Georgetown-area residents will soon be able to add solar panels on homes

Delaware Electric Cooperative (DEC), which provides power to most of southern Delaware, plans to add its first battery storage facility at Bruce Henry Solar Farm. The facility will allow about 100 DEC members in the surrounding area to install solar panels.  

“If members are interested in reducing their carbon footprint and adding their own power generation to their house … they should have the right to do that,” he said.

This new program comes as energy prices continue to rise because the region’s supply is not growing fast enough to meet the rapidly increasing demand, and a proposed data center near Delaware City that threatens to worsen the problem. 

Tucker said the company plans to officially announce the solar battery facility by the fall, then start installation 18 months to two years from now.

Supply chain issues have delayed the delivery of new solar energy batteries, Tucker said. 

Why couldn’t residents install solar panels before?

The biggest issue with solar power is that when the sun is not shining, the panels cannot produce energy. 

But the opposite situation can also cause problems, DEC engineer Lucas Zlock said. When the sun is shining, the panels may produce too much energy and threaten to send electricity back into the main electric grid, which is not allowed.  

This map show Delaware Electric Cooperative members whether they can install solar panels on their homes. | MAP COURTESY OF DEC

DEC has a map showing its members where they can and can’t install new solar panels. 

In the map’s green areas, members can install new solar panels and send any extra energy they generate back into the local grid, getting credits toward future energy bills in return. 

In yellow areas, residents can install solar panels, but they can’t put any excess energy back into the grid. 

That is because a local electric grid strikes a precarious balance between supply and demand, Zlock said.

There needs to be more demand than supply in a local grid in order to prevent any backfeeding, which is when excess energy goes back into transmission lines. 

PJM, the regional electric grid operator, does not allow any backfeeding because it needs to carefully account for all the energy flowing into the grid, Zlock said, and residential areas are not accounted for as power generation sources. 

In the red areas of DEC’s map, residents can’t install solar panels at all. That’s because those areas at times produce almost exactly as much power as they need. So if any residents started producing their own power, there wouldn’t be enough demand to meet the supply, Zlock explained. 

How could a battery fix the problem?

The Georgetown area is in a red zone because it has just enough power generation to meet demand on sunny days, when its energy comes from the Bruce Henry Solar Farm. 

The new battery on the farm will allow residents to safely produce energy with solar panels because any extra power they generate can be stored in the battery instead of risking backflow. 

Tucker said he expects the Georgetown area to go from red to green on DEC’s solar map within a few months after the battery facility is installed.

He called the facility a pilot program that DEC will use to decide if battery storage could be installed across the rest of the service area. 

But DEC CEO Rob Book said right now, the batteries are too expensive to be worth the benefits to consumers. The Georgetown project is only able to move forward because DEC received state and federal grants to fund it, he said. 

Delaware is in an energy “capacity crisis,” Book said, and it will need any power generation sources it can get. 

“But it’s got to be reliable,” he added, “and it’s got to be affordable for our members.”

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Jeremy Tucker serves on the operating board of directors for Spotlight Delaware. Board members have no role in the editorial decision-making of Spotlight Delaware. For more information, see our Boards page.