Stonington — The town continues to negotiate with a Middletown firm that wants to install hundreds of solar panels at the borough and Pawcatuck sewer treatment plants, that is predicted to save the town as much as $1.4 million in electricity costs over 20 years.

Last September, the Water Pollution Control Authority agreed to negotiate an agreement with Greenskies, the firm proposing the project.

At the time, Greenskies said it would take a month or two to negotiate the agreement and then another three to four months to design the project. At that point, Greenskies would be ready to submit an application to the borough Planning and Zoning Commission.

But so far no application has been filed.

Greenskies and its public relations firm did not respond to questions about the status of the project over the past week but WPCA Director Douglas Nettleton said Wednesday the town and Greenskies continue to discuss details of the contract.

He said Greenskies has been busy with a large solar project elsewhere in the state and there was language in the existing contract between the town and the firm that operates the plants that was complicating the negotiations.

He said he recently spoke to Ryan Linares, the business development project manager for Greenskies, who is going to review some concerns about the contract.

“It’s been a slow process. But mostly because everyone has been busy and there’s been a few legal issues,” he said. “But the board still wants to proceed.”

According to the original plan, the town would not have to invest any money in the project, as Greenskies would pay all the costs to install the $1.5 million in panels.

The town then would save an estimated $535,758 in electricity costs at the Pawcatuck plant, which, combined with savings at the borough plant of $334,037, would generate almost $870,000 in estimated savings over 20 years. And because Greenskies has made conservative estimates about the price of electricity during that time, WPCA officials say the savings could rise to $1.4 million or more.

Greenskies, meanwhile, earns its money by obtaining and selling electricity and clean energy tax credits. An earlier WPCA decision to offer its nonbinding support to the plan allowed Greenskies to apply for state energy credits.

Authority members have said they have an obligation to the ratepayers to support a project that could save money.

The installation of the 500 panels at the borough plant would encompass almost all of the enclosed grassy area that surrounds the plant and would end its use as a park. A buffer of trees would be planted to screen the panels from view.

The 900 panels planned for the Pawcatuck plant on Mary Hall Road would not infringe on the portion of the site that the Pawcatuck Little League uses for team practice.

j.wojtas@theday.com

SEATTLE – A state energy council on Tuesday, in a 5-1 vote, backed the permitting of a solar project that would spread across more than 200 acres of farmland in Kittitas County.

The Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council will submit its recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who will have 60 days to decide whether to green-light the Columbia Solar project.

The project proposed by Seattle-based Tuusso Energy would be among the first solar farms in Washington state. It would be able to generate up to 25 megawatts of power, providing enough electricity for about 1,000 homes.

Supporters view the project as an important step forward for harnessing the sun to generate electricity without releasing the carbon emissions that scientists have said are a key driver of climate change.

But the project, which would be at five different sites, has been controversial in Kittitas County. Some are concerned about the precedent that would be set in covering agricultural acreage with solar panels.

Opponents worry that the project, combined with a rising demand for clean energy, will swallow up swaths of agricultural land that produce the crops and livestock that underpin the county economy.

The Kittitas County Board of Commissioners has placed a temporary moratorium on new solar projects, and, commissioners had hoped the state council would stay out of the permitting process.

Developers have said concerns about solar sprawl are greatly overblown, and they went to the state council to override the county moratorium.

That state council, as it considered the project, included a Kittitas County representative. That representative, Ian Elliott, represented the only dissenting vote cast Tuesday.

Elliott, before the vote, said he did not think that Tuusso should have been able to bundle together five sites into one solar project. Rather, he said, they should each have been considered as a separate project.

“I think there are some risks that if this is a way we are going to do this in the future. There is a risk that they could be challenged,” Elliott said.

The state council’s permitting of energy projects is typically a slow-moving process, and may stretch on for years.

But Columbia Solar was granted an expedited review that enabled the developers to get through the process within nine months after first reaching out to the council.

Kittitas County has some 180,00 acres of farmland, and the project would occupy less than one-half percent of that acreage. The developers would lease the five sites for 30 years.

After that time, if the landowners want the acreage to be returned to farming, that should still be possible once soil amendments were added, under the terms of the lease approved Monday by the board.

ARLINGTON, Va. –The rapid acceleration of solar development by America’s electric cooperatives is transforming the energy landscape in rural America. According to a new report, electric co-ops today own or purchase more than nine times as much solar energy as they did in 2013.

