Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The Bizarre Local Politics of Solar Energy

—

by

James A. Bacon
in ,

by James A. Bacon

As nice as it would be to generate lots of power from the wind, one can understand why people don’t like wind turbines near them. They disrupt viewsheds. They make loud thrumming noises. They kills birds and bats. What I can’t understand is why people would object to having solar panels nearby. Solar voltaic panels don’t make noise. They lay close to the ground, and can be buffered by trees and shrubs. And they don’t harm wildlife.

More than 130 Chesapeake residents signed a petition calling upon Dominion Virginia Power, which is partnering with North Carolina-based SunEnergy1 to build a 241-acre solar farm, to relocate the facility to Dominion’s former coal plant along the Elizabeth River.

The planning commission recommended approving a conditional use permit for the projects. After postponing a hearing on the facility twice, the Chesapeake City Council is scheduled to air the issue tonight.

The solar farm, which would produce enough electricity for 5,000 homes, would occupy 241 acres. SunEnergy1 CEO Kenny Habul has said he has “bent over backwards” trying to accommodate residents, reports the Virginian-Pilot. He has invited them to help design a vegetative buffer that would surround the farm.

But the petitioners really aren’t concerned about views, judging by their petition. They’re mad at Dominion for operating a coal-fired power plant on the Elizabeth River, disposing fly ash on the site, and fighting a Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) lawsuit alleging that the ash ponds leached toxic minerals into the river. States the petition:

Rather than allowing Dominion to have its way and continue to abuse even more profitable Chesapeake acreage, let’s hold Dominion accountable for the wasted 257 acre site that is contaminating the Elizabeth River. If Dominion is being required by the federal government to implement solar energy, then Dominion should be forced to clean up the land they have destroyed, which creates a perfect site for the solar panels without additional destruction.

Bacon’s bottom line:

Check these petitions on Change.org: Grassroots groups are objecting to solar farms around the world. Most decry the despoiling of rural land. It is true, solar panels are extremely land intensive. That’s why developers tend to locate solar farms in rural areas where land is cheap and localized impacts, such as they are, effect the fewest people possible.

But that’s not the problem with the Chesapeake petitioners. They are angry at Dominion for operating a now-defunct coal plant and coal ash ponds that allegedly polluted the river (Dominion denies that it is, but a judge will decide), and now they’re blocking Dominion from partnering in the construction of the cleanest form of electricity known to man. If they want to hold Dominion accountable for its coal ash, then they should raise money for the SELC. Blocking the solar facility on environmental grounds is cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

36 responses to “The Bizarre Local Politics of Solar Energy”

  1. erikcurren Avatar
    erikcurren

    I agree, Jim, that is is bizarre for Chesapeake to oppose this solar array, especially with the rationale they’ve stated. They should welcome the clean energy, whatever happens with the coal ash cleanup.

    I do have mixed feelings about communities around the place protesting big solar arrays. On the one hand, just like Chesapeake, they also need the clean energy. On the other, doing solar in big arrays — just like a centralized coal or gas plant — may not be the most effective way to do solar.

    One thing that those complainers are right about is that the supply of good farmland is limited. If there’s a way to do solar without eating up so much good land, we should focus on that. The good news is, unlike a coal or gas plant, solar doesn’t have to be centralized. It can be distributed and it actually achieves many efficiencies that way.

    Big utility arrays do take up lots of land, as you note, but little rooftop solar doesn’t take up any extra land at all. You’re just putting a few solar panels on a roof that wasn’t being used for anything anyway. Or maybe you use a small amount of land here and there putting small solar arrays in a front or back yard.

    Utilities claim it’s cheaper per watt to build a few big arrays out in cornfields rather than to install a lot of small ones on home and office rooftops all over the place. But that fails to consider the costs of transmission, distribution and other infrastructure you require for big, centralized solar arrays that you don’t need for rooftop solar. Studies have shown that, when you do a full-cost analysis, distributed solar is actually cheaper per watt than centralized solar.

