by Bill

PJM Interconnection issued a press release today documenting the dramatic increase in solar generation across the PJM region.

In 2009, the WV Legislature and Gov. Manchin passed the WV Renewable and Alternative Portfolio Standard law to sabotage the development of solar power in WV.  The results are clear.  Here is the map from the PJM press release.  Look at NJ, where incentives are strong and PV installation has been exploding.  Compare NJ's results with WV.  In fact, compare WV with just about any other state in PJM.  Pathetic.

If you are fighting PATH, you should thank our friends in NJ, because they are taking responsibility for their own power generation, insuring that coal by wire transmission lines like PATH can never be built.

Cross posted from The Power Line
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by Bill

Here’s the story

As it turns out, most media estimates of the cost of installing solar panels on your home or business are wrong, because they are using out of date figures.  Read how in this latest peer-reviewed study.

Falling demand for grid power has paralyzed additions and innovations to the obsolete centralized grid just as reduced prices and increased solar panel efficiency are putting real reliable power within our grasp.

Think grid power will stay cheap?  Not in WV (This Charleston Gazette link will die in a week.)  Here’s the latest in a long line of WV electric rate increases:

"Nearly $20 million of the hikes aim to allow Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison to recoup spending on fuel, transmission and purchased power costs. The two utilities provide electricity in 37 of West Virginia’s 55 counties. The typical monthly residential bill will increase by an estimated $3.36 per 1,000 kilowatt hours consumed."

Rising rates and falling demand have killed investment in the obsolete centralized grid.  Now is the time for homeowners and small business owners to take control of their energy destinies.  Return on investment for small investors is at its lowest point in decades.  If you have some cash to invest, your future returns will be much higher if you invest in a solar power system.  If you don’t have money to invest, consider that interest rates for home loans are also at historic lows.

As always, the message for the new year, as I always say over at The Power Line is — Stop thinking like a consumer.

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by Bill

Greenbrier County solar power installer Bob Hoffa ( has taken action to force the WV PSC to act on creating a renewable energy credit market in WV.  He has begun filing petitions to have his customers' solar power systems certified as producers of renewable energy credits.

Here is a link to one of these petitions on file at the WV PSC Web site. Important update 11/16/2011: The citation of the WV Code in the early filings (including the one I have linked to) refers to WV Code 524.  This is incorrect.  The chapter symbol apparently translated over from .pdf format to Word as a 5.  The correct citation, which appears in several places in this petition, should be "WV Code Chapter 24".  The rest of that citation is correct.

If you are currently producing solar power at your home or business, I strongly suggest you file your own petition for certification with a complete description of your system.  If you have already been certified in other states through SREC Trade or another broker, you can probably just file a copy of your certification application from that process as your WV PSC petition.

Keep in mind that only grid tied solar power systems are able to sell renewable energy credits, because those credits are based on renewable power that is put into the regional grid from your system.  Stand alone, off-grid systems cannot qualify.

WV government is not responding, so we will have to take the initiative to get this done.
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by Bill

Pam Kasey at WV's State Journal has been doing a good job of covering the state's energy picture.  In this article, she interviewed Bob Hoffa, an independent solar power installer, and John Christensen of Mountainview Solar about the fact that WV has no program to encourage the development of a solar power industry in WV beyond a rather meager tax credit.

Kasey reports, as I have been reporting here for months, that WV solar power producers have been forced to make do with selling SRECs into other state's markets.  Out of state SREC prices in those markets have collapsed and WV producers are being shut out altogether in PA and DC.  WV producers have never been able to sell into MD and NJ, two of the most advanced renewable energy credit markets.

Although Gov. Manchin and the WV Legislature passed a completely ineffectual law establishing renewable/alternative energy credit system in the 2009 legislative session, the WV PSC has not publicized any rules implementing renewable credit markets in WV.  Read Pam Kasey's State Journal article if you want to learn how this failure is holding WV solar power producers back and preventing homeowners from stabilizing their electric bills.
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Solar Decathlon 09/28/2011
 
by Keryn

Three members of the Coalition's Steering Committee spent a day at the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon last weekend.  Patience Wait, John Christensen and I joined a big group of folks for a bus trip to the event sponsored by Coalition partner Mountain View Solar & Wind.

According to the Solar Decathlon website:

"The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency."

The projects are constructed at the schools over the course of the year, and then transported to West Potomac Park on the National Mall for the week-long competition.  This year's competition features 19 different homes, which are all open for tours.  The students who built the projects are on hand to explain and answer questions.  And there's lots of interesting and exciting technology on display.  If you think solar is too expensive, or inconvenient, or complicated, you need to go take a look! 

The event is free... just get yourself there.  One tip -- bring your own lunch.  West Potomac Park is in the middle of nowhere (or as close as you can get to nowhere within DC) and the DOE-contracted food concessions left a little to be desired.  How bad can it be?  Well, on Saturday, they ran out of food before they ran out of hungry people!

