Author Archives Laura Arnold

Kansas wind power could blow through Wabash Valley in Indiana; Express your opinion Aug. 30 at 6pm at Sullivan Co. Fairgrounds

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 20, 2012 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

August 16, 2012

Kansas power could blow through Valley

$2B plan calls for wind farm electricity to be transmitted across Indiana

Howard GreningerThe Tribune-Star The Tribune StarThu Aug 16, 2012, 05:03 AM EDT

TERRE HAUTE — Indiana, known as the crossroads of America, could soon be part of a $2 billion plan to transmit across the Hoosier state electrical power from Kansas-based wind farms.
Grain Belt Express Clean Line LLC, an affiliate of Clean Line Energy Partners LLC of Houston, is in the process of becoming a regulated public utility in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.
The company plans to file as a new utility before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission in the next few months, said Diana Coggin, the company’s project development manager. Grain Belt Express, as of December 2011, became a regulated public utility in Kansas.
While a specific route has not be selected, the transmission line would travel north of Kansas City, Mo., and St. Louis, then south of Terre Haute to Sullivan, Coggin said.
At Sullivan, the line would link into existing high-voltage transmission lines for further distribution to the east, such as to New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
The company expects to invest at least $6 million in the Sullivan substation, which would include construction jobs for the project.
Grain Belt Express has sheduled a town hall meeting for 6 p.m. Aug. 30 at the Sullivan County Fairgrounds to discuss the project with the public.
The project includes a 700-mile direct current transmission line that would deliver 3,500 megawatts — 600,000 volts — of power, enough to power 1.4 million homes. That is the equivalent of the power generated by three Hoover Dams, according to a company estimate.
Once all regulatory approvals are received, construction on the private investment project could begin as early as 2015, Coggin said, then take two to three years to complete.
The transmission lines would be on single steel poles, about 120 to 140 feet tall, in a 150-foot to 200-foot right of way.
“Wind turbines are more efficient and are producing more energy at a lower cost,” Coggin said. “The Great Plains have the best wind resources,” but the user population of power is small, and transmission lines are relatively weak, Coggin said.
“Our company was formed to bridge the gap between the most abundant wind resources and larger population centers,” Coggin said.
The company has four transmission projects under way. The three others include transmission lines from Iowa to Chicago; from Oklahoma to Tennessee; and from New Mexico to southern California.
The use of direct current lines allows the company to deliver power at a lower cost per mile.
It also enables the company to “use a merchant model, whereby we can sell capacity on the line and charge only the users of the line for the costs, whereas, most transmission lines are cost-allocated broadly to all ratepayers in the region,” Coggin said.
The transmission line would enable more investment in wind farms to be built, largely in Kansas. “The land [in Kansas] is leased and ready to go, but they don’t have the customers. By connecting them to the market, more wind farms will be built,” Coggin said.
“Indiana utilities have done a great job of building up the [electrical transmission] grid here. If we can get our line to connect to the existing 765 KV lines that originate in Sullivan County, then that is how we can reach consumers in a very broad area,” Coggin said.
“Indiana can be viewed, not only as the crossroads of America, but as a hub for renewable energy,” Coggin said. “The American public wants clean energy, and costs are coming down.”
Economic benefits, Coggin said, include low-cost energy, which would cut wholesale power costs. Indiana has about 200 businesses in wind energy and transmission supply, such as General Cable, Coleman Cable, Leeco Steel, Ambassador Steel, Universal Steel, ATI Castings and Brevini Wind. Another is Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives LLC, which acquired White Construction Inc. in Clinton in 2011.
Clean Line Energy Partners is owned by Ziff Brothers Investments LLC and Michael Zilkha of Houston, who previously owned Horizon Wind Energy LLC.

Reporter Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

Indiana Culver Duck farm taps waste product to create methane; Electricity to be sold under NIPSCO feed-in tariff

By TIM VANDENACK, The Elkhart Truth
Published 7:56 a.m., Friday, August 17, 2012

MIDDLEBURY, Ind. (AP) — There's solar power and wind power.

Now Culver Duck Farms is taking the move toward use of renewable energy resources a step further — it plans to use the duck parts that don't make it to the dinner plate to help power the facility. Duck offal would be put into what's called an anaerobic digester to produce methane, making Culver Duck one of a select group of ag operations nationwide using such technology.