    So, while I give Dominion a B+ for doing more big solar projects, I’d give them an A for getting out of the way policywise and letting homeowners do their own solar by allowing residential solar power purchase agreements (PPAs) in Virginia. I’d give Dominion an A+ if they worked with the solar companies, as utilities are in New York State, to come up with a 21st century grid that would accommodate both centralized and distributed renewable energy.

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      erikcurren, I think your make an excellent, and often overlooked point.

      Covering over our vast expanses of open ground, whether they be good farmland, or fields of thistle, grasses, and flowers, or today’s woodland, or be expanses of pasturage or swatches of wilderness or any other large fields of open ground, to cover over not only these expanses of God’s Earth, but also the life that earth sustains now and will sustain as untold seasons pass into the future, thus condemning of those creatures and creations of God that now or in the future will thrive and breed there, and pass their riches along to most everyone and thing, all of God’s abundance, in their neighborhoods, including our children who romp there, to cover over all of this into darkness, to condemn all of this to be reduced to what is left under radiant hot and humming metal and glass, this base act is so fundamentally harmful to most everything that we depend upon, we should demand strong proof that such a draconian use of our land is essential to meet society’s critical needs that cannot be otherwise satisfied.

      And never impose this long term harm if other less harmful and draconian options and alternatives are available to meet such needs. Such as those you highlight in your comment.

    2. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      Thanks for these insightful comments, and I agree with you about distributed solar versus utility-scale solar. But doing solar on rooftops is not always easy. I’m not big on suburban builders who seem to delight in complicated roof-lines and roof orientations that no solar installer could love. The impediment to rooftop solar that most offends me is local building officials and homeowner associations who won’t take the time to be helpful to someone trying to explore distributed solar options, or even take an actively hostile position. Compared to them, DVP is positively friendly and easy to work with.

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    well this is not about solar but about Dominions corporate behavior…
    of playing the PR card for their “good” deeds at the same time they are not doing the “right” thing and waiting to be “told” to do it.

  3. TomH Avatar
    TomH

    Well said Erik. I agree completely. One of the SCC attorney’s has recommended that solar PPA’s be allowed within Dominion’s territory. We’ll see if the Commissioners agree.

    There is a good deal of anger about Dominion’s handling of the coal ash issue. The 35,000 tons of ash spilled in North Carolina spread over 90 miles of the Dan River. It resulted in arsenic levels 35 times higher than is considered safe, chromium levels 27 times above limits and lead levels 1000 times higher according to the Board that has spent years cleaning up the Dan River to attract more tourism to the area.

    The lining of ash ponds and the water treatment being requested was considered best available technology years ago in New York State. How the Virginia and North Carolina DEQ’s went decades without bringing these utility practices out of the dark ages is beyond me. It shouldn’t be about saving a little bit of money. People’s health is at stake. The remediation expenses would not be nearly as high if the problem was properly dealt with years ago. This is the cost of the “head in the sand” approach to energy issues. I am not as aware of the situation with the Elizabeth River. But the concerns are probably similar.

    Once a utility loses the public’s trust all new proposals are at risk.

  4. TBill Avatar
    TBill

    I am confused we are giving Dominion and “A” rating for solar PPA’s. I mostly hear here that Virginia/Dominion is way bad on solar. Are we actually doing something good re: solar that I may have missed?

    1. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      No, TBill, you didn’t miss anything; he WOULD give Dominion an ‘A’ IF DVP would just allow solar PPAs. They don’t now, and probably won’t. Let me explain:

      The normal homeowner solar installation is where John Doe goes out and buys the solar stuff (and the interconnection stuff and any ancillary equipment like batteries) and installs it. He can generate whatever he can get out of it for his own use, and still buy the remainder of his consumption from DVP, or sell the excess generation (if there is any) back to PJM or DVP. He can do that today in Virginia — there are no DVP restrictions but electrical interconnection safety requirements; basically nothing stands in the way but local zoning. There are solar companies out there that are more than willing to sell Mr. Doe their equipment and do a turnkey job of installing it all.

