ANDERSON – Before a standing-room-only crowd, the Madison County Board of Zoning Appeals on Tuesday approved a special use and two variances that will allow a controversial solar farm to move forward.
However, it’s unknown whether the petitioner, Chicago-based Invenergy, will go through with the proposed 850-acre Lone Oak Solar Energy Center because of several conditions placed on the project.
“Practically speaking, this is far from the end of the game,” said the BZA’s attorney, Jeff Graham. “There’s a lot of hoops for the petitioners to jump through before they can start building.”
Officials from Invenergy did not return calls for comment.
In addition to attorneys for Invenergy and the BZA, residents who opposed the project also were represented by lawyers at the vote.
The BZA voted 3-1 on a special use for the solar farm.
The approved measure requires a 500-foot setback from non-participating residential structures and 200 feet from property lines. However, an agreed waiver between Lone Oak and each nonparticipating resident would make possible a setback of 250 feet from a residential structure and/or a property line setback of 100 feet.
Board member Don Pine voted against the variance because though Invenergy officials initially said this would be the only solar farm in the county, he believed they may request an expansion, Graham said.
“Three (BZA members) allowed the project to expand slightly to make up for the setback condition they put on the solar farm people,” he said.
The BZA also unanimously approved two variances, one a construction start date extension and the other setting the face amount for a decommissioning bond.
Normally, projects must begin within three years of approval, Graham said. However, the BZA, at Invenergy’s request, will allow construction to start no later than Dec. 31, 2023.
Invenergy estimated the cost for decommissioning the solar farm once it no longer is usable would be more than $5.6 million, minus the estimated salvage value of $1.7 million, Graham said. The company proposed a bond set at the salvage value, he said, but the BZA insisted that it be for the entire amount.
“That was a major move,” he said. “Invenergy had provided a list of conditions what they were willing to do. It’s possible those restrictions would be restrictive enough that the petitioners may not proceed.”
Invenergy also must obtain additional bonds, including one for potential damage to drains and another for potential damage to roads, Graham said. The amounts for those bonds will be set by the Drainage Board and the Transportation Board, he said.
As renewable energy and natural gas costs decline, it's harder to justify coal energy. Many utilities also are closing coal-generation plants in Indiana and elsewhere. Dwight Adams, dwight.adams@indystar.com
The changes came slowly, then seemingly all at once.
Next door, your neighbor installed solar panels. You started seeing more and more electric vehicles. When you drove north on I-65, you hit a patch of farmland dotted with large windmills. And what about that big field of solar panels at the airport?
You may not have thought much about it, but every time you flipped on the lights or plugged in an appliance, you were part of a revolution.
Until recently, virtually all residents in Indiana, and many states across the country, had little say in where their electricity came from or how it was produced. Bills arrived in the mail — whether from one of the big, investor-owned utilities or a smaller municipal or rural cooperative — and customers paid them.
But Indiana utilities no longer hold a monopoly on energy generation in the state.
Today, the prospect of running your home entirely on electricity produced by you or your community is no longer a fantasy, but a real possibility. As renewable energy technologies become less expensive, ratepayers have started taking generation into their own hands. Homeowners are installing solar panels. Communities are exploring investing in their own, small-scale solar farms. Big businesses — Facebook, General Motors, Cummins — are signing contracts with wind farms.
Utilities must adapt, or risk becoming irrelevant.
For utilities it means they are becoming less of a power producer and more of a power mover. And the nation’s aging infrastructure, first built in the years after World War II, was not built to accommodate electricity generated by both utilities and their customers. So they have their work cut out for them.
“Their challenge today is to reinvent themselves as fast as things are moving,” said Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance. “They have to create the airplane as they are flying it.”
And for customers, some predict a "democratization" of the grid.
“Today we just say, 'we are the utility and this is what we have,' but that will transition to 'what do our customers have in terms of what they’ve produced, and what do they need,'” said Fred Mills, vice president of communications at Indianapolis Power & Light. “What it comes down to is that we will be a more customer-centric organization.”