"It's just good stewardship and it should reduce the carbon footprint of the plant," said Tim McLaughlin, Culver Duck's plant manager, in a story published Friday by The Elkhart Truth (http://bit.ly/N4ZePg ).

Over the long haul, it will also cut energy costs and turn Culver Duck — which processes around 6.5 million ducks per year — into a "zero discharge plant," according to McLaughlin. That means the facility will largely recycle, on site, all the waste and byproducts it generates, including the duck offal — blood and innards — that'll help fuel three generators.

"The bottom line here — being green does have an economic basis," said David Turner, an environmental consultant out of Winona Lake working with Culver Duck.

The new $4 million power-generating facility — fired by methane produced from the duck parts and other inputs — is under construction north of the main Culver Duck building outside Middlebury. Work started last spring and it should be partially operating by Thanksgiving.

When fully operable, perhaps by year's end, it will generate around 1.2 megawatts of power. That's more than the 0.7 to 0.8 megawatts Culver Duck actually needs and, to put it in perspective, is enough to meet the energy needs of around 120 homes.

The heat exhaust from the three 0.4-megawatt generators will also be tapped to heat cleaning water at the Culver Duck facility, a family-owned business headed by Herb Culver Jr.

As is, Culver Duck pulls energy from the power grid, the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. grid. NIPSCO, according to a 2011 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency press release, operates four coal-fired plants that, between them, have a generating capacity of 3,300 megawatts.

That arrangement would actually continue when Culver Duck's power-generating facility comes on line. The energy from the new complex would be sold by the company to NIPSCO per a special 15-year agreement and distributed over NIPSCO's network.

However, the energy produced at Culver Duck would offset NIPSCO power generated by fossil fuels, reducing carbon emissions by that much, at least theoretically. A Culver Duck press release estimates the firm's new power generating facility will help reduce carbon emissions by more than 11,000 tons per year.

Culver Duck will get a return on the $4 million investment in as little as four years, according to McLaughlin. The plans are being privately financed, but as a renewable energy project, Culver Duck can tap into special federal tax incentives.

The firm has also applied for a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant.

Duck offal may not seem like a traditional energy source, and it isn't, at least here in the United States. Turner knows of just three other facilities in Indiana utilizing anaerobic digesters to produce methane, and cow manure, not duck offal, is the main input at those complexes.

Likewise, Norma McDonald of Organic Waste Systems, the Belgium-based firm assisting Culver Duck, said there's just one other U.S. duck processing facility using the technology, in New York. Around 200 agricultural facilities in the United States in all use anaerobic digester technology, but most are on dairy farms, cow manure being the chief input.

"That is probably about 1 percent of the number that there could be if the U.S. market were mature, similar to Germany, Denmark, Norway," said McDonald, who's based in Cincinnati. The technology is much more common in Europe, in part because higher energy prices there make it more economically feasible.

At the Culver Duck plant, duck offal will be combined with corn silage and other materials and placed in the digester, a huge, 900,000-gallon cylindrical vat still getting the finishing touches. The mix devised by Organic Waste Systems facilitates bacteria growth, which in turn breaks the offal and silage down, leading to methane production.

"There's nothing synthetic about it," said Turner.

The methane will be collected and then used to fire the three generators, which have yet to be installed. The properties of methane are similar to natural gas, which, when burned, releases fewer pollutants than, say, coal, according to McDonald.

Culver Duck had sold the unused duck offal — 18,000 pounds of it a day — for use in animal feed. Following a controversy in 2008 over tainted animal feed from China, though, the company started moving away from the practice, not wanting to get caught up in any repeat flap.

That was perhaps the most immediate spur for Culver Duck officials, aided in their plans also by Wightman Petrie, an Elkhart engineering consultant. Even so, McLaughlin said such an operation had long been mulled among company officials.

"Taking care of our environment always pays back," he said.

___

Information from: The Elkhart Truth, http://www.etruth.com

SEIA: NY Gov Cuomo Signs Legislation to Promote Solar Energy; Do you know the position of your candidates on solar energy?

