SunPower Corp., a California-based solar energy company, plans to request a special use permit from James City County for a solar farm up to 35 megawatts in Norge near Williamsburg, reports the Williamsburg-Yorktown Daily. The project, which would be built on a 223-acre site, is in the early permitting stage. SunPower is in active discussions with potential buyers of the power.
New Solar Farm in the Works
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18 responses to “New Solar Farm in the Works”
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In the past year or so – I have gotten the impression from various blog posts in BR that solar could not just be put anywhere… that there had to be grid infrastructure and interconnections to support it – as well as some consideration as to how much solar input that area could accept without being destabilized.
Perhaps I did not read correctly.. (would not be the first time!).
or perhaps each of these, now numerous, solar installations have been coordinated with Dominion but not in public realm, and/or with the SCC or PJM (or not).
at this point – I don’t have a clue how this is working…despite all the prior words…both from Jim, Dominion and various commenters over the months…
it appears to me that various independent companies are installing quite a bit of solar – across the state…. with no apparent limiting factors…
apparently happening with gas generators also..to a lesser extent..
Anyone know what is really going on?
what are we missing in understanding this?
Has Dominion got any words of enlightenment?
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We have talked about this for a long time now. 1. There is nothing Dominion or Virginia has done wrong about solar, other than, in VA, not to offer the State tax incentives offered in e.g. NC. 2. Developers of utility-scale solar who’ve already decided on the PJM marketplace have 12 states to choose among. 3. Within that large area, they look for cheap, flat land located as near as possible to a utility substation with transmission capability to spare, and support from the local business/farming/political community helps. 4. PJM has to sign off on adding generation anywhere on the grid to ensure that the wires and transformers aren’t overloaded; so most developers start by talking to PJM: where can the grid take more inputs without expensive transmission system upgrades? 5. With this list in hand, they go looking for nearby cheap, flat land, first in States that offer tax incentives to solar. 6. But the good sites in e.g. NC are gone, or not for sale. So? Southern/eastern VA is a lot like NC. 7. If the lower cost of the land and transmission upgrades at a site in VA are enough to offset the higher cost of unabated Virginia taxes, the developer has a purely financial decision to make. 8. He’s made it. Voila! Now it’s Virginia’s turn!
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Well said Acbar.
I get the impression that the solar construction is migrating from NC to VA, so Virginia may well get its fair share with the passage of time.
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@Acbar – they “out of” cheap land in NC? geeze guy… I KNOW that you KNOW that rural NC consists of thousands upon thousands of acres of unused land these days including hundreds of closed down factory sites!
second- Conventional wisdom here in BR a year or so ago was that because Dominion was not friendly towards 3rd party solar that there would not be much of it and instead Dominion would be doing it’s own solar pilot projects on their timeframe.
Remember the “surprise” when Amazon apparently got dissuaded by Dominion for a site and then they went to the Eastern Shore ?
I can see folks going to PJM to get a determination but then doesn’t that mean it might conflict with Dominions own plans and they could – conceivably say that there was to available interconnection?
So let’s swing over to Louisa where Dominion DID put in solar and YET just 8 miles away a 3rd party subsequently ALSO not only puts in SOLAR but 4 times the size of Dominion’s install.
You would think in THAT case if DOminion had the ability to stop another company – they would have had the ability by saying it was a pilot and plans were to expand it – ergo – no more solar was possible in that area. Ditto from PJMs point of view… If you can put THAT much solar
excerpt: ” The developer, Belcher Solar LLC, wants to blanket some 1,000 acres of farm and forest land with solar panels, which it claims is enough to provide electricity to 14,000 homes. Producing up to 88 megawatts of power, the solar field could be among the largest on the East Coast.
By comparison, Dominion Virginia Power’s solar installation on 250 acres just east of the town of Louisa [ 8 miles away from Belcher] off Chalk Level Road will produce 20 megawatts of power when it is completed at the end of December.”
http://www.thecentralvirginian.com/massive-solar-field-proposed-in-rural-area-of-louisa-county/
that section of the world – 14,000 houses worth of solar (not counting Dominion’s project) in a county that has 16,000 housing units.
Now – one would think that – THAT much solar connected to a grid – that is delivering only enough non-solar power to 16,000 homes then you add 16,000 houses worth of solar – would seem counter-intuitive to the prior discussions here that you can’t have that high a percentage of solar relative to demand without adverse impacts to reliability… because at night you lose the solar and it all has to be replaced with grid ..
so apparently Louisa has the interconnection facilities to use almost 100% solar during the day and then 100% grid at night.