Utilities respond to change
The transition could take decades, but the utility industry plans decades ahead and is making decisions about these investments now.
Thus far, major utilities still generate the vast majority of Indiana's electricity. And part of the reason is that utilities have fought customers' ability to generate their own energy.
State lawmakers voted in 2017 to drastically curtail Indiana’s net metering program, for example, under which utilities had to pay customers the retail rate for any electricity their solar panels put back on the grid. Solar experts said that 180-degree shift came way too soon, before residential solar had really gotten off the ground in the state.
The coal industry, which fuels 65% of the state's electricity, is also weighing in on those decisions. Coal interests want to keep Indiana utilities using big power plants, fueled by coal. But the utilities are increasingly turning to other fuels.
In September, NIPSCO, a northern Indiana utility, made history in the state when it announced that it would retire its coal fleet and invest in renewable energy. By 2028, they project that 65% of the electricity they generate will come from solar, wind and battery storage — and 0% from coal. According to their analysis, the change could save ratepayers over $4 billion in the long run.
Coal lobbyists are throwing their weight behind the Trump administration's promises to roll back clean air and water regulations, saying that will make the fuel cheaper in the long run. But customer demand, advancing technology and a glut of natural gas are propelling the transition to cleaner energy generation.
Even with the regulatory rollbacks, NIPSCO representatives said, renewable energy will remain cheaper than coal in the future. The catalyst for change: market forces.
Large companies are not waiting around. Cummins Inc., for example, has started purchasing some of its energy from wind turbines. General Motors is powering plants in Ohio and Indiana with wind and solar energy, and Facebook is pursuing a wind project in Indiana to power its data center.
"If people want cleaner things, then companies and technology will respond to that," said Mills from IPL. "I think that is a quicker and more effective way than rules and regulations.”
Duke Energy is still in the early stages, planning to announce its newest plans for generation later this summer. Duke recognizes that technology is advancing for both utilities and customers, said Stan Pinegar, Duke Energy’s Indiana president. Energy companies are no longer the only ones that have the capacity to produce power.
“It is naive to think customers won’t have more options in the future, we are seeing it already and will see it even more down the road,” he said. “So we just need to find our space and be really good at it.”
More customer-centric
One of those options for customers is solar, though not quite in the usual way.
Just last month, the state's first solar cooperative was launched in Indianapolis — a way of lowering the cost to install panels for residents by bringing them together and using a single installer at a group rate.
The lead organization on this effort, Solar United Neighbors, has helped hundreds of people in as many as 10 states install solar panels through such cooperatives. The Indianapolis project is still in the first stage of gathering interested residents. So far at least 25 people have signed up.
“We’re about empowering homeowners and empowering communities to see a future of an energy democracy, where electricity is in the community and not in the hands of investor-owned utilities,” said Zach Schalk, program director at Solar United Neighbors.
With electricity not in the utilities' hands, “one of the big risks is [they] become irrelevant and customers, big and small, figure out how to go around ]them],” Soholt said. “It’s hard to make the total grid be irrelevant. But people will figure out a way to get what they want and utilities can figure out how to be a part of that or either be left behind.”
A few utilities have guessed that their role might shift away from power producer and more toward that of grid operator.
“We are the wires provider,” Pinegar with Duke said. “So in the future we will be relied on as the transporter of power.”
Those wires and the grid were built to have power flow one way, according to Scott Wright, executive director of market strategy and design with MISO, which coordinates the delivery of electricity across 15 Midwest states.
But as more people produce their own electricity, and sometimes more than they need, they send that energy back onto the grid — necessitating a two-way street.
That is spreading out where power is produced. Such “distributed generation” likely will require more investment in the grid, according to Wright, including more transmission lines and more monitoring to help keep things flowing and balanced.
Batteries will also play a crucial role in that future, according to Mike Holtsclaw,director of power delivery engineering at IPL.