      A solar PPA is a different deal. John Doe calls in a solar company that does the same turnkey job, but charges him as little as nothing up front for it. And that solar company retains ownership of the solar and interconnection equipment, and maintains it, too. And sells the solar power to the homeowner at a flat rate that’s cheaper than DVP’s retail rate, but profitably above financing and operating costs for the solar company.

      Guess what? DVP (like other retail utilities) opposes solar PPAs because (1) PPAs do not help pay for grid costs thus eventually raising rates for other customers, and (2) a PPA, legally, is a retail sale of electricity in DVP’s exclusive retail service territory, so DVP has the right to object to it.

      The standard argument for allowing PPAs is that the PPA is a relatively painless way to get solar equipment out there in the community where everyone can see it; the solar company, which is experienced with how to do it and the permits required, does all the work at little up front cost or risk to the homeowner and commits to maintain it all, too. Of course the homeowner gets only a fraction of the continuing economic benefit he’d achieve if he bought the equipment himself; the PPA provider is a middleman. But people in the solar business feel that the big utilities should overlook that as long as the homeowner is happy with the deal, in order to encourage more “homeowner-solar” penetration.

      Typically, utilities will say, once PPAs become commonplace there is no getting rid of them. To which it’s fair to ask, so what? The retail utility like DVP can divorce its distribution rates entirely from the quantity of electricity purchased and recover all grid costs separately; that would take care of the ratepayer subsidy problem (which is nowhere near as severe as with “net metering” in any event). PPAs are not as beneficial for the homeowner but let the market figure that out; meanwhile let’s encourage all the solar development we can get, and DVP gets the experience of working with distributed solar whether it’s installed under a PPA or not.

      But DVP and most other utilities have a knee-jerk reaction against allowing encroachment upon their exclusive franchise rights. I don’t expect to see this change anytime soon.

      What’s more, PPAs are easily restructured so as to avoid the”retail sale” argument entirely. For example, just give the power output to the homeowner but charge him a fixed monthly financing and maintenance fee. But that is too transparent an arrangement for most solar PPA companies; instead, it is free publicity (and politically more appealing) for them to complain about the intransigent local bad-boy utility.

      1. TBill Avatar
        TBill

        Thank you Acbar!

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    in terms of “farm land” – . … here’s what I suggest – look around you at all the places that are near already-developed land.

    For instance, look at the land inside of interstate interchanges… land that is not accessible nor useable… for most purposes…

    then look at slopes along highways where they made cuts to level the road…

    then look at things like storm ponds and impervious surfaces…

    If a Mall could sell/use electricity from solar panels – enough to pay for the panels and the result would be far less contaminated runoff from the parking lots… then why not?

    powerline and pipeline rights-of-ways that a great deal of money is spent on to keep vegetation cleared… etc…

    how about coal ash ponds… covered with solar panels so that rainwater no longer enters the coal-ash pond and percolate through it leaching contaminants into the ground water?

    there are opportunities – not only for solar itself to use non-farmland but to garner good PR…

    again – look around you as you use your car – and count the places where land is not useable for anything that might potentially be good sites for solar…

  6. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    I drove back to Fairfax County from OBX via Elizabeth City, NC and Suffolk, VA over Highways US 158 & NC/VA 32 & US 460 as per directions from my Better Half. I saw two solar farms in North Carolina. None in Virginia. They certainly did not seem to be eye-sores to me. They were, however, located a reasonable distance from any homes.

    Interestingly, both solar farms appear to be located in Dominion North Carolina Power’s franchised territory, but could possibly be located in one or more Coop Service Area.

    1. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      I think before long you will see them in Virginia as well; there is no obstacle in Virginia, only a greater State tax subsidy in North Carolina.

