by RENEW Wisconsin | Oct 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
For the second time in three years, state of Wisconsin incentives for customer-sited solar and small wind systems has been suspended, a result of recent Public Service Commission (PSC) decisions affecting Focus on Energy’s renewable energy budget. Incentives for biogas and biomass installations are not affected by the PSC’s decisions.
The cut-off of solar and wind incentives follows an across-the-board suspension of renewable energy incentives that lasted one year before being lifted in July 2012. RENEW Wisconsin has issued a press release concerning the PSC’s decision below.
UPDATE: Check out Tom Content’s article on JSOnline for more information.
For Immediate Release
August 1, 2013
PSC Pulls Plug on Solar and Wind Incentives Again
PSC Vote a “Dark Day for Solar Energy in Wisconsin”
Focus on Energy has suspended incentives for solar and small wind energy systems for the remainder of 2013, as a result of a Public Service Commission (PSC) order approved last week. The funding suspension takes effect even though Focus on Energy has spent only $1.2 million of the $10 million budgeted this year for all renewable energy technologies.
The PSC split 2-1 on the vote stopping the flow of incentives for solar and small wind energy systems. Commissioners Phil Montgomery and Ellen Nowak approved the suspension order, while Commissioner Eric Callisto voted against the motion.
“In approving this funding stoppage, the PSC ignored the public comments of over 630 citizens and businesses who urged the agency to provide a consistent, stable program to promote solar and wind energy,” said Executive Director Tyler Huebner. “This will go down as a dark day for solar energy in Wisconsin.”
The funding suspension was triggered by a slowdown in demand for incentives for biogas and biomass energy systems. Though up to $7,500,000 in incentives is set aside for bioenergy projects, only $384,448 in incentives have been paid out to date in that category. Under an order adopted by the PSC in 2012, Focus on Energy must maintain a 75/25 percent funding split between the bioenergy category and the solar/small wind category.
“Prices for solar projects have dropped steeply in recent years and these projects are as cost-effective for residential and business customers as biogas is for farmers and food processors,” said Huebner. “In addition, the timelines for biogas projects are unrelated to those of wind and solar projects. Add these together, and there is no reason financial incentives for solar and wind should be contingent on the health of bioenergy market.”
“This decision further ‘boxes in’ the Focus on Energy administrator regarding these incentives. The stipulations added by the Commission appear to make the calculations mathematically unworkable. We can envision the program’s administrator resorting to a Ouija Board to figure out how much funding is available for solar and wind projects going forward.”
Burke O’Neal, co-owner of Full Spectrum Solar in Madison, discussed the impact on businesses. He said, “It’s really bad for business in Wisconsin to have a program that appears and then with very little notice disappears. It’s really hard to build a business and a stable industry when programs aren’t consistent.”
In his dissent, Commissioner Eric Callisto stated that Commission’s goal in its 2012 ruling “was to create market certainty, foster fiscal sustainability and program cost-effectiveness, and ultimately allow the funding of more biogas and biomass projects. The Commission’s decision today helps to advance none of those goals, but rather reintroduces substantial uncertainty into the renewables marketplace.” Callisto added, “If the Commission’s 75/25 split was meant to emphasize biomass and biogas resources, it isn’t working, and today’s decision won’t help.”
RENEW Wisconsin’s Tyler Huebner added, “In Wisconsin we send $12.5 billion out of the state each year to buy coal, oil, and natural gas. We don’t have any of those energy resources within our state. The Focus on Energy incentives for solar and wind should be available to help residents, businesses, and farmers take control of their energy bills and produce electricity in a self-sustaining manner. For a decade, the success of this program helped Wisconsin build a thriving small business market to deliver these alternative energy solutions to customers. With this latest suspension, that once-thriving market of businesses will take yet another hit, and sadly, the credibility of the entire Focus program certainly takes a hit too.”
—-END—-
by RENEW Wisconsin | Sep 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
GreenWhey Energy’s is the nation’s only privately owned facility to process food waste from multiple sources. This new facility will generate enough energy to power about 3,000 homes. Read more in the Country Today article below:
TURTLE LAKE — After more than five years of planning and a few setbacks, GreenWhey Energy is open for business in Turtle Lake.
“It’s a good day,” said an emotional Tom Ludy, one of the plant’s owners, during an open house Sept. 26 in the plant’s brand-new intake bay. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Engines in the $30-million facility were fired up for the first time just a few days before the open house. Ludy said it will take about six months to fully ramp up to full production.
Eventually, GreenWhey’s two anaerobic digesters will bring in 500,000 gallons of wastewater seven days a week from area cheese plants, converting it to electricity, heat and fertilizer.
GreenWhey is the only privately owned anaerobic digester facility in the U.S. to utilize wastewater from multiple food processors.
The whey-t is over: GreenWhey Energy’s vision of turning cheese plant waste into useable energy becomes reality – The Country Today: Front Page
by jboullion | Sep 9, 2013 | Uncategorized
The state’s Libertarians have endorsed a proposal led by RENEW Wisconsin — a local clean energy group — to allow Wisconsin electricity customers to lease solar panels for their energy needs.
”Most of us don’t trust the environmental movement because they’ve cried wolf forever and ever,” Wisconsin Libertarian Party chair Paul Ehlers told a surprised local media over the weekend. ”There are all kinds of philosophical disagreements, but at the end of the day this was pretty much a no-brainer.”