While renewables hold great promise, he said, they need to be paired with something — such as batteries. Wind and solar inherently will have valleys in their power generation, so batteries can help harness the excess energy produced and deploy it when it’s needed.
In 2016, IPL opened the first grid-scale, battery-based storage system in the MISO region to respond to fluctuations in energy supply and demand as well as support the ongoing integration of renewable resources.
Batteries continue to drop in price, and it’s likely the future will see many families with their own systems in the garage to supplement their power generation. Still, utilities believe customers will rely on the grid for back-up power if someone should fall short.
All those changes will leave customers’ utilities bills looking drastically different.
Customers won't be charged as much for the fuel they use — wind and solar are free. But they'll have to pay to connect to the grid and have the guarantee to move power from one place to the other, IPL said. It also would include some sort of supplemental charge if any of the utility’s electricity was used.
But could it also include a credit — the utility paying customers — for overflow electricity that was sent elsewhere? That remains unclear.
Charting Indiana's future
Even as the change takes place, few in the industry predict a 100 percent renewable future and there will be much debate about what technology will fill that gap in the near and long term.
Time will tell, as a task force to chart Indiana’s energy policy will begin soon. Many people see this as an opportunity to look at how Indiana’s energy will be produced in the future.
It’s expected that coal interests will weigh in heavily, as they did during the legislative session and during their push to enact a moratorium that could have stalled electric utilities' efforts to move away from coal. But in a surprising legislative twist, that measure was defeated.
The utilities have said this transition is pressing forward, and they need the ability to adapt and innovate to stay ready and the keep the lights on.
That task force is expected to complete its report by December 2020.
“To me,” Soholt said, “the challenge is the speed in which we can achieve these changes and how quickly can we make this transition.”
Indiana Regulators Reject Utility’s Proposal for Massive Gas Plant
The billion-dollar facility would have cost utility customers more for an unnecessary plant
INDIANAPOLIS—Today, regulators at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission rejected a proposal for a new gas-fired power plant by Vectren, a CenterPoint Energy Company which is a Houston-based utility company. Vectren first proposed the plant in early 2018 to replace the bulk of its aging, inefficient coal-burning units. The plant was proposed to be built on the site of Vectren’s existing AB Brown coal-fired power plant located in Posey County near Evansville, Indiana. The project had an estimated cost of nearly 1 billion dollars and was expected to raise the energy costs of southern Indiana residents upon completion.
Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana (CAC) and Earthjustice represented a coalition of Indiana energy customers, including CAC, Sierra Club, and Valley Watch, who challenged the proposal at the Commission. Representatives of coal industry groups along with the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC), the state agency representing ratepayer interests, also opposed the proposed gas plant as not in the best interests of Indiana consumers.
Attorneys for the groups contended that Vectren’s Integrated Resource Plan was based on shoddy modeling that rushed energy customers into a large capital investment with little to no consideration of less risky, lower-cost alternatives to the 850 megawatt plant. The groups argued that the proposed gas plant was over-built and far exceeded the demand of Vectren’s customers. Consumer parties also noted that the plant would lock consumers into a fossil fuel energy infrastructure for the next 40 years, over the life of the plant, and not allow flexibility to employ conservation and clean energy alternatives.
The coal industry keeps pushing the lie that utilities need on-site fuel to keep the lights on, but in reality, Vectren—like every other utility across the country—can reliably serve its customers without keeping dirty, expensive, and inefficient coal units running, and without maintaining a reliance on fossil fuels and building massive gas plants to replace their dinosaur coal fleets.
“We are pleased with the Commission’s decision to protect Indiana energy customers.” said Earthjustice attorney Thom Cmar. “Southwestern Indiana customers already have the highest rates in the state. This proposed plant would only generate dirty energy that they do not need, and put them on the hook for the cost.”
“Kudos to Chairman Huston and the Commission. It takes a lot of courage to say no to the utilities,” stated Kerwin Olson, Executive Director of CAC. “The Commission did the right thing and protected the captive ratepayers of Vectren from this absurd and risky proposal from Vectren.”