      But the factor Larry seems to ignore is that those bigger “utility-scale” installations (like you saw along the way) require proximity to transmission lines. Small, distributed “homeowner” solar can be on rooftops and can connect to the grid through normal distribution lines and homeowner service connections, which are low voltage, but those 200+ acre solar fields have outputs that require direct connection to a transmission substation and may even require a new or upgraded transmission line. If that happens to be near the road where passersby see it — so be it. The future of solar is with distributed installations and Dominion should embrace them, not accommodate them reluctantly and unenthusiastically. This, by the way, is one way cooperatives can show a friendlier face to consumers.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        Oh I don’t think you can put solar ANYWHERE – I just point out that there are quite a few locations where it might be feasible and that it’s hard to believe that there are NO viable locations so .. because of that – we do none…

        it’s a question of whether or not we actually want to LOOK for sites that may work – or just not do it at all.

        is there a plan? If there is a plan – does the public know it?

        1. Acbar Avatar
          Acbar

          Who should look? One proactive thing the local distribution utility (DVP or co-op) could do is publicize such locations — but then they’d be accused of favoring particular landowners, which is something they avoid like the plague. Local planners? Not likely.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            who should look? DVP for sure… if for no other reason to let citizens KNOW that they ARE actually interested in moving forward on solar that IS possible.

            I don’t buy the excuses… If they truly look – in a honest way – the public will know they are – and understand if some of those sites don’t work out. What the public does not buy is the idea that no sites work..no matter what…

            I don’t know who DVP uses for their PR – but there are really obvious things they could do – to gain the public’s favor – even if they were cynical… the public would still THINK they were trying…

            it’s almost as if they go out of their way to alienate the public , sometimes..

        2. James A. Bacon Avatar
          James A. Bacon

          Is there a plan? I don’t think so. But there are probably a half dozen outfits scouring the state for favorable locations with the aim of assembling the land, getting the necessary permits and packaging the site for sale to Dominion or some other utility. That’s every bit as good as a plan.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            is there a Dominion “plan” for solar ..other than to say it could be ‘problem’?

            😉

            For instance – … Acbar said – ” require proximity to transmission lines. Small, distributed “homeowner” solar can be on rooftops and can connect to the grid through normal distribution lines and homeowner service connections, which are low voltage, but those 200+ acre solar fields have outputs that require direct connection to a transmission substation and may even require a new or upgraded transmission line.”

            is there data , maps that show where such opportunities to “connect” exist right now?

            It sounds like the 3rd party outfits are having to basically find ways around DVP to get their projects rather than DVP working with those entrepreneurs to guide them to where solar connects to the grid are viable.

            TMT mentioned solar farms in NC. I too have noticed them along the I-73 corridor. one near a large hog farm and another near a poultry plant… neither with close “neighbors”.

            here’s one in Massachusetts:

            http://environment.transportation.org/images/articles/I-90_Exit_13_South_small.jpg

            http://environment.transportation.org/environmental_topics/energy_greenhouse/case_studies.aspx#bookmarksubMassDOTPublicPrivatePartnershipGeneratesSolarEnergyonHighwayRightsofWay

            Highway Right-of-Way Solar Project

            In the summer of 2013, MassDOT issued a Request for Response to procure solar PV generation facilities at multiple parcels within the State highway layout with a minimal of 6 MW aggregated capacity. After a three-staged selecting process, MassDOT awarded the project to Ameresco, Inc. in June, 2014 for providing the best-value proposal.

            Solar PV arrays of 6 MW capacity can generate 7,800,000 kW hours of electricity per year, which is equivalent to the average power consumption of 1,285 homes in Massachusetts. Replacing such amount of electricity in the current ISO-NE grid with solar power will lead to 6.8 million pounds of CO2 emission reduction annually.

            MassDOT also expects considerable financial benefits from this project. Under the negotiated power purchase rates and the current Massachusetts net metering policy, this project is projected to generate a total of at least $15 million in savings/revenue (aggregated cash flow) over the 20-year contract period. The realized savings will depend on the actual power production and the net metering credit rates at the given time.