In 2013, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) received a grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) to help electric cooperatives remove barriers to solar development. Through the ensuing Solar Utility Network Deployment Acceleration (SUNDA) project, NRECA worked with 17 electric cooperatives to develop models and resources for co-ops interested in developing solar energy.

“Electric cooperatives are led by and belong to the communities that they serve. This heightened community focus allows co-ops to quickly adapt to evolving consumer expectations,” said NRECA CEO Jim Matheson. “As solar costs come down, co-ops are bringing the benefits of this renewable resource to local communities and consumer-members across the country, often in places once written off as unsuitable for solar.”

According to the newly released NRECA report:

• Today, the average co-op solar project is larger than 1 megawatt, up from 25 kW in 2013.
• Half of the nation’s nearly 900 not-for-profit, member-owned electric co-ops have solar offerings for their consumer-members through projects they own, electricity they purchase or joint projects with other co-ops.
• Generation and transmission cooperatives (G&Ts) are increasingly leading on solar development.
• Electric cooperatives lead the electric utility sector in the development of utility-sponsored community solar programs. As of July 2018, nearly a quarter of all co-ops offer a total of 196 existing community solar programs.

Increased consumer interest in solar combined with a decline in the cost of installed solar were key factors in the accelerated adoption of solar among electric cooperatives.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national trade association representing more than 900 local electric cooperatives. From growing suburbs to remote farming communities, electric co-ops serve as engines of economic development for 42 million Americans across 56 percent of the nation’s landscape. As local businesses built by the consumers they serve, electric cooperatives have meaningful ties to rural America and invest $12 billion annually in their communities.

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In a community where renewables have provoked backlash, expo offered a showcase for clean energy entrepreneurs, advocates.  

Renewable energy is still a controversial topic in Floyd County, Virginia, but solar-baked chocolate chip cookies? Not so much.

Children huddled around Alex Haney, a project manager for Affordable Energy Concepts, as he slid a spatula into a black box ringed with reflective panels and scooped out a perfectly baked chocolate-chip cookie.

“The light from the sun heats up this black box, and the heat cannot get back through the glass cover, so it just heats up like your car does with the windows rolled up,” Haney said. “Some people ask, how long does it take that to charge? There’s no electricity in that.”

The solar oven was a crowd-pleaser at the second annual Floyd Energy Fest, which gathered clean energy advocates, utilities, and entrepreneurs at a rural farm atop the Blue Ridge Plateau in eastern Appalachia.

In a community where wind turbines and other renewable energy have provoked backlash, the Floyd Energy Fest offered an apolitical venue to talk about solar panels, electric vehicles and other energy technologies.

As part of Appalachian Virginia, two-thirds of Floyd County consistently votes Republican in elections. The rural, mountain county also is home to a progressive community that grew out of the “back-to-the-land” movement of the ’60s and ’70s. The result is a vibrant, entrepreneurial culture with an emphasis on self-sufficiency.

The juxtaposition of traditional and alternative lifestyleshas also produced a cultural clash that has bled into politics, including how county government addresses climate change. In 2017, a coalition of local environmental and civic groups presented the county board of supervisors with a draft resolution that called for more use of renewable energy.

Mason Adams / Energy News Network

Alan Maurer of Baseline Solar in Blacksburg, Virginia, speaks with attendees at the 2018 Floyd Energy Fest.

The board tweaked the resolution, amending it to remove an endorsement of wind energy due to a political fight over wind turbines in 2011, and passed it in October. The backlash hit two months later when a group of residents complained that a commitment to renewables threatened their freedom to drive cars and use wood-burning stoves. Eventually, the board passed an amended version of the resolution that endorsed an all-of-the-above energy policy, including “cleanly and inexpensively accessible fossil fuels.”

That fight through last summer and fall served as an unstated backdrop to the Floyd Energy Fest, but political division was largely absent. Present instead was the kind of enthusiasm found among the children hovering around Haney’s solar oven, as well as his other solar “toys.” One child moved his hand back and forth in front of a solar panel as others watched the corresponding effect on a water fountain it powered. Another panel powered a fan that cooled people on a sweltering day when temperatures hovered in the 80s.

The rural energy fest spun out of a larger energy expo in nearby Roanoke, western Virginia’s largest metro area. The smaller Floyd Energy Fest included three dozen displays and about 200 attendees in a rural county of about 16,000.

