City of La Crosse, WI
Solar Ready Guide
These guidelines are provided by the City of La Crosse to assist the residents and businesses owners in the community in making their buildings “solar ready”.
What is Solar Ready?
A Solar Ready building is engineered and designed for solar installation, even if the solar installation does not happen at the time of construction. Solar Ready design is important if photovoltaic (PV) or solar hot water (SHW) technologies are to be installed on a building at any time during the building’s lifespan. Solar Ready also allows owners to take advantage of a changing energy market more easily and less expensively in the future.
By 2018, the costs for on-site solar pv installations had dropped 65% over the costs just a few years earlier. Projections for solar pv anticipate continued increasing cost efficiency, while State and local renewable energy policies continue to come ‘on line’ which both encourage renewable energy as well as improve the economics of on site renewable energy generation. Making a building Solar Ready enables a building owner to take advantage of cost effective on-site renewable energy generation in the future, even if the current economics for on-site solar are not yet persuasive for a specific site, continued advancements in system technology and public policy are very likely to make on-site solar a choice for most buildings.
Why Implement Solar Ready Guide?
The City of La Crosse has committed to transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy. The City has established long-term goals to reduce community-wide GHG emissions by 40% to
50% below 2019 levels by 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. In order to undertake this effort, the City has undertaken to develop the 2022 Climate Action Plan to lay out a pathway to meet the City’s goals.
As companion planning documents, the City has developed three sub-plan components: This Solar Ready Guide, the Net Zero Energy Building Guide, and the EV Ready Guide. The purpose of this Solar Ready Guide is to provide a tool for use by businesses and residents in the advancement of solar ready buildings and solar PV installations within the City of La Crosse.
One of the largest barriers to the installation of solar energy systems is the traditional building design. Most existing buildings were built without consideration for the potential of on-site solar energy generation. Roof structure, building orientation, location of mechanical systems and other building design elements can often make the installation of solar energy systems significantly more complicated and expensive than it would have been if these features were simply designed with solar in mind. Even new buildings often require substantial retrofits to take full advantage of the building’s available solar resource, which is why new building solar ready guidelines are needed.
