by jboullion | Feb 28, 2013 | Uncategorized
222 S. Hamilton, Madison, WI 53704
Immediate Release February 26, 2013
More Information
Don Wichert, Executive Director
608.255.4044, ext. 1
RENEW Petitions PSC to Improve Interconnection Rules
RENEW Wisconsin (RENEW) filed a petition on February 22 asking the Public Service Commission (PSCW) to simplify the process under which distributed generators can connect their generators to Wisconsin’s electrical grid. The vast majority of these small generating facilities are fueled with locally available renewable energy resources like biogas, solar, and wind.
RENEW’s filing grew out of a year-long study that assessed how Wisconsin’s 10-year old interconnection rule (PSC 119) compares with best practices established in other states.
“We found that Wisconsin’s outdated rules hurts distributed generators by adding complexity, time, and cost to the interconnection process ,” said Don Wichert, RENEW’s interim Executive Director and study coordinator. “Most of the renewable energy systems coming on line now are owned by non-utility generators. Fixing the problems in PSC 119 will lead to more renewable energy systems going in faster and at a lower cost. Supported by 86 companies, organizations, and individuals, RENEW’s petition identified 10 specific changes that, if adopted by the PSC, would align Wisconsin’s interconnection procedures with national best practices.
“Customer-owned renewable energy systems save ratepayers money in many ways”, said Wichert. “Because they offset electrical needs right where the electricity is being used, distributed renewables supply clean electricity in a reliable and affordable manner, avoiding potentially expensive investments in central generating plants and costly transmission lines. Moreover, they create jobs and support local businesses. These are all positive public policy goals”, Wichert said.
END
RENEW Wisconsin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) that leads and represents businesses, organizations, and individuals who seek more clean, renewable energy in Wisconsin. More information on RENEW’s website: www.renewwisconsin.org.
by jboullion | Feb 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
More on the Highland Wind Farm PSC decision: an article by Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel:
State regulators on Thursday rejected an application to build a new wind farm in St. Croix County, citing concerns about turbine noise the project would generate for nearby homes.
The state Public Service Commission voted 2-to-1 to reject Emerging Energies’ proposal to build the Highland wind farm, which was proposed to generate 102.5 megawatts of power from 41 turbines, or eough to supply about 30,000 homes.
Commissioners said that they were rejecting the proposal “without prejudice,” in essence leaving the door open for the developer to file a new application for the project, after it conducts a new noise study using more conservative assumptions about the background noise in the area.
The $250 million Highland project is the first wind farm to be ruled on by the state commission since Republican Gov. Scott Walker appointed two commissioners, a majority of the three-member panel.
Emerging Energies representative Jay Mundinger said after the vote the developer plans to continue its pursuit of a permit for the project.
Commissioner Eric Callisto, the lone remaining appointee of former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, said he would have approved the project but would have attached conditions binding the developer to protect nearby landowners from excessive turbine noise.
Noise studies by the applicant found that 20 homes would experience noise levels above the 45 decibel standard at night, but the commission could work with the developer on “micro-siting” issues after new analysis was done, he said.
The Highland project is the only large wind energy project currently in active development in the state. The state’s utilities have already built enough wind farms to comply with the Wisconsin renewable portfolio standard, which requires that 10% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2015.
During the commission’s meeting in Madison, commissioner Ellen Nowak said the applicant didn’t prove that all the wind project would result in noise levels below 45 decibels at night, the standard that’s in Wisconsin’s wind siting rule.
As a result, she said she concluded the project was not in the public interest.
In their decision, the PSC commissioners decided not to attach special requirements concerning low-frequency noise, after wind consultants studied the impacts of low frequency noise from wind turbines the same developer built near Green Bay.
Reached after the meeting, Mundinger said Emerging Energies would take the commissioners’ noise concerns into account but was not giving up on the project.
“We believe that sound, from what we’ve heard, is a big concern, and we believe we can address that and we believe we have a pathway to get the (project permit) in short form,” he said. “We want to make sure we address the sound and be able to move this project forward.”
The company has offered not to use the kind of turbine that it used when developing the Brown County wind farm — the tallest towers built so far in Wisconsin. Instead, Emerging Emergies has agreed to use two other turbines that don’t generate as much sound, he said.
PSC commissioners said they would not approve the project if it used the loudest of the three turbines Emerging Energies had been considering.
“The turbines are better than ever before,” Mundinger said. “They’re quieter than the ones just 10 years ago.”
Peter McKeever, attorney for the Forest Voice, a group that mobilized in opposition to the wind farm,said he was pleased with the commission’s decision.
Wind farms are difficult to build in Wisconsin because the state’s dairy farming heritage and land use history resulted in smaller farms being closer together rather than large farms that are farther apart on the Great Plains, he said.
“If we want wind to be a really viable energy source we have to get smart about siting wind farms in Wisconsin,” he said.
The state should be leery of developing projects where homeowners could experience problems similar to those found in the Green Bay area project, McKeever said.
At issue in this case is one of the variables in that model – an estimate of how much sound would be absorbed by the ground when the wind turbines are spinning.