“As a representative of Sierra Club and as a Vectren customer raising my daughter in Southwest Indiana, I am grateful to the IURC for this decision,” said Wendy Bredhold, senior campaign representative with Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “Their proposed gas plant was too big, expensive and risky, and would have committed our community to burning fossil fuels for decades to come. Vectren made the right decision to retire its coal plants, and now has an opportunity within their 20-year planning process this year to do the right thing and replace coal with clean and affordable wind, solar, energy efficiency and battery storage.”
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A link and/or a copy of the 38 page IURC Order in Cause No. 45052 referenced above can be found here:
IURC Issues Order in Vectren South's Proposed Generation Plant Case
Order Includes Decision on Proposed Generation Plant, Federal Environmental Compliance Projects to the F.B. Culley Unit 3 Generating Station
INDIANAPOLIS – The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (Commission) issued an order today in Cause Number 45052 unanimously denying a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) by Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Company (Vectren South) to build an approximately 850 MW combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT).
The Commission found that Vectren South’s evidence does not convince it that the utility’s proposal would allow it flexibility and optionality. The Order states, “The proposed large scale single resource investment for a utility of Vectren South’s size does not present an outcome which reasonably minimizes the potential risk that customers could sometime in the future be saddled with an uneconomic investment or serve to foster utility and customer flexibility in an environment of rapid technological innovation.”
The Commission recognized that the requested preapproval would obligate regulated customers for a 30-year period in a time of rapid change. Prospective reliance on future market conditions brings risk. The Commission stated in its Order, “A metric biased in favor of portfolios with surplus generation is speculation we decline to embrace.”
Further, the Commission’s Order states, “We are hard pressed to see how reliance on one facility for so much of the Vectren South system requirements is consistent with maintaining flexibility to respond to changing market conditions and technological change.”
Looking forward, Vectren South is scheduled to submit a new integrated resource plan (IRP) in 2019, and the Commission instructs Vectren South in that submission to present a more thorough analysis that fully evaluates all possible options for continuing to provide reliable, efficient, and economical electric service.
The Order states, “Vectren South should use its scheduled 2019 IRP process to address problems in its modeling, incorporate more options for partnering with other entities and competitive inquiries into smaller-scale options that can be acted upon swiftly to meet the end-of-2023 date upon which additional capacity may be needed.”
In today’s Order, the Commission also approved a request by Vectren South for federally mandated environmental compliance projects and related relief for the coal-fired F.B. Culley Unit 3 generating station. The Commission found that Vectren South considered alternative plans for compliance with the Effluent Limitations Guidelines (ELGs) and the Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR Rule), and said that the evidence shows that the Culley 3 Compliance Projects would extend the useful life of the unit and are reasonable and necessary.
To review the Commission’s Order in Cause Number 45052, as well as all related documents in this case, please visit the Online Services Portal here and search by the Cause Number.
A common if disingenuous argument against the adoption of residential solar is that not only can systems be expensive, but that expense is a lost cause because solar systems devalue homes and the homes around them. Directly contradicting this, Zillow has released a report stating that homes with solar panels sell for 4.1% more than their generation-naked counterparts.
The premium was calculated by comparing sale prices and listings from March 1, 2018 to February 28, 2019, controlling for bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage and location.
This 4.1% average equates to $9,274 on average nationally, though the monetary mark is much more regionally dependent. For example, Riverside, California’s price premium average is 2.7%, almost 1/3 lower than the national average, however that 2.7% represents $9,926, obviously higher than the average and reflective of higher property costs in California.
The mark that really stands out both as a percentage and a numerical value is New York City. Solar homes in the Big Apple represent a bigger differential national average at 5.4%, which, and it’s well known how expensive property is in the city, translates into $23,989 numerically.