Now – the ONLY THING that MIGHT have some affect is that both of these solar sites are 9 miles from the North Anna Nuclear plant – which probably DOES have some form of interconnection sufficient for it to deliver 1900 mw of power.
so perhaps that’s the key….
but the thing is – at this point I am speculating rather than having heard from anyone else here – Dominion or other knowledgeable commenters as to how you would have two major solar installations – one of the them Dominion the other 3rd party that between the two of them deliver 100% of the power needed for a given area – and Dominion did not oppose the second 3rd party facility – on the grounds that it would be too much solar for that area.
so I’m pointing up these apparent conflicts in the narratives here and so far the explanations are not really holding water… IMHO.
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here is some more info from a different source:
” the DEQ said in a Nov. 2 notice that Virginia Solar/Belcher Solar LLC has provided the department with a notice of intent to submit the necessary documentation for a permit by rule for a small renewable energy project (solar) in Louisa County, Virginia. The project will be located on 1,305 acres across multiple parcels, on land east of Waldrop Church Rd. north of Bickley Rd. south of Desper Rd. and west of Harris Creek and Courthouse Rd. The solar project conceptually consists of approximately 370,000 x 335-watt panels plus 35 x 2.7-megawatt inverters which will provide a maximum 88.2 MW of nameplate capacity.”
this is actually west of the Dominion site and further away from the North Anna Plant…
and “Permit by Rule” –
here’s a DEQ slide presentation that talks about it and I admit – it’s not exactly crystal clear to me!!!!
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LG, some specific responses: you say:
“rural NC consists of thousands upon thousands of acres of unused land these days” — Yes, that’s true, but the solar community wants this acreage not just anywhere but in the form of cheap land next to a transmission substation and that transmission substation must have the capability to absorb the generated power without overloading. What I’m saying is, those sites are gone in the PJM part of NC (eastern, in DOM’s territory), where they can connect to the PJM grid and PJM wholesale market prices are favorable.
“Conventional wisdom here in BR a year or so ago was that because Dominion was not friendly towards 3rd party solar that there would not be much of it” — that may have been what some were saying here but I have NEVER shared that view and don’t now, either. It should be perfectly obvious that since the DOM part of NC has been the most favored part of NC for solar development, DOM is doing something right re solar!
“Amazon apparently got dissuaded by Dominion for a site” — I remember no such “dissuasion.” Amazon did go to the Eastern Shore, apparently because the co-op out there had a nearby substation with plenty of extra capability to accept the project’s power and the local government was highly supportive, but DOM didn’t dissuade them; more likely the cost of the land and the cost of transmission upgrades to locate elsewhere did that.
“I can see folks going to PJM to get a determination but then doesn’t that mean it might conflict with Dominions own plans and they could – conceivably say that there was to available interconnection?” — No! Let me make this clear once and for all: federal law REQUIRES a transmission-owning utility like DOM to hook up an independent generator ANYWHERE it wants to locate, provided, the generator must pay the cost of any transmission upgrades required. DOM CANNOT say no to the independent generator. Moreover, the application process is administered by PJM, not by DOM, to make sure things are handled without bias towards DOM’s own generators. PJM has to sign off on all transmission planning decisions within the PJM grid.
“You would think in [the Louisa] case if Dominion had the ability to stop another company – they would have had the ability by saying it was a pilot and plans were to expand it.” — No! DOM cannot favor its own generators, even with regard to connecting to its own transmission wires. The “wires” or “grid” business is, by federal law, operated as a common carrier equally available to all comers. PJM has the final say over what is an overload situation; short of that, DOM must accommodate requests to connect. If the connection requires an upgrade, there or elsewhere on the grid, PJM administers a “queue” of applicants to connect, and the first in line gets all the available transmission capability until it’s gone, then the second, then the third, and so on; if DOM is second in line and the first generator took all the transformer capability in that substation, DOM’s generation subsidiary has to pay the transmission upgrade costs, even to connect its own generator.
“So apparently Louisa has the interconnection facilities to use almost 100% solar during the day and then 100% grid at night.” It’s not just Lousa, it’s the entire 12-state PJM grid; and it’s not solar OR the grid, the solar output is PART OF the grid. Think of the grid as a 12-state-wide lake. Every generator pumps water into the lake; every consumer leaks water out of the lake. PJM’s job is to make sure the lake remains at the correct level. DOM’s job is to build and maintain its portion of the lake infrastructure (the ‘pipes’ in and out). DOM’s separate job is to run generators, alongside all the other PJM utilities’ generators and the independent generators, when told to do so by PJM in order to keep the lake at the right level.
