to fulfil the terms and conditions of a Certificate of Public Good (CPG) are handled by the DPS which helps people reach an informal resolution of their disputes with regulated utilities.

This is not to knock the technical prowess and achievements of Solaflect in reducing fossil fuel electricity generation. Their tracker technology is evolving and is being applied in California. But, in the push to expand to new markets, the little guys who believed and bought into Solaflect at the beginning must not be left behind, shortchanged and forgotten.