Monthly Archives: July 2015

Are small changes eating away at net metering?

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A new law expanding opportunities for commercial solar and wind has unexpected consequences for homeowners. Advocates worry it's one more attack on net metering in Virginia.

A new law expanding opportunities for commercial solar and wind has unexpected consequences for homeowners. Advocates worry it’s one more attack on net metering in Virginia.

Many owners of solar homes were surprised this spring to get letters in the mail from their utilities, informing them of pending changes in Virginia’s net metering rules. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission will be writing regulations to implement a law passed this year that was applauded for increasing the commercial net metering cap to 1 megawatt, from 500 kilowatts. (The SCC case is PUE-2015-00057.)

Unbeknownst to anyone not working on the bill, a late addition to the text restricts the capacity of net-metered projects to just what is needed to meet the customer’s “expected annual energy consumption based on the previous twelve months of billing history or an annualized calculation of billing history if twelve months of billing history is not available.” And while the bill is otherwise directed at commercial installations, the added language contains no such limitation—hence the unexpected letters to homeowners.

Although customers with existing systems aren’t affected by the changes, the letters have prompted concern among consumers and renewable energy advocates, especially those who are working on the various “solarize” programs around the state that use bulk purchasing to bring down costs and draw in new customers.

According to many installers, limiting a solar array to the size that just meets a customer’s electricity needs won’t matter to most homeowners, because their roofs generally won’t accommodate more solar panels than that anyway. In addition, over-producing isn’t financially rational because the utility doesn’t have to pay you the full retail value of any extra electricity you produce.

But a problem arises when it comes to new construction, or when solar is added as part of an addition or renovation that will increase electricity demand, making past use an inaccurate predictor of future demand. The same problem would arise if a homeowner decided to buy an electric car and wanted to power it with solar. The law makes no provision for these situations, so the State Corporation Commission will either have to decide how these should be handled, or leave it to the utilities.

Leaving it to the utilities seems like a bad idea to people who have witnessed the tendency of Dominion Virginia Power and Appalachian Power to interpret ambiguity in ways that further constrain the solar market. Environmental groups and MDV-SEIA, the solar industry trade association, are filing comments urging the SCC to include language in the implementing regulations to ensure that customers have the right to install a solar array big enough to cover their needs when past use alone isn’t an adequate measure.

But let’s take a step back to look at the broader policy implications of the legislation. This effort to control the size of net-metered facilities is not just a pain in the neck for potential new customers, but it also runs counter to Virginia’s stated goal of increasing the share of electricity from renewable energy. If customers aren’t going to be paid more than a few cents per kilowatt-hour for their excess electricity anyway, surely it would be in everyone’s interest to let them build surplus solar to their hearts’ content (assuming their infusions of electricity don’t create grid issues, a problem that is best addressed directly). The same holds true whether we are talking about residential or commercial, solar or wind. People who are willing to take on the cost of building clean, renewable energy should be encouraged to do so, period.

In addition to restricting the size of solar installations, the new law makes other changes. Customers now must notify their utility 30 days prior to installation of the solar facility, rather than 30 days prior to interconnection, a change some installers say may benefit customers by alerting them to problems before an installation goes forward. Additionally, the utility must approve the facility before installation; however, language in the existing law provides only a few narrow grounds for withholding approval.

Finally, the new law authorizes utilities to charge customers “all reasonable costs of equipment required for the interconnection to the supplier’s electric distribution system, including costs, if any, to (a) install additional controls, (b) perform or pay for additional tests, and (c) purchase additional liability insurance.” It also states that the reason for this is “to ensure public safety, power quality, and reliability of the supplier’s electric distribution system.” The existing law had required customers to “bear the reasonable cost, if any, as determined by the Commission, to (a) install additional controls, (b) perform or pay for additional tests, (c) purchase additional liability insurance.”

A lot of people have asked how this bill passed without any public discussion of the restrictive language and its effect on homeowners. A fair question, and one I asked, too, because when it was introduced back in January, the legislation merely provided for an increase in the commercial net metering limit. However, a look at the bill history shows that, as often happens, the added language first appeared in a committee substitute distributed to legislators at the same meeting where it was to be voted on.