“Now – one would think that – THAT much solar connected to a grid . . . would seem counter-intuitive to the prior discussions here that you can’t have that high a percentage of solar relative to demand without adverse impacts to reliability… because at night you lose the solar and it all has to be replaced with grid ..” No! The solar generation is PART OF the grid. This is not mere semantics: ALL generation within PJM must be allowed to connect by PJM. If PJM planners say the grid has too little transmission anywhere in PJM to accommodate the delivery of that next increment of generation at Site X to customers, that generation can only be built if somebody comes up with the money to upgrade the grid so as to remove that transmission constraint. Under federal law and FERC’s rules, that ‘somebody’ these days is whoever wants to build that next generation.
“Now – the ONLY THING that MIGHT have some effect is that both of these solar sites are 9 miles from the North Anna Nuclear plant – which probably DOES have some form of interconnection sufficient for it to deliver 1900 mw of power.” Bingo! The transmission connections into North Anna are particularly strong, and underutilized, too.
“. . . How you would have two major solar installations – one of the them Dominion the other 3rd party that between the two of them deliver 100% of the power needed for a given area – and Dominion did not oppose the second 3rd party facility – on the grounds that it would be too much solar for that area.” No! The PJM grid is not a collection of local-area ‘lakes’ but one giant 12-state ‘lake’. All that generation and all that load is commingled in the ‘lake.’ [Yes there are transmission congestion constraints out there in extreme conditions but they play a minor role in this discussion.] What PJM has said is, it starts to have stability issues if the amount of solar OVERALL gets into the 30% range, but even then, a system of generation and transmission designed specially to complement widely-distributed solar generation at nighttime probably could go to a much higher percentage of solar in the daytime. How is this possible? Primarily, it means that each one of those generator interconnections has been allowed, incrementally, ONLY IF both the daytime and nighttime flows across the entire PJM grid from all that solar coming on and going off and being replaced can be accommodated. That is how grid planning is done.
“Virginia Solar/Belcher Solar LLC has provided the department with a notice of intent to submit the necessary documentation for a permit by rule for a small renewable energy project (solar) in Louisa County, Virginia.” Yes, that is for a DEQ permit to build the plant. You can bet, the developer has already applied to PJM and obtained its place in the interconnection queue to interconnect with the North Anna substation — because what good is a plant that can’t sell its output — and obtaining the interconnection rights is probably a longer lead time process than obtaining a DEQ permit. If you really want to see what’s being built in Virginia over the next few years, go to the PJM website and look for the (public) information on all the queues for generators to interconnect at various places across the PJM grid. Some of these applications are clearly speculative and don’t tell you much about the applicants, but they are all there for you to research if you want to. You can bet, all the big independent solar developers out there track this PJM information intently, and look for land accordingly.
“so I’m pointing up these apparent conflicts in the narratives here and so far the explanations are not really holding water.” There’s no conflict. DOM simply is not in charge of interconnecting to the grid. PJM is. Here is a public PJM manual that explains this interconnection application process in detail: www[dot]pjm[dot]com/~/media/documents/manuals/m14a.ashx [And there is a public map of all the current interconnection queues available at this web location: gis[dot]pjm[dot]com/esm/default.html But you can’t see the map without registering with PJM first, for security reasons.]
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I actually read all of that – and understood much of it and thank Acbar for his patience and patient explanation! Thank You!
I DID notice one thing on the Permit by Rule which is a specific Va Code – it’s capped at 20 mw… per site…
but between Dominion’s Solar and Belcher’s Solar – one might presume that even though that solar goes into the “lake” that it probably gets consumed locally – no?
I realize anytime I “presume” something .. on this that I’m on shaky ground!
I think I DO understand the “lake” or “balloon” concept of putting power in at various spots and others drawing it out at other spots … but “in” and one place and “out” nearby… rather than far away? does that make sense?
In other words – if North Anna is putting 1800 MW into the grid – it’s probably going to get used within 50 miles that up in Pennsylvania – unless whatever is up in Pennsylvania is “down”.
or am I hopelessly unable to understand the concept? don’t sugar-coat… dumb as a stump on how the grid works? yes?
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¡The best reward for any teacher is the student who expresses interest and has an “aha” moment. No impatience here, just lack of time.