Billy Weitzenfeld, executive director of the Association of Energy Conservation Professionals (AECP) and president of SustainFloyd, which sponsored the festival, said he prefers the newer iteration: there may be fewer people, but there’s more meaningful engagement between them. During a delay in the proceedings when a presenter misplaced a jump drive, for example, Weitzenfeld fielded questions from a couple of dozen people. He touted the federal solar tax credit, which allows the deduction of 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system. Someone asked about Appalachian Power, which along with a few smaller municipal utilities supplies most of the electricity in southwestern Virginia.

“I have a love/hate relationship with ApCo,” Weitzenfeld said. “It’s changing and getting better because of the grassroots. It has to, because residential solar is exploding.”

Haney noted three general types of people he’d met that day: potential customers seeking information; people seeking smaller systems for an RV or tiny house; and those just curious to learn more about renewable energy.

“I’m getting a lot of questions about Appalachian Power,” Haney said. “People are asking if they’re helpful with solar and what are the rules. Appalachian Power will do a net metering concept, which is probably the most affordable way to get your money back with solar. They’ll let you put extra solar on the grid and give you credit on your power bill for that. So you’ll save money for every kilowatt hour that solar produces, even if you’re not home to use it at the time.”

Earl White of Big Indian Farm approached Haney with questions about outfitting 14-foot-by-14-foot cabins for his three sons with solar power. White is yet another Floyd County resident with his own business, operating a bakery and farm store with his wife in Indian Valley, a community in the county’s western end. White clearly had already done some research on solar generation, but was looking for more information from the multiple solar vendors and advocates at the festival.

Other solar installers, such as Rick Brown of SolShine Energy Alternatives in Floyd County and Alan Maurer of Baseline Solar in Blacksburg, also used booths at the festival to educate the curious and court potential customers. All were taking a “wait-and-see” approach to Virginia’s sweeping new energy law, which would appear to encourage more development of solar generation but in a way that benefits utilities building large projects more than residential customers investing in smaller units. None seemed worried about federal tariffs on Chinese goods increasing the price of solar panels, saying they expected a small price increase at worst.

Bigger companies and utilities such as U.S. Cellular and Appalachian Power ran booths as well, but the festival’s bread-and-butter were small advocates, stakeholders, and entrepreneurs hustling for a piece of the clean energy industry.

One vendor that occupied the middle ground on that spectrum was Apex Clean Energy, a Charlottesville company with about 220 employees that has developed 2.2 GW of wind projects in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas, with more than twice that planned for the near future.

The company has proposed two projects in western Virginia: Botetourt County’s Rocky Forge Wind, a 25-turbine, 75 MW wind farm, has received county and state permits, and the company is seeking customers to buy power. Farther southwest in Pulaski County, Apex is still beginning the process of winning support and permits for Pinewood, a 150-MW wind farm with 30 to 40 planned turbines on land owned by the Boy Scouts of America. Apex hopes to have the projects operational by 2019 and 2020, respectively.

Charlie Johnson, a development manager with Apex Clean Energy, said the company was at the festival for community engagement around both projects. So far as finding customers, it is closely watching the private sector.

“The latest thing we’re seeing is a lot of corporate interest in these projects,” Johnson said. “We’ve sold two projects to IKEA, to offset their North American utility consumption. That’s been a huge driver for the industry.”

Mason Adams / Energy News Network

Mark Hanson of the Renewable Energy & Electric Vehicle Association showed off his Chevrolet Spark at the 2018 Floyd Energy Fest.

Besides businesses, advocates like Mark Hanson ran booths. As president of the Renewable Energy & Electric Vehicle Association, Hanson showed off his Chevrolet Spark, with its “ELEC KAR” vanity license plate, and answered questions about technology and the regulatory and utility ins and outs of acquiring solar generation for one’s house. Through REEVA, Hanson has guided dozens of people through the process, and he knows the blueprint for getting approval.

Amidst these wonks and entrepreneurs were the curious and crusading. One person handed out “No Fracking Pipeline” stickers opposing the nearby interstate Mountain Valley Pipeline now under construction. Others tried to wrangle their kids, who got their faces painted, sought out solar-powered bugs, and played with the solar “toys” on display near Haney’s solar cookie oven.

For the children, those toys made for a fun way to pass the time. For clean energy advocates in Floyd County and Virginia, they represent a potential future for rural America.