By Elle Wood

HARRINGTON — Colorado-based Pivot Energy will be partnering with Walmart to invest in community solar projects across five states, including Delaware.

Matt Pagano, vice president of structured finance for Pivot Energy, explained that the collaboration, announced March 26, began amid discussions about other company projects.

“We have a team at Pivot that focused on developing corporate relationships and coming up with (solar) solutions,” he said. “We had been talking with Walmart just about developing and building them on-site facilities at Walmart locations that would consume the electricity directly.

“We knew at the time that Walmart did other things, like invest in projects directly through ... tax equity financing, but that wasn’t the focus of the conversation.”

After Pivot Energy officials decided that community solar was another effort they wanted to pursue with Walmart, the company once again approached the retailer.

“We just circled back with them and went through a competitive process with them and a couple other investors,” said Mr. Pagano. “That was sort of the opening to this broadening relationship.”

The overall project includes 19 solar facilities under development, 15 of which are dubbed “community solar projects” — when the energy is loaded off to multiple users, for instance in a residential community, he explained.

The 19 sites will be divided among Delaware, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland and California. Delaware’s location — one of the community solar spots — will be in an undisclosed area of Harrington and will generate 5.7 megawatts of direct current.

Mr. Pagano said Pivot Energy wants neighbors of the community solar projects to be able to use the electricity no matter the cost.

“A lot of these houses and businesses will be consuming this energy,” he said. “There is a pretty large component of the subscribers that are specifically low-income end users, which is a big thing for Pivot and Walmart.”

Because of this, the two companies will be donating 15% of the energy output to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. These households will receive credits on their electric bills.

Mr. Pagano said the initiative’s organizers also understand the importance of agriculture to the areas they are developing. Therefore, Pivot Energy is working with farmers to maximize solar energy production, while keeping field production high, he said.

It’s a practice known as “agrivoltaics.”

“At these sites, drip irrigation will be installed, which will enable high-quality crop produce in between the rows of the solar array, in addition to sheep grazing, habitat enhancement and other responsible land stewardship practices,” said Mr. Pagano.

Pivot Energy hopes to have all of these projects online by the end of 2025, bringing down electricity costs as much as possible.

He believes that solar energy not only lowers energy prices but also brings together electrical infrastructure.

“I think there is data out there to support that it is helping drive down electricity costs,” said Mr. Pagano. “It’s not that these projects are adding more costs to the electrical infrastructures; in fact, they are helping ... improve the electrical infrastructure by being constructed.”

Mr. Pagano added that Pivot Energy seeks to create a healthy environment, and he believes that solar energy will bring people closer to that.

“At a high level, I think we need to transition away from fossil fuels,” he said. “And solar is one of the several paths to achieving that.”

To learn more, visit pivotenergy.net.