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 19, 2012 / Posted in Uncategorized / 1 Comments

I am providing information about solar energy incentives from yet another state to provide "food for thought" for Indiana and elsewhere. Tell me what you think? Laura Ann Arnold-- Email me at Laura.Arnold@IndianaDG.net.

For Immediate Release
August 17, 2012

SEIA Statement: New York Governor Cuomo Signs Legislation to Promote Solar Energy

WASHINGTON – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo today approved legislation allowing solar energy to continue its rapid growth in the state. The package of bills, all related to tax exemption of solar projects in New York, is likely to have a positive impact on the total amount of electricity derived from renewables in the state. The Solar Energy Industries Association ® (SEIA ®) applauded the new laws, which will keep New York’s impressive solar growth on track to achieve its renewable energy goals in the NYSun Program.

“We applaud Governor Cuomo, as well as Senator George Maziarz and Assemblyman Cahill for their bipartisan work paving the way for solar to succeed in New York State,” said Carrie Cullen Hitt, Vice President for State Affairs at SEIA. “By making it more affordable for businesses and homeowners to install solar systems, these laws are vital to helping New York realize its goal of 45 percent renewable-powered electricity by 2015. We look forward to continuing to work with state leaders so that New York can meet its total solar market potential in the near future.”

New York is home to about 7,500 solar photovoltaic (PV) solar installations and it ranks 6th in the nation in number of PV systems. These systems have the capacity to produce 121 megawatts of clean solar energy – enough to power nearly 20,000 homes. In addition to these new laws, the state has several other policies in place to promote solar investment, including a feed-in tariff through Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) customer-sited tiered program, and net metering – rules that credit customers for excess power generated.

The bill package signed by Gov. Cuomo today includes:

Bill A 34-B: Provides tax credits for solar energy system equipment.
Bill A 10620: Provides for the amount of tax abatement for solar generating systems in cities of one million or more.
Bill A 5522-B: Exempts the sale and installation of commercial solar energy systems from state sales and compensating use taxes and allows municipalities to grant these systems a tax exemption as well.

Today, the U.S. solar energy industry employs 100,000 Americans at more than 5,600 companies, mostly small businesses, across the nation in all 50 states.

About SEIA:

Established in 1974, the Solar Energy Industries Association® is the national trade association of the U.S. solar energy industry. Through advocacy and education, SEIA® is building a strong solar industry to power America. As the voice of the industry, SEIA works with its 1,100 member companies to make solar a mainstream and significant energy source by expanding markets, removing market barriers strengthening the industry and educating the public on the benefits of solar energy. Visit SEIA online at www.seia.org.

Background Materials:

Bill A 10620/ S7711

Bill A 34-B/ S149-B

Bill A 5522-B/ S3203-B

New York Solar Fact Sheet

Media Contacts:
Jamie Nolan, jnolan@seia.org, 202.556.2886

Monique Hanis, mhanis@seia.org, 202.556.2885

Danville Plant Producing Electricity From Garbage; Project is Partnership Among Waste Management, Wabash Valley Power Assoc. and Hendricks Power Coop

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 16, 2012 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

InsideINdianaBusiness.com Report

A partnership among energy companies and organizations is celebrating a new Hendricks County facility that uses gas from landfill waste to generate electricity. Twin Bridges IV is owned by Wabash Valley Power Association and operated by Waste Management of Indiana LLC.

August 15, 2012

News Release

Danville, Ind. -- Waste Management of Indiana, LLC, Wabash Valley Power Association and Hendricks Power Cooperative Wednesday dedicated a renewable energy generation facility that uses gas from landfill waste to generate electricity.

The celebration marks the completion of the fourth landfill gas-to-energy plant at the Twin Bridges Recycling and Disposal Facility. With the addition of the 3.2 megawatts of power from Twin Bridges IV, the site now generates the equivalent amount of electricity to power approximately 14,000 homes.

Twin Bridges IV represents Wabash Valley Power's 14th landfill gas-to-energy facility, each of which is located throughout the northern half of Indiana on landfills owned by Waste Management. Through an exclusive partnership, Wabash Valley Power owns the power plants, while Waste Management of Indiana supplies the landfill gas and serves as the plant operator.