Read more
by jboullion | Aug 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
In
testimony submitted yesterday in Wisconsin Public Service Corporation’s ongoing
rate case (Docket 6690-UR-1220), RENEW witness Michael Vickerman takes the
utility to task over its net metering service, which it proposes to weaken even
further. Vickerman’s testimony discusses specific elements of the utility’s net
metering proposal, which, if approved, would unreasonably discriminate against WPS
customer-generators compared to those located in the service territory of other
investor-owned utilities. These proposals include reducing WPS’s net metering
threshold from 100 kW to 20 kW and limiting availability of net metering to
energy-only customers. Vickerman’s testimony also describes the necessary
analysis that would be required for WPSC to claim that net metering customers
are not paying the costs they cause, i.e., that they are “subsidized.” WPS has
not performed such analysis. Vickerman concludes his testimony with recommendations
for aligning WPSC’s net metering tariff with the best practices offered by
other utilities. Click here to view his complete pre-filed testimony.
Public
Service Commission witness Corey Singletary also submitted testimony on net
metering. He describes WPS’s offering as “the most restrictive net metering service
of any Wisconsin utility.” His positions on WPS’s proposals to weaken its net
metering service even further are similar to RENEW’s. Click here to access Singletary‘s pre-filed testimony.
by jboullion | Aug 28, 2013 | Uncategorized
In
the study released yesterday, Berkeley
Lab analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind
facilities in 27 counties
across nine U.S. states. In
summary, the
research did not find any statistically identifiable impacts
of wind facilities
to nearby home property values. Read the full 2013 report, the previously published 2009 report, and yesterday’s press release below for more information.
Immediate release — Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than
50,000 home
sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S.
states, yet was
unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values.
“This
is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this
topic [the first
was published in 2009 –
see below], and
in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no
statistical evidence
that operating wind turbines have had any measureable impact on
home sales
prices,” says Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report.
Hoen
is a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies
Division of Berkeley
Lab.
The
new study used a number of sophisticated techniques to control
for other
potential impacts on home prices, including collecting data that
spanned well
before the wind facilities’ development was announced to after
they were
constructed and operating. This allowed the researchers to
control for any
pre-existing differences in home sales prices across their
sample and any
changes that occurred due to the housing bubble.
This
study, the most comprehensive to-date, builds on both the
previous Berkeley Lab
study as well a number of other academic and published U.S.
studies, which also
generally find no measureable impacts near operating turbines.
“Although
there have been claims of significant property value impacts
near operating wind
turbines that regularly surface in the press or in local
communities, strong evidence
to support those claims has failed to materialize in all of the
major U.S.
studies conducted thus far”, says Hoen.
“Moreover, our findings comport with the large set of
studies that have
investigated other potentially similar disamenities, such as
high voltage
transmission lines, land fills, and noisy roads, which suggest
that widespread impacts
from wind turbines would be either relatively small or
non-existent.”
The
report was authored by Ben Hoen (Berkeley Lab), Jason P. Brown
(formerly USDA
now Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City), Thomas Jackson (Texas
A & M and
Real Property Analytics), Ryan Wiser (Berkeley Lab), Mark Thayer
(San Diego State University)
and Peter Cappers (Berkeley Lab). The research was supported by
the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy.
Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent
scientific
challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human
health, creating
new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the
universe. Founded in
1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized
with 13 Nobel
prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for
the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
Technical
contact: Ben Hoen (845) 758-1896, bhoen@lbl.gov
by jboullion | Aug 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
David Perry’s article for the Renew Economy blog addresses health concerns surrounding the infrasound produced by wind turbines and concludes that they are just another unfounded claim by antiwind energy campaigners.True, wind turbines produce infrasound, but at levels far below what is necessary to cause harm. In countering these unfounded assertions, Perry relies on research by Prof. Geoff Leventhal on infrasound effects and finds that self reported health impacts are nothing more than textbook examples of the nocebo effect: If you believe something bad is going to happen, then chances are your brain will make it happen.
By David Perry
Anti-wind
energy activists have shifted the goal posts over the years, with
aesthetic, birdlife, carbon abatement and even economic issues getting a
run. But by far the most cutting attack has been around noise, and the
supposed health impacts that result.
There is no question that wind turbines create sound, and
that in some circumstances this sound can be heard at nearby residences.
Rigorous noise standards are designed to give a reasonable level of
protection against sleep disturbance, taking into account the location
of turbines, the model, and existing background noise. This approach is
not unusual, and similar standards are applied to a range of man-made
noise sources, from pubs to freeways.
While this is good enough for most people, some still find
the residual noise levels annoying. At this point, noise level alone
isn’t a good predictor of annoyance — personality and existing attitudes
tend to dominate. Those residents with a clear view of the turbines
tend to find them more annoying,
while those receiving an economic benefit are more tolerant .
Compounding this, residents with negative-oriented personality traits
tend to perceive turbine noise as being louder.
At the extreme, I’m aware of at least two wind farms where complaints
have been received about excruciating, intolerable levels of noise, only
for the resident to be told that the wind farm was shut down at the
time.
Just because these factors cannot be quantified with a
sound logger does not mean nothing can be done. Community engagement,
face-to-face discussion and education go a long way, as does ensuring a
lasting community benefit. In some cases landscaping or improved sound
insulation can solve the problem. While this undoubtedly affects indoor
sound levels in many cases, it also empowers residents with a sense of
control over the situation, improving their outlook more
generally. Developers are now keenly aware that listening to the local
community and sharing the financial benefits is pivotal in getting a
wind farm built, and keeping neighbors happy.
That should be the end of the story.
Alas, all manner of health issues (216, at last count)
have been attributed to wind farms, even when the wind farm is
completely inaudible, located tens of kilometers away, or, as mentioned,
not even operating. These physics-defying claims are largely a result
of fear mongering around infrasound.
[READ MORE]