It wasn’t a nefarious deal; an environmental lobbyist helped negotiate the bill, and the solar industry signed off on the changes, all under pressure to get a deal done that would improve the prospects for solar in the state. But they were also distracted. The first week of February is crunch time at the General Assembly, with dozens of other important bills in play simultaneously, many of them going through rapid-fire changes likely to either help or hurt (mostly hurt) Virginia’s energy future and its environment.

The General Assembly cannot be called a deliberative body. With thousands of bills to deal with in a 45-day session, only a few people know what is going on, and those are usually the paid lobbyists. In this contest, the person with the most paid lobbyists wins. And no one has more paid lobbyists than Dominion Power. So when pro-renewable energy bills get amended, the results favor the utility.

Progress on renewable energy in Virginia tends to run more sideways than forward, and this is no exception. Over the long run, though, the utilities face a losing battle to control and minimize their customers’ access to solar. In the next few years, battery technology will upend the top-down structure of the utility markets, and utilities will plead for access to their customers’ batteries to help meet the need for peak power and grid services.

Until then, we renewable energy advocates, customers and industry members have to keep on educating legislators about what good policy looks like. Wind and solar afford us huge opportunities in decarbonizing the electric grid, reducing pollution, and increasing business opportunities in the nation’s fastest-growing energy sector. If we open up the market instead of constraining it, everyone will benefit.

Apex moves forward with Rocky Forge wind farm as the Clean Power Plan makes Virginia utilities look harder at renewables

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Wind turbines in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. Photo credit Mitchazenia/Wikimedia Commons.

Wind turbines in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. Photo credit Mitchazenia/Wikimedia Commons.

It had begun to look like no one would ever build a wind farm on land in Virginia. Appalachian Power Company (APCo) hasn’t shown interest since the State Corporation Commission bounced its proposal for West Virginia wind farms several years ago. Just this past November, Dominion Resources let it be known the company saw no future in land-based wind. One after the other, wind development companies put their Virginia plans on hold, citing permitting issues, anti-wind local ordinances, and—especially—a challenging policy environment.

But interest in Virginia wind never went away, and now Charlottesville-based Apex Clean Energy is pushing ahead with plans for up to 25 turbines on a tract of private land in Botetourt County, 30 miles north of Roanoke. Although development is still in the early stages, the company expects construction to take place in 2017, with electricity flowing that same year.

Apex has years of experience developing wind farms across the country, but this would be its first venture in its home state. The timing seems good; the EPA Clean Power Plan will make renewable energy more valuable to utilities and state officials, and wind energy costs have grown more competitive every year. And while previous wind farm proposals in Virginia have run into opposition from landowners and others, Botetourt County officials unanimously passed a wind ordinance that will allow the project to move forward, with public backing that included an endorsement from the Roanoke Group of the Sierra Club.

Yet anyone who has followed the fates of previous wind farm proposals has to wonder whether Apex can succeed where others have failed. With that in mind, I talked with Apex’s Tyson Utt, Director of Development for the Mid-Atlantic, to gage just how likely we are to see turbines up and running two years from now.

Utt explained that the project is still in the design phase, so a lot of the pieces still have to fall into place. Studies are ongoing to determine the optimal size, type and number of turbines. The project could be as large as 80 megawatts (MW), enough to power up to 20,000 homes, and would represent an investment of up to $150 million. A transmission line crosses the site, and Apex is working with Dominion to ensure grid access.

Apex has not lined up a buyer for the electricity at this stage. Utt said options would include a power purchase agreement (PPA) or sale of the completed project to a utility such as Dominion or APCo. Other possibilities include striking a deal with a corporation that wants to buy wind energy, as Apex has done with Ikea in Illinois and Texas.

Recent events suggest the utilities could be persuaded to take a close look. APCo’s 2015 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) lists wind energy as a low-cost option for complying with the Clean Power Plan. And Dominion, in spite of all-but-dismissing wind in its own IRP, is still pushing aggressively for the right to put turbines on land it owns in Tazewell County.

