Renewable Properties president on battling project challenges in a wildfire hot zone

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Lake Herman Solar Project Summary

Just weeks after heatwave-induced blackouts, California developers have a new production problem: wildfires.

According to the California Independent Service Operator (CAISO), smoke and ash spread led to a 20 percent reduction in solar panel output. With such annual and large blazes, which seemingly will only continue as climate change worsens, project developers may need to consider new technologies, or even a more careful approach to siting, going forward.

“The whole kind of wildfire risk is a newer thing for California, the velocity, the intensity, the frequency of these wildfires really was not something that was front of mind until a couple years ago,” said Aaron Halimi, the president and founder of Renewable Properties, a development company with multiple operational or under-development projects in the at-risk areas.

“Now its certainly something we think about and consider... its not a key factor but its a consideration,” he said.

Renewable Properties’ Lake Hermon solar project is set to begin construction early next month, but it could see slight delays depending on how long the fires persist, one of the main interruptions of wildfires on renewable projects. According to Halimi, the wildfires are not an immediate danger to existing projects physically, but the main concerns are air quality preventing production and construction delays. 

“Solar structures are a little different than a home, overall flammability exposure is [much lower],” Halimi said. “There’s cases of grassfires blowing through panels and it not causing much damage.” 

To prevent delays, Halimi’s team typically plans to avoid major milestones and approvals with the utilities in the midst of wildfire season, but last year’s planning was interrupted by the arrival of COVID-19. This pushed many project milestones into the middle of fire season, and according to Halimi, there is not much to be done but wait the issue out. 

“Unforeseen delays associated with wildfires or associated with the pandemic are not too dissimilar to our normal day-to-day, other than those events tend to come out of the blue, and they tend to come fast and hard,” Halimi said. “Its challenging to navigate, but if you’re well-capitalized and experienced and have the ability to wait things out they’re certainly solveable. But in the immediate term, in the near term, they hurt.” 

Due to the low physical issues to the solar sites, Halimi doesn’t foresee a whole lot of technological changes to the panels for fire resilience. The main concern for many appears to be energy output from the panels due to cloud cover and ash. 

“There is a concern that as smoke and ash spread ... that does lower the output from solar plants,” Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business told KQED.

“It’s highly unusual, no one assumes that the sun isn’t gonna come out within a 24-hour period,” Halimi agreed. 

To combat this, Halimi believes that new technologies for effective panel-cleaning may come into play. 

“I just washed my panels about a month ago and now they’re covered in ash, that’s a real thing,” Halimi said. “We may be more focused on more cost-effective ways to clean the panels more frequently due to smoke and ash in the air from these wildfires.”