"In 2007, our Board of Directors set a goal to increase our ownership of diverse fuel resources," explained Greg Wagoner, Vice President of Business Development, Wabash Valley Power. "Yet while we want to be proactive in our pursuit of that goal, we remain committed to the delivery of affordable, reliable power to our member cooperatives. Our partnership with Waste Management of Indiana is instrumental in this process."

Fuel for the Twin Bridges landfill gas-to-energy facility is derived from wastes buried in the landfill, which generate methane gas. A network of recovery wells and pipes control and collect the methane and convey it to an on-site power plant. There the gas is condensed, purified and used as fuel to drive engines that, in turn, drive electricity generators.

The engines used in this process are manufactured by Caterpillar, Inc. at its Lafayette (Ind.) Engine Center. At Twin Bridges IV, two 20-cylinder engines burn landfill gas (methane), each of which generates 1.6 megawatts of electricity. The facility is designed to be scalable, with the ability to grow to four engines as the landfill's gas generation increases in future years.

"Our goal is to operate our landfill facilities in a way that meets the highest environmental standards," said Brad Eisenhart, Senior District Manager for Waste Management of Indiana. "The Twin Bridges landfill and gas-to-energy facilities do that and more by managing waste gases and channeling them to generate energy. This benefits the community in way that makes our people and company very proud."

Waste Management has established as one of its sustainability goals doubling its waste-based energy production by the year 2020, he said. Achieving this goal would mean its facilities across North America generate power to serve more than 2 million homes.

As part of a major expansion in 1993, Waste Management committed to make Twin Bridges an environmental and a recreational asset for the Danville community. The facility includes 975 acres with 237 acres permitted for solid waste disposal. Waste Management developed the facility to serve as an important local recreational area offering the community soccer and girls softball fields, an 18-hole golf course, a trap and skeet range, an archery range and other outdoor amenities. Twin Bridges received certifications by the Wildlife Habitat Council as a Corporate Lands for Learning and Wildlife at Work facility.

Waste Management and Wabash Valley Power partner on 14 landfill gas-to-energy facilities in Cass, Elkhart, Hendricks, Jay, Lake, La Porte, St. Joseph, and White counties.

ABOUT WASTE MANAGEMENT

Waste Management, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. It is also a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. The company's customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America. To learn more information about Waste Management visit www.wm.com or www.thinkgreen.com.

ABOUT WABASH VALLEY POWER ASSOCIATION

Wabash Valley Power Association (WVPA) is a generation and transmission (G&T) cooperative based in Indianapolis. The G&T provides wholesale electricity to 26 distribution systems in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio. Collectively, these distribution cooperatives supply electricity to more than 380,000 homes, farms, businesses and industries. To learn more, visit www.wvpa.com.

ABOUT HENDRICKS POWER COOPERATIVE

Hendricks Power Cooperative provides electricity and energy services to over 27,000 customers in west central Indiana. Formed in 1936, the cooperative is owned and controlled by the members they serve. As an electric cooperative, Hendricks Power is part of the nation's largest energy network which includes 1,000 electric cooperatives, public power districts, power supply generation and transmission cooperatives, statewide associations, regional trade and service associations, supply and manufacturing cooperatives, data processing cooperatives and employee credit unions. For more information regarding Hendricks Power Cooperative and other related services, please visit www.hendrickspower.com.

Source: Waste Management of Indiana LLC

Making Projects Happen with Group Net Metering Policies: Indiana Needs Net Metering Changes; What about your state?

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 09, 2012 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

This article from Renewable Energy World (REW) focuses on another policy concerning net metering that Indiana and other states need to address. It is the issue of aggregate net metering, virtual net metering, group net metering or community net metering. Who wants to join with me to work on this issue in Indiana?

Laura Ann Arnold

By Andrew Savage | August 7, 2012

Almost every state in the country has net metering laws on the books.

But only a few states allow a lesser-known policy that is critical for the expansion of distributed renewables, particularly community-scale solar — that’s aggregate, virtual, or group net metering. And there are a lot of good reasons to want to see its expansion.

The basic premise is that the output of a renewable system can be shared among accounts. An extension of this policy is allowing multiple electric customers to share in a net metered system’s output. This is often referred to as “community net metering,” “aggregated net metering,” “virtual net metering,” or “group net metering.”

However, whatever you want to call the policy, looking at the small number of states that permit such net metering reveals a myriad of unnecessary exclusions and caveats which limit their effectiveness — and the amount of net-metered solar.