“One might presume that even though that solar goes into the “lake” that it probably gets consumed locally – no?”. I think you’re hung up on a common mechanical explanation/misconception of electricity. So let this non-engineer try to explain it as it was drilled into me. We speak of electricity “flowing” from A to B, from generator to load — but it ain’t so. What the grid delivers is “potential” — which is measured by the voltage between the hot and ground wires. The potential is maintained by the ability of electrons to flow, but it is not their flow that matters but their “potential” to flow, thus the name — remember, in an a/c system the potential reverses 60 times a second so physical electrons don’t go very far in such a system but slosh back and forth. This potential, measured in W (or kW or MW) can be increased or decreased by transformers, and is degraded by losses which are a function of distance and rate of flow among other things. A paradox? When that potential is consumed over time, actual flow does occur and work is done as the electrons slosh back and forth (measured in watthours or kWh or MWh) and the losses occur then (like water pressure falling off in a garden hose when too many sprinklers fed by one hose are turned on at once — although properly speaking a water distribution system is more analogous to d/c electricity).
Now, back to that ‘lake’ analogy: the entire lake’s potential must remain close to uniform or flow will automatically occur to level it. If too much is withdrawn over here, when all the generation is over there, maybe the lake isn’t deep enough to accommodate the resulting flow to redistribute the lake to level its surface without the system operator also redistributing some of the generating; otherwise the lake surface, the voltage, can drop locally. True, if a consumer is in a transmission-constrained area that suffers from low voltage, operating a generator on the consumer’s side of the constraint will have a greater corrective effect on the voltage there than a generator on the grid but outside the constraint. Another way to look at it is, having widely distributed generation running eliminates the constraints, thus allowing all areas of the ‘lake’ to rise up to the same level. Areawide low voltage is a special case; in general, each consumer drawing from the bottom of the ‘lake’ receives full ‘lake’ voltage regardless of whether generation is running nearby or far away and should be unaffected by which generators happen to be dispatched locally by PJM from time to time. That’s why it generally doesn’t matter to the voltage in central Virginia whether NA1 & 2 are online or the bulk of the generation is in OH — although it sometimes matters to Newport News Shipbuilding and the rest of the lower Peninsula whether Yorktown 3 is online.
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re: ” although it sometimes matters to Newport News Shipbuilding and the rest of the lower Peninsula whether Yorktown 3 is online.”
why?
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Because the transmission connection to the rest of the ‘lake’ isn’t strong enough to carry the load on the Peninsula on-peak. Both a voltage and a stability problem. Currently reducing the net load with local generation, but EPA says that must cease. So, must drop load there, or must increase the strength of the transmission connection, or must replace the local generation. This is a local issue that Dominion must fix as it’s Dominion’s generation retirement that’s changing the status quo.
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okay -but the transmission connection to “the rest of the lake” was apparently not a problem as long as there was a local generator (Yorktown) , right?
that’s where I get the idea that local generation is used locally …even if a part of the “lake”.
if it works that way for Yorktown…. why not other places?
If you had a large solar array – but it provided power for a WalMart of Amazon facility – even though still connected to the grid “lake” – it used the solar rather than the grid – when the solar was producing….
so move the solar one mile from the Amazon facility and feed the solar into the local grid – and it flows one mile to the Amazon facility… when available… and when not …Amazon pulls from the “lake”.
no?
😉
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Electricity on a synchronous a/c grid attempts to flow from high voltage to low voltage, from leading to lagging cycles of a/c. A pocket of low voltage and lagging cycles acts like a sink hole; if the lake cannot ‘level’ it, the circuits will melt trying, or shut down. From a functional point of view some of those pockets are way out on the radial delivery system and some are right in the heart of the ‘lake’ but electrically it’s the same problem. You need enough total generation and you need distributed generation and you need enough of a transmission “grid” to hold it all together like a web (a grid with multiple paths, not just strings radiating from a single source). Anytime a portion of that web can’t ‘fill a sink hole’ you must either bring up generation inside the hole or disconnect it or turn-off loads in it or build a stronger connection to the rest of the grid. Yorktown is option one, there.
As far as your Amazon example goes, that’s exactly what does happen. Only Amazon built that solar array to pump energy in over in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore, while Amazon’s load was data servers in Loudoun County west of DC. Amazon pumped into one part of the ‘lake’, withdrew from a distant part of the lake, but you can still say it was “their” energy. Why does it make such a difference, or any difference, whether the source and the load are proximate?
Of course, when a customer self-generates on site, that generation is proximate, but it needn’t be — unless it’s within a grid load pocket the system operator is trying to fill in which case the distributed location of that generation can be critical. The rest is just accounting for the ‘lake’ inputs and withdrawals. At the wholesale level PJM does that. At the retail level the numbers have to get crunched by DVP as well, which complicates the accounting. The electrons don’t care.