  7. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    Big Solar Farms violate the Rule Against Perpetuities.

    1. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      A topic sure to drive a law student crazy and soon forgotten by most lawyers except Estate Planning attorneys.

      No interest in property is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after the death of some life in being at the creation of the interest. Of course, it applies only to contingent remainders, executory interests, and certain vested remainders subject to open. Most states have adopted the rule, often modified, by statute.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        how does that relate to solar panels and more or less than anything else built on a piece of land ?

    2. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      If you stopped at “The Rule Against Perps” you’d have a good point.

  8. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    “Is there data , maps that show where such opportunities to “connect” exist right now?”

    I don’t know if such maps are out there but there are three problems to making them:. The locations of utility facilities are hardly secret but everyone from Homeland Security on down discourages any publication of detailed transmission maps. Then there’s the issue mentioned earlier, utilities don’t want to be seen as promoting anyone’s real estate deals, one parcel over another. But the biggest: these solar developers are competitors and once they assemble a map of all the best locations at considerable expense, the last thing they’ll do is share it. You can’t just wave these obstacles away with a wand. One of the best shortcuts I know is to go talk to the planners at PJM, who will help developers zero in on good areas to connect to the grid without a lot of additional equipment cost.

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      There are many complexities here. Hence too there a many opportunities for exceptionally creative thinkers and doers, that more and more talked about, and less and less understood, and apparently now dwindling breed of people, who truly are entrepreneurs that improved our lives, instead of endlessly claiming to do so.

      So what does this mean, for example, for the idea of putting solar power grids into our highways’ right of ways.

      Some folks consider highway rights of ways precious, nothing less than irreplaceable incubators and museums of whole multitudes of rare and threatened species of plants, including the endless possibilities locked within these plants individually and collectively.

      Hence, the act of covering these irreplaceable open spaces over with hot metal and dark glass would cause a holocaust with consequences worldwide for our planet.

      Think to of the consequences of discovering that everywhere you go, whether it be near and far, your journey will be lined for endless miles with row after row of cluttered up sterile hot panels of steel and glass. Would this not over time become a living nightmare?

      Yet the truly creative will surely find ways to install these panels in places that afford great advantage with little or no environmental degradation.

  9. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” One of the best shortcuts I know is to go talk to the planners at PJM, who will help developers zero in on good areas to connect to the grid without a lot of additional equipment cost.”

    does PJM know where the best grid connect points are and VDP not?

    1. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      Different focus. PJM doesn’t know anything about site availability but knows at a high level where you can attach new generation to the transmission grid and what the transmission equipment cost of that attachment will be (e.g., are there other applicants to connect in the same area, are any ahead of you in the first-come, first-served queue, what upgrades will be required when your turn comes). For a utility-scale solar developer looking across a wide area spanning dozens of utilities and hundreds of possible sites, that’s a good place to start. But of course, once the developer finds a few candidate locations it have to drill down more than that. DVP knows the same stuff about its parts of the transmission system but in great detail, and also knows a lot more about its distribution system and all those substations, and about the local politics and players. DVP will not want to get involved in private land deals but may have land of its own it’s willing to sell or rights-of-way it will allow to be used. Any connection to DVP’s grid facilities is going to have to involve DVP sooner or later.

      1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
        Reed Fawell 3rd

        This seems likely to turn into an explosion of endless litigation, once the effect of these solar farms on land, even smaller plots of land, and nearby lands and view sheds, and neighborhoods, become more fully apparent and understood. This Chesapeake case is likely only the beginning.

      2. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
        Reed Fawell 3rd

        These issues are akin to the comments I made on earlier article, namely:

        … 1/ I recall driving years ago hour after hour south down the high plains and big sky country of Montana. There travelers are surrounded by a wide open and empty landscape, one clothed in golden grass and punctuated by lonesome buttes of stunning proportion, works of art in immense scene that takes ones breath away.