In this case, the commission essentially asked Emerging Energies to assume a worst-case scenario: That the 45-decibel standard will be met at all times, even when there is totally reflective ground – hard frozen ground with no snow or vegetation on it.
The commission adopted a more stringent noise requirement than it did when it approved its most recent wind farm, the We Energies Glacier Hills Wind Park, in 2010, said Katie Nekola, general counsel at the conservation group Clean Wisconsin. However, in that case, there was no challenge to the assumptions used by We Energies in its turbine noise modeling.
She expressed hope that the decision would be a temporary setback for the Highland project.
See the original posting of this article here.
by jboullion | Nov 12, 2012 | Uncategorized
More information
Michael Vickerman
mvickerman@renewwisconsin.org
608.255.4044,ext. 2
State’s Renewable Standard Delivers Positive Results
Most utilities already meeting 2015 targets
Most Wisconsin electricity providers have already acquired all the renewable energy supplies they need to meet the state’s 10% target in 2015, according to the Public Service Commission (PSCW).
The agency’s annual compliance review showed that nearly 9% of electricity sold by in-state electricity providers in 2011 originated from such renewable energy resources as sunlight, biogas, hydro, landfill gas and wind, compared with 3% in 2006.
“By any measure, the state’s Renewable Energy Standard (RES) has been an unqualified success,” said Michael Vickerman, program and policy director for RENEW Wisconsin. “From the standpoint of job creation, resource diversity, price stability, environmental protection and revenue generation, the RES has delivered exceptional value to a state that is very dependent on imported fossil fuels for electricity generation.”
Passed in 2006, the RES has been the most powerful policy for driving growth in renewable electricity sales. Yet with so many electricity providers already in compliance with their 2015 requirements, the prospects for new investments in home-grown energy sources are uncertain.
“Right now, we don’t have a policy in place for directing investments into clean energy after 2015,” Vickerman said. “If we want to reap the economic and environmental benefits that come with renewables, state lawmakers will have to extend the Renewable Energy Standard or adopt a successor policy.”
“Investments in renewable resources not only supply Wisconsin utility customers with clean energy, they also generate work opportunities for local manufacturers and businesses, additional revenue for local governments, and income for farmers,” said Vickerman.
“Renewable energy should be the cornerstone of an economic development strategy that aims to increase the state’s workforce and expand investment opportunities,” Vickerman said. “We look forward to working with the Governor and the next Legislature to put in place a realistic, low-cost policy framework that maintains the momentum building from the current RES.”
by jboullion | Nov 9, 2012 | Uncategorized
A commentary by Michael Vickerman, Director, Policy and Programs at RENEW Wisconsin:
Shock waves reverberated across the Upper Midwest when Dominion Resources announced in late October that it would permanently shut down its Kewaunee nuclear generating station in early 2013. Operational since 1974, the Kewaunee station, located along Lake Michigan 30 miles east of Green Bay, currently generates about 5% of the electricity that originates in Wisconsin.
Virginia-based Dominion, which bought the 560-megawatt Kewaunee plant in 2005 from two Wisconsin utilities, attributed its decision to its inability to secure long-term power purchase agreements to keep the plant going. Without securing purchasing commitments from utilities, Dominion would have to sell Kewaunee’s output into the regional wholesale market at prices well below the plant’s cost of production.
While the pricing environment for all bulk power generators is nothing short of brutal these days, Kewaunee carries the additional burden of being an independently owned power plant, since the entities most likely to buy electricity from that generator—utilities–have power plants of their own that compete for the same set of customers. And a growing number of these utility-owned generators burn natural gas, which is currently the least expensive generation source in most areas of the country.
Dominion’s decision comes down to simple economics. Wisconsin utilities believe that over the foreseeable future natural gas will remain cheap and supplies will remain abundant. That would explain their unwillingness to enter into long-term commitments with Dominion, even though Kewaunee recently acquired a 20-year extension to its operating license and does not need expansive retrofits to comply with environmental standards, unlike a host of utility-owned coal plants in Wisconsin.
But even if Dominion’s managers were convinced that natural gas prices have nowhere to go but up in 2013 and beyond, the company, lacking a retail customer base in the Midwest, could not risk producing power below cost while waiting for the turnaround.
Wisconsin utilities have placed heavy bets on natural gas in the expectation that it will remain the price-setting fuel for years to come. Over the last 12 months, they have bought several combined-cycle generators from independent power producers. Buying power plants enables them to pass through their acquisition and operating costs directly to their customers while generating returns to their shareholders. I suspect these utilities are anything but broken up over the impending demise of a nonutility competitor that could have supplied electricity to Wisconsin customers for 20 more years.
But there is another side to this story; the low-price energy future that Wisconsin utilities are embracing can only materialize if natural gas extraction companies continue to sell their output below production costs. This expectation is unrealistic, given the massive pain being inflicted on these companies in the form of operating losses, write-downs, and credit rating downgrades.