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let’s say for the sake of argument that the EPA decides to let the Yorktown plant stay open – AND/OR a crap-load of solar and natural gas plants also get done.
Would there STILL a problem with that area not having “good connections” to the big lake?
You could – in effect – CUT the emissions from Yorktown – in half if you could put up enough solar so it did not need to operate during the day OR you could put up 1/2 the gas plants you’d need if you ran SOLAR and wind the other half.
no?
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“So move the solar one mile from the Amazon facility and feed the solar into the local grid – and it flows one mile to the Amazon facility… when available… and when not …Amazon pulls from the “lake”.” Well, yes, you could describe it that way. More accurately, you could also say, “. . . feed the solar into the local grid and less energy from outside the local area has to flow in to sustain the voltage there.” Suppose there’s a motor running at the Amazon facility. If you could put a tag on each electron that sloshes through that motor, it’s statistically probable that more of them were put in the ‘lake’ from nearby rather than distant generation, but all that generation across the whole, entire grid was necessary to sustain the voltage (the lake level) evenly across the grid and allow it to remain connected and stable.
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Your further q. about Yorktown: OK let’s assume you’ve got the daytime covered (” blanketed”, no?) with solar — what’s the worst scenario? Residential peak use in winter is around suppertime (heating/cooking/household chores), spurred on by earlier sunsets, and late industrial shifts at the shipyard, also max institutional use (evening classes, medical), will coincide after dark, although commercial load might be down a bit after dark (the malls are still open); I’d venture to guess that lower Peninsula load would exceed the import capability in at least some evenings after all that solar gen had dropped off. So some kind of transmission fix or replacement gen. would still be needed. DVP would know the daily load profile within the load pocket in detail and the answer may already be out there in DVP’s IRP filing or SCC application for the James River crossing or somewhere on PJM’s website.
Now, I agree with you that solar on the Peninsula would allow you to run Yorktown less. But Yorktown is three old coal units — these are slow to heat up (hours!) and burn less efficiently when warmjng, and so if the load forecast says they’ll be needed AT ALL the next day DVP probably keeps them hot and steamed-up through the night rather than go through the labor- intensive shut down cycle — keeping them hot as “spinning reserve” during the daylight hours versus half-day shutdown may actually reduce total emissions as well as save expense — so the solar presence might not cause much of a reduction in carbon emissions on those days.
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so on the Peninsula – the “lake” is narrow and not able to deliver what is needed because the “pipes” are too small.. the “pipes” being the existing powerlines that would bring power from PJM?
and the way to fix it:
1. – new power lines over the James
2. – more power lines down I-64 and rail line.. corridors
3. – over the James from the South side…
4. – gas pipeline down I-64 or across the James from the South for new combine cycle plants..the total amount “needed’ might be less if a lot of solar was built to provide power during the day – and non-solar power at night?
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In short — yes. PJM and DVP will run every scenario to make sure it’s reliable under all reasonable conditions. If more than one scenario is reliable, they compare the cost of each and usually go with lowest cost absent other considrrations like aesthetics.
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As I said before, the Peninsula issues could also be solved by reducing the load (energy efficiency), local solar (storage could help with evening peaks), and maybe some combined heat and power units in shipyards, which both reduce loads and produce local energy. All of this removes the need for greater energy imports and the requirement for a new transmission line. A dedicated program could accomplish this within a few years.
All of this could be solved in 5-10 years with solar plus storage at a cost lower than from conventional units, But Dominion doesn’t have the time. They kept the search for options “inside the box” far too long. But to be fair, many of the best options aren’t necessarily best provided by the utility and could reduce their revenues.
I have made comments previously about obstacles to third solar party solar providers. Virginia and North Carolina are currently some of the worst offenders (more evidence will come when I can get to it). However, this applied only to distributed generation for commercial and residential use.
The wholesale providers have the freedom exactly as Acbar described it. It was only recently that solar could compete on a cents per kilowatt basis with gas-fired generation at the wholesale level. In their IRP cross-examination, Dominion admitted this. They reduced solar’s value in their plan by adding a penalty that was about 40% of the installed cost of solar for “grid integration”. Puzzling, because Dominion makes money building transmission lines and they don’t penalize their new gas plants for needing transmission lines.
I am concerned that we are missing the boat by not allowing similar development of more distributed solar. This would add to grid stability and resiliency. Some states require a 50/50 balance between utility scale and distributed solar. I’m not a big fan of lots of do’s and don’ts. The simple economic value of distributed generation should be enough to promote its development.
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