For example, New Jersey’s policy adopted this month is restricted only to public projects. Pennsylvania’s version is called “aggregate virtual net metering” and is limited to individual customers who own multiple meters within a two mile radius. California allows for sharing of credits for multi-tenant properties and also for local governments, but only if all participating accounts receive a time-of-use rate.

But for something shared so virtually as an electron, one needs to ask why these policies include so many unnecessarily restrictive caveats based on things like geographic distance and customer class.

It’s an important enough issue that the net metering report, Freeing the Grid, recognizes aggregate and group net metering policies as key ranking indicator when evaluating states.

Vermont has the most advanced and solar-conducive policy. It started with the concept of allowing multiple farm buildings to join a “group” for on-site generation, Vermont’s expanded “group net metering” law allows offsite generation up to 500 kW (2.2 MW for military). The only requirement is that members be in the same electric utility. That’s it. Groups may be mixed among residential, commercial, and government customers. Local utilities must reward credits and bill net metering customers within a group directly. And, notably, Vermont’s law recently provided time-of-use customers a consistent method for crediting their net metered production. The system has proven efficient, easy, and most importantly encourages net metering.

Why is getting this policy right so important? The expansion of policies like group net metering help dissolve the traditional boundaries of distributed electric generation and are critical for facilitating the expansion of solar net metering.

Choosing the most productive sites: Group net metering allows installers, investors, and customers to choose the best possible site for a renewable energy system. Rather than being boxed in to a less-than-adequate roof or a geographic space too small or too shaded for the most cost-effective net metered projects, group net metering allows for ideal siting, making for a better investment with higher financial returns. Further, group net metering allows for greater flexibility when considering local planning, zoning, or historical requirements. Take for example two homeowners with inadequate roofs for solar. Under Vermont’s group net metering law, those two homeowners could easily join with a third neighbor or businesses and share the energy from a solar tracker installed at a more productive, economical site.

Achieving economies of scale: While traditional net-metered solar often makes a lot of financial sense, group net metering laws allow for economies of scale in larger project development. According to the Department of Energy, the average residential cost of solar is approximately $6/watt nationally. Meanwhile, larger scale distributed solar projects cost $3/watt (for fixed solar) or even below. Consider also that land values vary dramatically even within the same electric utilities, and you see how installing a site a little way down the road can also have a significant impact on financials of a project.

Creative solar finance: Group net-metering policies facilitate community solar projects and third-party ownership models, expanding opportunities for customers. As SunRun, Sungevity and other third-party ownership models have demonstrated, innovative solar financing has proven widely successful in deploying residential net metered solar. This innovation continues with companies like Solar Mosaic who are creating mechanisms for “crowdfunding” projects, where individuals can directly make renewable energy investments. Promising new initiatives are enhanced by conducive local policies.

Reduced default risk: For states that allow third party or Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) investors to offer group net metering, these policies reduce the risk to an investor because should a net metering customer suddenly not have an electric load (a school closes, for example) or not be able to pay (in the case of a bankruptcy), the PPA agreement could be fashioned so that the energy output from the project could simply be transferred to a new customer within the utility if allowed under group net metering law.

More solar for more customers: Group net-metering policies help enable non-homeowners to invest in solar and have also facilitated the proliferation of solar programs for affordable housing tenants. For example, California’s Multifamily Affordable Solar Housing (MASH) Program, was designed in 2008 specifically for low income affordable housing and the California Public Utility Commission reported earlier this month that virtual net metering has allowed thousands of low income tenants to receive the direct benefits of solar as reductions in their monthly electric bills.

In sum, aggregate, virtual, and group net metering polices allow for the expansion more efficient, economical projects to provide renewable energy to an increasingly diverse customer. It key, though, to get the policies right.

State policies and individual utilities should look hard at how to dissolve the traditional, unnecessary boundaries in the industry. Such a policy shift could quickly usher in a brighter distributed renewable energy future.

Andrew Savage is on the executive management team of AllEarth Renewables and is former deputy chief of staff to Congressman Peter Welch.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2012/08/dissolving-traditional-energy-boundaries-with-group-net-metering?cmpid=SolarNL-Thursday-August9-2012