        Hours of paradise, however, changed quite suddenly when I saw in the distance a house built on the very top of a lone butte. This gave its owner a 360 degree view but to me it ruined the view of everyone approaching it from miles around, whether they did so by coming down the road, or on foot or horseback, traveling across that amazingly irreplaceable landscape.

        Unfortunately that house proved to be the first of dozens that desecrated at the very top of most every butte for 40 miles around Bozeman, Montana. And once there at Bozeman the disillusioned traveler found a town whose appearance failed miserable to match the country surrounding it. What possesses people to foul their own nest, and do so in inverse proportion to the quality of the gift God gave?

        How easy it would have been for the builders to tuck those houses beneath the ridge lines of those 40 miles of buttes. This preserved for the owners of every home the natural appearance of its 180 degrees view all the way across that magnificent land, along with the view of everyone else for 40 miles around.

        2/ That scene on those last forty miles to Bozeman reminded me of Virginia. How Virginia state roads suffer from unsightly roadside clutter, clutter has been ruining views of Virginia since the advent of the automobile, how so few Virginian seem to care as so little is done to fix it.

        3/ One problem might be that the regulations to control and mitigate these view-shed problems are inherently tricky, as Jim’s article points out. Our culture today has another related flaw. Its regulations, however intended, seem most always taken to monstrous extremes, imposing ridiculous costs to defeat worthy and necessary projects altogether instead of building into them the protections reasonably needed to fix the original concerns.

        4/ one wonders how emerging technology may help to resolve some of the issues described in Jim’s article and do so sooner than we think. Things akin to telephone lines now put underground, or now done way with altogether by use of wireless technologies …

        See dev.baconsrebellion.com/2016/01/putting-a-price-on-the-priceless

      3. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
        Reed Fawell 3rd

        I also believe that Solar farms also, in practical effect, will tend toward violating the spirit of the Rule against Perpetuities wherein the base intent was to stop an English Earl from tying up and extending his practical control over a the considered hugely valuable asset in which the English Crown and other gentry had substantial inchoate interests – namely who owned and could control such lands among noble families and royalty in 17th century England and for how long – and how far one single owner might extend that control into the future beyond his grave to protect his special even unborn interests, hence allowing that noble to imposing a “restrain on alienation” that thwarted future transfers to outsiders. This explanation bastardizes a subject on which year long further study post doctoral scholarships have been awarded at Cambridge as recently as 1975, but it serves the purpose generally of questioning how long does our society want prime lands to be held to such draconian uses as solar panel farms amid vibrant communities, and areas that can easily and will almost surely become vibrant, or otherwise better employed. I my opinion we have exactly such a case in Talbot County Md. right now.

        1. Acbar Avatar
          Acbar

          Reed, certainly on your first point there are private structures desecrating any number of prominent hills and vistas around Virginia. Some of them were placed there by utilities but the ones in worst taste seem to me to be private homes “built to make a statement.” While not in Virginia, there’s one hilltop excrement alongside I-68 between Cheat Lake and Morgantown, WV, that makes me want to bring along a howitzer every time I pass there. And I know of no statute or rule of law preventing the permanent spoiling of the view by private structures in Virginia, other than, the theoretical right of an adjacent property owner to sue to abate a public nuisance, or of the State itself to condemn the property as an exercise of its police power. The rule against perpetuities does limit how long a deceased property owner can impose a requirement or restriction upon the use of his land after he’s gone, say by conditional inheritance; but when the time described by the rule has expired, I believe the then-owner may do what he wishes, including, choose to leave any previously-mandated offensive structures in place.