The Zillow report outlines the reasoning for this sale premium is a mixture of investment and taste. On the investment front, some homeowners are willing to pay more for a house with a system, rather than buying a different house and then working out the logistics of installing a system and paying for the materials and installation, which in some places could be more than the pre-installed premium. In other cases, solar systems aren’t the only features that contribute to this premium, as other luxuries like heated floors factor in.
With these variables considered, some buyers just want the system purely to see relief on their electrical bills if they know that they’re high energy users or because they are environmentally conscious.
Kevin Burkett | Pharos-TribuneThe former Trelleborg site on the west side is one of two proposed locations for solar farms.
A section of land along Holland street on the west side is a second area being looked at for a future solar farm installation. Kevin Burkett | Pharos-Tribune
Logansport is giving consideration to two solar farm proposals — one that could potentially lower electricity costs locally is in the works, and another that is about to be presented.
With consumer interest in “green power” — electricity generated from renewable sources such as wind, landfills, the sun and hydroelectric generation facilities — continuing to grow in Indiana and throughout the nation, solar energy production has been steadily rising in popularity.
A week ago, Logansport Utility Service Board members discussed a proposal from Inovateus Solar to build a solar panel field on the city’s west side. The land in the 1400 block of Holland Street is owned by Milt Cole of Cole Hardwood and is primarily located within the city limits.
The proposal calls for Inovateus to install solar panels on the property and sell power generated from the panels to LMU as part of a purchased power agreement (PPA) — a financing option with low upfront capital costs.
“These proposals present the city and utilities with some options,” Mayor Dave Kitchell said in a news release. “Not only could we lower our utility costs, but we could do it without any expense to the city or the utilities.”
While there are a number of federal tax incentives available for solar projects including the Rural Energy for America Program, Business Energy Investment Tax Credit, Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System and the Residential Renewable Energy Tax Credit, because municipalities operate as nonprofits, they cannot directly take advantage of federal tax breaks.
However, PPAs allow cities and towns to still reap the benefits from these incentives. Solar energy companies finance, build, own and maintain a system on the municipal-owned site, selling the solar electricity generated back to the city at a reduced, fixed rate for an extended period of time (typically 15 to 20 years).
LMU’s existing PPA with Next Era allows for the city to purchase a portion of its power supply from other renewable sources located in the city. If approved, Inovateus would provide power at a cost lower than what LMU is currently paying to Next Era, which has a five-year agreement with LMU.
At the conclusion of the lease, LMU would have the option of purchasing the system or having it removed at no cost.
Meanwhile, a second solar proposal will be presented to the City Council Utility Committee next week. That proposal will focus on the placement of solar panels on the former Trelleborg site — a property already owned by the city.
The proposal would still allow for a subdivision approved by the city to be built on the property.
“The other part of this is that it will increase the property tax base of the community,” Kitchell said. “The Trelleborg site in particular is roughly 10 acres that currently provides no benefit to the city and is expensive for us to mow and maintain.”
The ad hoc Solar Committee, which includes representatives of the Logansport City Council, Logansport Utility Service Board and the Mayor’s Office, is expected to explore various issues related to the proposals.
Solar power in Indiana continues to be on the rise in recent years thanks to new technological improvements and a variety of regulatory actions and financial incentives — particularly a 30-percent federal tax credit for any size project.
Solar farms utilize a large-scale deployment of solar panels to generate renewable electricity for sale to utilities, government entities, individual customers and organizations.
In today’s climate of ever-tightening budgets, cities and towns across Indiana are motivated to explore a variety of options to reduce their operating costs. Increasingly, towns and cities are evaluating their publicly-owned buildings, land and parking lots in a comprehensive approach to developing solar energy locally.
In Indiana, the electric utility industry is pursuing a variety of green power initiatives to help municipalities meet their financial and renewable energy goals, including the development of renewable generation facilities, agreements to purchase renewable energy on the wholesale electric market and green power billing options for customers.
In 2015, Indiana ranked 18th among U.S. states for installed solar power. It’s estimated that 18 percent of electricity in Indiana could be provided by rooftop solar panels.