Apex is not alone in thinking this year could be a turning point for wind energy in our region. Just over the border in eastern North Carolina, the Spanish wind company Iberdrola will hold a groundbreaking ceremony this week on a $600 million, 102-turbine wind farm near Elizabeth City. That project has been in the works since 2011 and was once thought dead after utilities including Dominion and Duke Energy turned down opportunities to buy the power. There has been no word yet on who will buy the power from Iberdrola.*

Making the money work

The wind industry has been buffeted by the stop-start history of the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC). With the credit, the industry boomed. With each expiration, it tanked. Today most observers doubt it will be reauthorized. This isn’t fatal in parts of the country where flat land means low development costs. Wind remains the least-cost energy option in many states. But building wind farms in mountainous areas of the east is a more expensive proposition. (Consider the logistics of hauling hundred-foot-long turbine blades up winding mountain roads.)

So almost my first question to Utt was how he thought Rocky Forge could produce power at a competitive price. Utt acknowledged the challenge posed by the loss of the PTC but insisted that even in Virginia, wind power can be competitive so long as there is some mechanism that levels the playing field with fossil fuels. If it’s not the PTC, he said, perhaps it will be Master Limited Partnerships, which currently offer tax advantages for development of oil and gas but not for wind and solar. Sales of Renewable Energy Certificates will also help bridge the money gap.

With Rocky Forge still in the early stages, and no nearby projects of its own to compare it to, Apex doesn’t yet know where the cost per kilowatt-hour will fall. But bottom line, said Utt, “We think we can be competitive with gas plants.”

These days, of course, solar energy dominates the news, with solar prices tumbling at a breathtaking rate. (Just this month we learned that First Solar Inc. has contracted to sell solar electricity to Nevada Power for 3.87 cents per kilowatt-hour, a new low price record for solar.)

Apex develops solar projects, too, said Utt. But wind and solar “are different,” and both will have roles to play under the Clean Power Plan, which he described as “a game-changer.”

“Millions of dollars in local economic benefit”

Clean energy is popular, but local economic benefits often carry more weight with county officials. Utt said the project will provide “millions of dollars in local economic benefit through tax revenues and local spending on goods and services over the 30 year life of the project.” It will also “create up to 100 full-time equivalent construction jobs and 5 to 10 long-term local operations jobs.”

It surely helps that Apex is itself based in Charlottesville, making it a known quantity. Utt said Apex “has a track record of hiring wind turbine technicians from local wind technician programs similar to the program at nearby Dabney Lancaster. At Dabney Lancaster, several local residents have completed the wind technician program,” but they have to seek jobs in other states.  “We would like to see those jobs stay in Virginia.”

For Utt, the jobs question is personal. “I was born and raised in Virginia and wanted to get into wind, and I had to leave the state,” he told me. “I spend most of my time driving to Maryland or North Carolina. We are a Virginia-based company and want to get this industry going here. We have a hundred-some people in Charlottesville, most of them working on projects in other states. We want this to set a precedent for other projects in the state.”

Birds, bats and neighbors

Public acceptance of wind energy can’t be taken for granted in Virginia, but the Rocky Forge site may be as good as it gets here. Much of the area where the turbines will go has been previously cleared, and the land is privately owned. The nearest home is a mile and a half away, and a high-voltage transmission line already crosses the property. No bald eagle nests have been found within a four-mile buffer area, and Utt said the company has had biologists on site every two weeks to study wildlife issues.

Nonetheless, a handful of opponents showed up at the county supervisors’ meeting, with one speaker reportedly comparing Apex building a wind farm to ISIS taking over the Middle East. (A certain level of anti-wind hysteria seems to be endemic to Roanoke. Just a few years ago the Roanoke Tea Party web site warned that renewable energy was part of a United Nations plot to make us all live sustainably, as un-American a concept as could be imagined.)

