Local community solar projects will save 31 Wendy’s and McDonald’s locations across Northern Illinois an estimated minimum $20,000 annually on electricity costs due to a partnership between Perch Energy and the franchises’ owner, Mike Allegro.
Bruce Stewart, the CEO of Perch Energy, told pv magazine USA that the energy will be sourced from three community solar projects in Illinois:
- Bend 1, a 2.61 MW project in the Owen Township, which is scheduled to begin operation June 10, 2025.
- Bend 2, a 2.75 MW project in Rockford, which is scheduled to begin operation June 10, 2025.
- Vermillion, a 2.61 MW project in Pontiac that is scheduled to begin operation April 29, 2025.
The projects the franchises will source from, however, aren’t enough to cover a hundred percent of their consumption, Stewart said. “We need more solar farms to give them the full value of savings,” he said.
The annual $20,000 savings is based on the community solar projects that are currently available. As more community solar projects are built and additional capacity becomes available, “We’ll be able to give them more credits which equal more savings value,” Stewart said.
As to which upcoming community solar projects the franchises will be able to source from, the project must be in ComEd’s footprint, which is the utility that these franchises subscribe to, Stewart said.
“Every time one of these [community solar] projects comes online, the percent of power that’s redistributed by ComEd goes slightly up each and every time,” Stewart said. “So when it’s time to go fill these projects, we know exactly how much power they’re going to produce. We find the matching amount of power that somebody else is consuming. In this case, these [31] franchisees, the Wendy’s and McDonald’s are consuming some of that.”
The projects were approved under Illinois’ clean energy program, Illinois Shines, which allows 40% of the power generated by a community solar projects to go to commercial offtakers, and the rest to be distributed to residential customers. However, Stewart noted that distribution depends on the state program, some of which allow commercial customers to subscribe to 100% of a solar facility’s generated power.
Illinois introduced a community solar offering under the Illinois Shines program in 2019. As of 2024, Illinois was ranked fourth for its community solar operating capacity, according to the Institute on Local Self Reliance.
Stewart said Perch Energy manages the purchaser’s relationship with the community solar for the life of the solar project. “We make sure they get the proper credits on their [utility] bill that matches their consumption so that they’re getting their savings month over month” he said, “If an offtaker, such as a franchise location closes or relocates to another state,” Stewart said, “we’ll find another customer to fill that extra capacity. We’ll always keep it full so that whatever the [solar facility] is producing, we’re matching it with customers on the other side,” he said.
Stewart said many people and businesses fail to realize the difference between solar and community solar. Businesses often don’t believe they are eligible for community solar “because they don’t have the rooftop for [solar panels], don’t get enough sun or don’t actually own the building,” Stewart said. “But none of those things actually matter when you’re talking about community solar.”
With community solar, “nothing’s being constructed on site, so you don’t have any construction or investment cost,” he said. “You can simply sign up to subscribe to get the benefit of the power because it connects to the grid,” Stewart said.
“It was an easy decision. A lot of our restaurants are open early and close late. And some are open 24 hours a day, so we use a lot of electricity,” said Mike Allegro, the franchise owner. “Everything is more expensive these days, but while the cost of everything else is going up, it’s one bill that Perch and Solar On Earth [the deal’s energy broker] are helping to bring back down.”
Last June, Wendy’s enrolled 130 of its locations in community solar through a partnership with Ampion. In 2023, Wendy’s set near-term science-based targets to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 47%, and Scope 3 emissions from franchisees by 47% per restaurant by 2030, from a 2019 baseline.
“Any business, organization, municipality, family or individual—really the whole community—stands to benefit from energy savings with community solar,” Stewart said, “It’s the local McDonald’s and Wendy’s, but it’s also the school, the apartment building, the homeowner and all of Main Street that gets to access savings in a real way.”
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