The event got pretty crowded by Saturday afternoon, making the lines to get into the exhibits around 30 minutes long.  A full day only allowed me to see 10 out of 19 homes, so allow plenty of time.  My favorite house was Perdue University's INHome.  What appealed to me was the complete normalcy of it.  It was a home you could actually picture yourself living in.  Pure practicality.  That's not to say the others weren't interesting (especially New Zealand's First Light), but more in a vacation home, kinda cool but I couldn't permanently live in a house with a fold out bed, kind of way.  I think the weirdest house was California's CHIP, although I didn't have time to tour that one.  If you attend, and even if you don't, be sure to vote for your favorite house on the Solar Decathlon's website (psst... Perdue!)

I think the most disappointing thing at the event (yes, even worse than the non-existent lunch) was the Department of Energy's display.  It wasn't a home, just an information tent, without much useful information at all.  I saw this as soon as I stepped into the tent.  Who can tell me what's wrong with this picture?
Picture
DOE's U.S. wind map is missing something really important.  Here's what a real map of U.S. wind potential looks like:
Picture
That's right, DOE's map doesn't show the best wind resources of all, just off both the east and west coasts and in the Great Lakes.  According to DOE's map, none of this wind potential exists.  And, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the obvious... this was the SOLAR Decathlon, not a Wind Decathlon!  Thank goodness for a bunch of bright, innovative college students who saved the DOE from their own dumbness by putting on such a great show to distract from the DOE's poor planning efforts.
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by Bill

A little over a month ago, I posted a comment on Coal Tattoo in response to Ken Ward’s post here.  Ken posted about poor old Matt Wald’s whining that loss of coal plants would result in a need for New York to import large amounts of power from elsewhere.  Wald dismissed the ability of wind power to meet peak load needs, while completely ignoring what large scale deployment of rooftop solar could do.  I addressed that specific point in my comment.

Here is a recent article by John Farrell adapted from his Web site Energy Self-Reliant States.  In the article, Farrell states:

"A recently released solar map of New York City found enough room on building rooftops for solar panels to power half the city during hours of peak electricity use. Taking advantage of this solar windfall could allow New Yorkers to save millions on electricity costs and create tens of thousands of jobs."

Instead of joining Wald in supporting the FERC transmission agenda, Farrell goes on to say:

"The system has changed. The rapidly falling cost of renewable energy offers a dramatically different electricity future. Millions of Americans could become power generators instead of just consumers, sharing in the economic benefits of clean energy, but only if they can wrest back control of their electric grid.

As it stands, antiquated state and utility rules put a gridlock on the electric system. Just as the old AT&T monopoly limited which phones could connect to their network, utilities make connecting new wind and solar projects arbitrarily difficult. Renewable energy projects also face complex paperwork and long delays to get online, making it harder to get loans and finance projects. The Clean Coalition, a California-based renewable energy group, reports that as many as 97 percent of renewable energy projects seeking a contract and grid connection under California’s renewable energy law fail to do so. Millions of dollars and renewable megawatts are stranded by the rules of the electric system.

The rules are little better at the federal level, where regulators oversee regional electricity grid planning. Under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has routinely awarded bonus incentives for new transmission line development at the expense of local power generation. Although FERC has issued its Rule 890 requiring regional planning authorities to examine cost effective alternatives to new power lines (such as local solar power), FERC chairman Jon Wellinghoff says that the Commission largely leaves the policing of this rule to the stakeholder process, one he admits is dominated by incumbent utilities and transmission line developers.

Ultimately, the utilities remain tied to a system that supports their business model, a guaranteed rate of return on new centralized power plants or transmission lines but few rewards for allowing third parties to replace dirty fossil fuel power with clean, local renewable energy."

Cross posted from The Power Line
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by Bill

I had been planning to do a post about Matthew Wald's recent article in the New York Times, but I didn't have time right after the article appeared.  Mr. Wald was discussing the impacts of impending coal-fired power plant closings and their impact on grid operations.  The article was essentially a Xerox copy of coal industry talking points which dropped Mr. Wald, in my opinion, from journalist to media clown.

Yesterday, Ken Ward posted a story on the ever excellent Coal Tattoo about the plant closings controversy.  In the post, Ken referred to Wald's NYT article and another Xerox job by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein.

First, here's a comment about Klein's piece.  Klein wrings his hands about the looming disaster if coal's share of electrical generation falls from the current 45% level.  Ten years ago, coal fueled 50% of US electrical production.  Was that decline in coal use from 2000 to 2011 the disaster that Klein is predicting for future declines?  Unfortunately, this is the kind of silliness that we have come to expect from major news outlets that focus only on talking points from obsolete industries.

Now for Mr. Wald.  Wald expends a good deal of ink in his article saying that renewables cannot meet the challenge of fueling peak load, and that more transmission lines will have to be built into urban centers.  In his discussion, he writes only about wind power, and never mentions solar power, or, more importantly, rooftop solar generation in population centers.

