June 2017 Chapter Meeting

Date: Thursday, June 15, 2017

Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Location: Green Spaces

63 East Main Street, Chattanooga, TN 37408
 http://www.greenspaceschattanooga.org/contact/

Parking options:

a) Street parking

b) Station Street Parking Lot - $3/2h - corner of Rossville Ave. and Johnson St.

c) Republic Parking Lot - $4/2h - on Rossville Ave, behind Green Spaces building

Topic: EPB's Community Solar Share Project

EPB is the local electric utility company in Chattanooga, TN. It's Community Solar Share project is a partnership with Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that aims to offer local energy consumers a new choice for renewable energy. This is the first large-scale solar power generation project in Chattanooga and offers the advantage of dramatically lowering barriers that most customers willing to participate in solar generation face.

The presentation will first take a look at how projects are completed at EPB from initial grant writing to project implementation. The Community Solar project will then be discussed. To fully understand the complexity of the project and reason for doing it, a small part of the presentation will look at market forces driving EPB and other utilities to invest in these types of technologies. Finally, the program and products EPB has developed will be discussed and how these offerings could change over time.

Speaker: Hunter Ellis, Research Analyst, EPB

During his five years at EPB, Hunter has worked in Strategic Research performing industry research, economic analysis and financial modeling for the energy and communications industries. He has authored many reports detailing trends in the areas of energy, communications, alternative generation, and energy storage industries. Hunter also serves as an author and contributor in grant proposals and has served as the Research and Data Analytics chair for the Young Professionals Association of Chattanooga.

Hunter’s main area of focus is centered on alternative generation and storage technologies. He assesses the economic feasibility and implementation practicality of these technologies at EPB. Currently, he is developing a set of economic models that will project the economic and distribution system impacts of alternative generation and storage technologies to EPB’s smart grid. Hunter’s models and knowledge in the field of alternative generation helped EPB secure a $1.3M grant to implement a community solar project in Chattanooga.

Ellis has a master's degree in Industrial Organization Psychology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.