          1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
            Reed Fawell 3rd

            I am quite familiar with the rule. It base intent I believe was to prevent one’s person’s taking land out of circulation without the rationale of inheritance deemed proper at the time. Here, should solar farms be given unbridled permission based on current market forces alone, we likely will live to regret it and once it is done be unable to do anything about. There should be laws against building houses atop naked buttes. Law against paving over one’s 1000 acre farm into a sea concrete at one’s whim. And doing the same with Solar panels. This is my opinion because it harms every body who by right passes by and there are limits to all things, including covering over the earth.

        2. Acbar Avatar
          Acbar

          As for your point about tying up land in “such draconian uses as solar panel farms amid vibrant communities” — I think we deal there with whether the marketplace is the best way to define the “best use” of available land. Surely a solar power generator’s extravagant use of land near a growing urban area would succumb in time to some developer’s desire to buy the place and build houses or offices or whatever on the property. Until then, it would be a potential eyesore. But I agree with you and LarryG and ErikC and TomH, there is simply no need to build these enormous fields of silicon wafers in order to have renewable solar energy. The markets need to catch up with the reality that distributed solar is becoming so cheap that it makes sense for the average homeowner — assuming only that he has a roof oriented in the right direction (and that will become a selling point for new homes if the idea catches on). We won’t need gimmicks or purchased-power-agreements or even tax subsidies once the knowledge of how to do solar becomes widespread in our communities. And then we won’t need any more 200-acre ‘utility-scale’ solar farms, either.

      4. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        @Acbar – don’t the 3rd party folks have to know if DVP can handle the connect?

        A while ago – I had gotten the impression that DVP could, in essence, nix 3rd party connects by just saying – “not a good place to connect – denied”.

        I got that – I thought – from reading some of the commentary from Jim…. who I thought was getting some of it from DVP…

        so is the idea that DVP can just say “no” – not true?

        apparently – given the recent events… you’d think that DVP can certainly control 3rd party use of the Chesapeake interconnections.. right?

        1. Acbar Avatar
          Acbar

          It is not true; DVP cannot say no under the FERC rules governing independent system operators. What they CAN say is, it will cost $xyz to accommodate the new interconnection, and here’s how long it will take to get permits and to build the new facilities if any are required; and both DVP and PJM can suggest it would be a lot cheaper if you built over here and not there, but if the generator insists on a particular site, they must make a cost estimate for it. PJM is in charge of planning and approving these upgrades and DVP in effect does the work as builder for PJM and the interconnection applicant; if there’s a dispute over what to build or how to build it, that goes to FERC to resolve not to the VSCC. There’s a standard PJM process and standard form contracts for interconnection requests from independent generators, all on forms approved by FERC. Your federal bureaucracy at work! This process was designed from the get-go to reassure the independent generator community who were afraid of getting jerked around by the transmission owners who, often, owned much of the competing generation themselves.

        2. Acbar Avatar
          Acbar

          I don’t know the details about Chesapeake, but Dominion is wearing several hats there. It not only owns the transmission system in the area, but also owns a complete set of interconnection facilities that are sitting there unused, at a site where it owns the property, already zoned for utility use, probably served by good transportation, and with a potential labor force nearby. PJM would have to evaluate the effect on the grid of re-energizing those old facilities to connect new generation but I’m guessing the new generation could come on line there quicker and cheaper than at a totally new site.

        3. James A. Bacon Avatar
          James A. Bacon

          I don’t recall giving the impression that Dominion can nix third party connections. Not to say that I didn’t, but I don’t recall it. Frankly, I don’t know one way or the other.

  10. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” I am quite familiar with the rule. It base intent I believe was to prevent one’s person’s taking land out of circulation without the rationale of inheritance deemed proper at the time.”

    I’m confused… does that mean that Dad can’t build a barn on land his son with inherit?

    or that Dad can’t put that land in a Conservation easement without the Son’s concurrence?

    how about some practical examples?

  11. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” I don’t recall giving the impression that Dominion can nix third party connections. Not to say that I didn’t, but I don’t recall it.”

    somehow I got that impression – from the commentary… If I run by the passage – I’ll cut/paste it.

Leave a Reply

Read More