Wald says that wind power cannot impact peak demand because wind is mainly still on hot summer afternoons.  He is wrong on two counts: (1) he never mentions the impact of solar production which is at its peak during summer peak electrical periods and (2) he makes no distinction between summer peak and winter peak, because wind power is often producing well during cold windy nights at winter peak.

Mr. Wald completely ignores the fact that widespread deployment of rooftop solar, in addition to creating jobs in a devastated economy, provides generation which is maximized at times of summer peak load, inside the population centers where power is needed most.  Let me repeat that: inside the population centers where power is needed most.

Because rooftop solar is a peak production at summer peak demand within the distribution system of population centers, what we really need to insure grid reliability a summer peak is (1) rapidly expanded deployment of rooftop solar generators and (2) a dramatically upgraded distribution system to handle this expanded generation capacity.

Here's an example of the problem.  The Washington, DC PSC has been pushing for years to deploy massive rooftop solar generation on the square miles of flat roofs of federal buildings in downtown DC.  The local utility, PEPCO has repeatedly told the PSC that this will not work because PEPCO's obsolete distribution lines and switches cannot handle large two way flows of electricity.

This is a distribution constraint, not a transmission constraint.  Mr. Wald and Mr. Klein need to stop basing their stories on power company PR and start talking to engineers and experts about these problems.  Until they do, I will continue to call them out as media clowns.
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Force majeur is a legal concept that allows a party to a contract to break that contract in the event of an unforeseeable event like a hurricane or an earthquake.  On August 3, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio allowed FirstEnergy to break Ohio law based on a claim of force majeur, not because of an earthquake, but because FirstEnergy could only meet half of its requirements under Ohio's Renewable Portfolio Standard.

As the solar industry and the PUCO's own staff pointed out, it is not a good way to start a state program by letting power companies break the law.

The PUCO's unwillingness to enforce Ohio law does not bode well for the future of Ohio's RPS and its SREC program.  The fact that RPS programs are so subject to the whims of politicians and regulators is a serious drawback to the whole renewable credit system.  With feed in tariff programs, a price is set at which power companies must buy power from solar producers and that is that.  Homeowners and investors can rely on a specific revenue stream to recover their investment.

As with so many other aspects of utilities regulation, RPS programs are under constant attack from power companies that want special treatment and that constantly push to have their lawbreaking made "legal" by regulators and politicians.

I am particularly upset about the PUCO decision, because I just received my certification to sell SRECs in Ohio yesterday.  In the most recent Ohio auction, out of state SRECs sold for a paltry $41, but that was too high for FirstEnergy and PUCO.
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by Bill

Here is a story in today's Charleston Gazette about another WV innovator who has developed an advanced solar hot water system.  The WV Legislature and former Gov. Manchin passed an "alternative" portfolio standard/energy credit system that ensures these kinds of renewable energy entrepreneurs will receive no support in WV.  Be sure to watch the video interview with businessman James Richards discussing the history of solar hot water systems and explaining how his Sunbank system works.

Washington, DC allows homeowners who install solar hot water systems to generate renewable energy credits (SRECs) to support renewable energy trail blazers.  In WV, FirstEnergy can generate credits from burning coal mine gob piles.

As Gazette reporter Doug Imbrogno points out, the US is now far behind the rest of the world in the manufacturing and installation of solar hot water systems.  Imgrogno quotes this account by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute:

Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute, noted in his 2009 book, "Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" that until recently solar water was a niche market for heating pools in America, even as it has grown by leaps and bounds abroad.

Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute, noted in his 2009 book, "Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" that until recently solar water was a niche market for heating pools in America, even as it has grown by leaps and bounds abroad.

"China ... is now home to 27 million rooftop solar water heaters. With nearly 4,000 Chinese companies manufacturing these devices, this relatively simple low-cost technology has leapfrogged into villages that do not yet have electricity. For as little as $200, villagers can have a rooftop solar collector installed and take their first hot shower."

And in Europe, where energy costs are relatively high, rooftop solar water heaters are spreading fast...

"China ... is now home to 27 million rooftop solar water heaters. With nearly 4,000 Chinese companies manufacturing these devices, this relatively simple low-cost technology has leapfrogged into villages that do not yet have electricity. For as little as $200, villagers can have a rooftop solar collector installed and take their first hot shower."

And in Europe, where energy costs are relatively high, rooftop solar water heaters are spreading fast...

Congratulations to James Richards and his new Sunbank technology.  This is the energy innovation WV needs whether our state's government officials recognize it or not.
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by Bill

Don't take my word for it.  Take a look here.  Out of state SRECs in PA, DC, OH markets have fallen from $250 last September, to $80 at recent sales to $50 in the last auctions.  This is a crisis for WV's energy innovators.
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