Don’t just take my word for it, ask Exxon Mobil ceo Rex Tillerson, whose company spent $41 billion during the shale gas boom to acquire XTO, a large gas producer that is now yielding more red ink than methane. As reported in a recent New York Times article, Tillerson minced no words in assessing the impact of its recent misadventures on the company’s bottom line. “We’re all losing our shirts today,” Tillerson said. “We’re making no money. It’s all in the red.”
Much of the industry’s woes are self-inflicted. The lease agreements that drillers eagerly signed during the height of the shale gas boom obligate them to extract the resource by a certain deadline, regardless of whether such activity is profitable. That these companies cannot disengage quickly from existing leases is greatly diminishing their appetite for exploring new natural gas prospects. Until a pricing turnaround occurs, they will refrain from spending money on exploring new resource provinces like Ohio and Michigan.
Sooner or later, this slowdown in exploration activity will tip the supply-demand equation in the opposite direction, resulting in lower-than-average gas storage volumes. Barring a repeat of last winter’s unusually mild weather, the crossover point should occur around January 1st . But with so many balance sheets in tatters from this highly unprofitable market environment, nothing short of a strong and sustained price increase will be required to persuade drillers to start taking risks again.
When this corrective price increase begins rippling through the electricity markets, it will be interesting to observe how the customers will respond. Right now Wisconsin utility managers are convinced that they are making the right call on natural gas. So completely have they swallowed the shale gas “game-changing” mystique that they were willing to let a 560 MW nuclear plant fall out of the supply picture for good. In this brave new world of theirs, gas is the new coal, and resource diversity is passé.
In the aftermath of Dominion’s announcement, a few commentators have defended the impending closure as a textbook example of how markets work. But this view ignores the delusional thinking that sent shale gas extraction into overdrive, causing prices to plunge below the cost of production. The real game-changer, as it turns out, here was not the emergence of “fracking” technology but the industry-generated public relations campaign that implanted the narrative of a nation awash in cheap natural gas into virtually every American cranium. But as we now see, this narrative has boomeranged on the natural gas industry, and they are paying for their current woes in ways that guarantee a pronounced pendulum swing in the direction of higher prices.
The question going forward is: will this narrative also boomerang on Wisconsin electricity users, after the last employee leaving Kewaunee turns out the lights?
Michael Vickerman is program and policy director of RENEW Wisconsin, a sustainable energy advocacy organization. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit previous posts Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com. This commentary is also listed on RENEW Wisconsin’s blog: http://www.renewwisconsin-blog.org/
by jboullion | Oct 31, 2012 | Uncategorized
Now is the time to make sure you know where your candidates stand on the day’s most important issues. Two important issues that will have a major impact on our state’s future are clean energy and energy efficiency.
Voters typically consider energy a national issue, but state-level politics often have as much or more impact on our energy future. In Wisconsin, state laws determine the how much of our electricity comes from renewable sources like wind and solar power. Additionally, programs like Focus on Energy, the statewide energy efficiency program, help homeowners and businesses save millions of dollars on energy bills.
Despite these laws and programs, we still send over $12 billion out of state each year to purchase dirty fossil fuels. Increasing our commitment to clean energy and energy efficiency could help Wisconsin become more energy independent, clean our air and water, and create thousands of jobs.
Unfortunately, legislators voted to significantly cut funding to Focus on Energy in the last legislative session, despite the program’s proven success; it saves homeowners and businesses $2.50 for every $1 invested in the program. Now is the time to move clean energy and energy efficiency policies forward, not backward.
A recent poll by the bipartisan research team of Public Opinion Strategies and Fairbank, Maslin, Metz and Associates found that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly support clean energy and energy efficiency. In fact, the poll found that 85 percent of Wisconsin voters support increasing the use of wind energy to meet our state’s future energy needs, and 89 percent support increasing the use of solar energy. Additionally, 84 percent said they would support policies requiring 30 percent of Wisconsin’s electricity to come from renewable sources. This is well above the current standard of 10 percent by 2015, which utilities have largely met.
By passing clean energy policies and increasing funding for money-saving programs like Focus on Energy in the next legislative session, legislators can help create Wisconsin jobs. Companies like Milwaukee’s Helios SolarWorks, a solar panel manufacturer, Manitowoc’s Orion Energy Systems, a leader in lighting efficiency, Prairie du Sac’s Tower Technologies, a renewable energy installer, and hundreds more can create more jobs if leaders work together to advance clean energy and energy efficiency policies.
In addition, such policies could attract new companies to Wisconsin and make our state a leader in the rapidly expanding clean energy economy. In April,
Ibisworld.com listed solar panel manufacturing (No. 2) and green and sustainable building construction (No. 9) among the nation’s top 10 fastest-growing industries. The poll found that more than two-thirds of voters believe clean energy and energy efficiency will create jobs and investing in these industries now can help ensure Wisconsin remains economically strong for decades.
At a time when our state and nation remain deeply divided on many issues, clean energy and energy efficiency unite people of all political stripes. With less than two weeks to the election, now is the time to ask your candidates where they stand on these important issues.
Keith Reopelle is the senior policy director at Clean Wisconsin. For more information, visit www.cleanwisconsin.org. Find the original article here.