More seriously, opponents cite concerns about birds and bats. Studies have shown that wind turbines are a relatively minor cause of bird deaths compared to the other ways we humans kill birds (windows, wires, vehicles, pesticides and letting Kitty out the door), but bat mortality is a real concern in the Appalachian Mountains. Utt said he felt the wind industry has learned a great deal about building turbines in bat areas in recent years. Apex will include mitigation measures in its operating plan, such as shutting down the turbines at low wind speeds and during key migration times.

Apex’s proactive approach to wildlife issues, and its early engagement with local residents going back many months, helped it win over local officials and environmental activists. Dan Crawford, the chair of the Roanoke Group of the Sierra Club, invited Apex employees to give a presentation about the project in early May, and the group ended up endorsing the proposal.

The Sierra Club had supported a previous effort to build a wind farm on Poor Mountain, which stalled in 2012 when developer Invenergy gave up on Virginia. The Sierra Club supports appropriately-sited wind farms as part of America’s transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Crawford says he is hopeful now that the Apex project will move forward.

“Like a dance floor, someone has to be first. Rocky Forge will open the door for future wind power development in Virginia and the Allegheny Mountains of the Southeast.”

 

*Update: Later on July 13, the buyer was revealed to be Amazon Web Services. Anybody notice a trend?

APCo tries to quell criticism on solar policies, and just makes matters worse

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Photo credit Matt Ruscio, Secure Futures LLC

Photo credit Matt Ruscio, Secure Futures LLC

Appalachian Power Company (APCo) has spent the past two years ducking its Virginia customers who want the ability to buy solar power from third-party providers. This spring it finally unveiled what it claims will be the answer to their prayers: a bizarre, convoluted “Experimental Rider R.G.P.,” available only to certain larger customers like colleges and universities.

Under this proposal, a customer can arrange to have solar panels installed and owned by a third party developer but won’t be allowed to use the electricity or take advantage of net metering, as it would if it owned the system itself. The customer will have to continue buying dirty electricity from APCo, while the solar electricity the customer is also paying for is sold onto the grid, and the customer credited for its value according to a complicated and unfriendly formula. Instead of breaking even or saving money on electricity bills by going solar, the customer will pay substantially more.

By contrast, normally a customer who installs solar uses the solar electricity “behind the meter,” reducing the use of dirty electricity from the grid and saving money, especially if it had been paying high demand charges to its utility, as many institutions do.*

The limitations and poor economics of APCo’s proposal has would-be customers and solar advocates crying foul. According to an analysis by Professor Mark “Buzz” Belleville of the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, VA, the program is so expensive that it’s not likely to get any takers. Worse, he concludes, “The [State Corporation Commission’s] approval of the proposal would actually be counterproductive to solar deployment in Virginia.”

That’s because “APCo will be able to claim that they made a [Power Purchase Agreement] program available, and the fact no one signed up shows that there is simply not a demand for PPAs in SW Virginia. Moreover, the SCC’s approval may strengthen APCo’s argument that PPAs are not legally permissible in APCo territory unless they are entered into pursuant to its SCC-approved program, and it will lay the groundwork for utilities to argue that a customer who has a PPA is not eligible for net metering under Va. Code §56-594.”

Understanding what’s at stake here requires a short history lesson. Back in 2011, a solar developer out of Staunton, Virginia, called Secure Futures LLC installed a solar array on a rooftop at Washington & Lee University. The parties used a popular financing approach known as a third-party power purchase agreement (PPA), which can let a customer go solar with no money down by having the developer keep ownership of the solar panels and sell the electricity they produce to the customer.

Federal tax rules make PPAs especially important for tax-exempt entities like colleges that can’t use the 30% federal tax credit for renewable energy facilities. When a for-profit solar developer owns a facility, however, it can take the tax credit and pass on the savings to the customer.

PPAs appeared to be explicitly authorized under Virginia law, but when Dominion Virginia Power got wind of the arrangement at Washington & Lee it moved quickly to block it, claiming a violation of its monopoly on the sale of electricity within its territory. Dominion’s weak legal position didn’t matter; the mere threat that the utility giant would unleash its army of lawyers was enough to stop the PPA in its tracks. The university completed its solar installation using an alternative, non-PPA approach.

Dominion had won the skirmish, but at a price. The utility took such a drubbing in the court of public opinion that it eventually acceded to legislation in 2013 establishing a limited “pilot program” under which not-for-profit entities and some commercial businesses can use PPAs, at least through the end of 2015. Secure Futures has gone on to develop additional solar projects in Virginia under the legislation, including at the University of Richmond and, under a just-announced deal, at six Albermarle County schools.

APCo, however, didn’t participate in the pilot program, and it has steadfastly resisted efforts to bring it into the fold, even in the face of mounting criticism. As Belleville pointed out in a Roanoke Times op-ed in March of 2014, the failure to extend the PPA law to residents of APCo territory put southwest Virginia at an economic disadvantage, closing it off to business opportunities that are available elsewhere in the state. Yet utility lobbying successfully defeated legislation this year that would have made PPAs explicitly legal statewide.

So southwest Virginia’s state of limbo persists, with many legal experts advising that PPAs are legal there under Virginia law, but most developers and customers unwilling to expose themselves to prolonged and expensive litigation to find out for sure. This state of affairs suits APCo very well. No doubt it calculates that the worst that can happen now is that the SCC rejects its rider and prolongs the state of limbo. Then the utility’s lobbyists will tell legislators it did its best to help customers but was prevented from doing so by that darned SCC.

APCo’s actions are those of a rational monopolist facing the threat of competition; it is easier to keep a competitor out of your market than it is to improve your product. But its efforts to throw roadblocks in the way of solar also reflect the suspicion, shared by many American utilities, that distributed solar generation benefits only the customer who installs it, at the expense of the utility and other customers. They believe this justifies them in making solar more expensive, even if it means preventing projects from being developed altogether.

This is a textbook example of cutting off your nose to spite your face, given the need for a rapid build-out of distributed solar generation to fight climate change and strengthen grid security. These are not considerations that hold much sway with Virginia’s SCC, however, so let’s confine ourselves to the cost argument.

The problem for APCo is that the notion that distributed solar increases costs for other ratepayers is mere conjecture, and neither APCo nor Dominion has offered any hard data to support it. Indeed, the only evidence from Virginia points the other way, according to Secure Futures CEO Tony Smith.

Since his company’s skirmish with Dominion, Smith has worked with a municipal utility, Harrisonburg Electric Commission (HEC), to study the financial impacts to the utility of Secure Futures’ first Virginia PPA project, a 104-kilowatt array installed in 2010 at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg (outside of Dominion territory).

The case study measured only the energy and capacity-related impacts of the solar array on the utility, ignoring the wide range of other benefits often considered in “value of solar” analyses. Analyzing three years’ worth of data, Smith found that the EMU array provided an average net benefit to the utility of $22.78 per kilowatt per year. The full technical analysis is available here. In an article soon to be published in the May/June issue of Solar Today, Smith writes:

Using a net benefit model developed in consultation with HEC management, we find that in the case of the EMU solar installation, the benefits to HEC outweigh the costs . . . Our net benefit results suggest that within HEC territory, solar installed for a commercial customer with demand exceeding 1,000 kW benefits all municipal utility stakeholders, including non-participants.

Certainly it would be interesting to repeat the analysis with data from more Virginia projects, including ones in APCo’s territory. But first, those projects have to get built. Right now that isn’t happening due to the PPA limbo. If APCo’s Experimental Rider gets approved—well, the projects still won’t get built, because no one will sign up.

Flip a coin: heads APCo wins, tails customers lose.

The SCC case is No. PUE-2015-00040. An evidentiary hearing is scheduled for September 29 at the SCC offices in Richmond, Virginia.

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*Residential customers don’t pay demand charges, making this an unfamiliar concept to many people. Demand charges (KW) are fees over and above the cost of energy usage (kWh) that are assessed according to a customer’s peak power requirements, measured as the highest peak demand in a given 30-minute period during the month. For many institutions, demand charges can exceed the cost of energy usage, and using solar electricity to reduce peak demand is often a compelling reason to look at solar in the first place.