Southern New England is Selling Us Off

Comment

Comment by Kathy Sherman on October 29, 2015 at 1:27pm

I believe that FERC order 1000 already does require the ratepayers of states mandating "renewable energy" to pay for the transmission upgrades required for their long-term contracts. However, for the first contracts by MA utilities First Wind, the utilities and Dept of Energy Resources persuaded the regulators (Dept. of Public Utilities) that no new transmission was needed for Oakfield and Bingham and that reliability of electric supply or its costs were of no concern. Only the Attorney General tried to protect consumers and raise the issue. Conservation groups like Conservation Law Foundation certainly do feel free to add in transmission costs of Canadian Hydro at a rate equal to the cost of supply. Connecticut regulators didn't even get to decide on the contracts for CT utilities and whether the generation of Number Nine Mountain was going anywhere; that decision was usurped from the regulators.

Interestingly, the outfit that sued over the decision by the CT Dept. of Energy accepting No. 9 as the winner, is the same firm creating a ruckus about Big Solar near Bennington VT (I say big; it is 4 MW but a lot of deforestation), Allco Renewable headed by Mr. Melone. Watchdog points out that Melone fought the Nantucket Sound/Cape Wind project out of concern about the impact of it on his $15 million vacation home on Martha's Vineyard. There are many things wrong with Cape Wind, but that is not high on the list.

I looked into Allco yesterday because I wanted to know of they had pursued an appeal of their loss in court about No. Nine. If they are related to the Allco that crashed and burned about '08, and I think they are, they make SunEd, Enron and maybe even contemporaneous Madoff look clumsy and small time; very small time. But Allco bought some of the ConEdison generating assets; the utilities are migrating to where the profits are (transmission/distribution/pipelines) and mergers that defy the spirit and intent of "deregulation". How can mandated long-term contracts possibly support a "competitive market place" for generators, especially smaller hydro, and how can they as a mechanism merely to finance the capital investments in these projects, serve to make competitive markets that serve the ratepayers? Incentives are for new facilities so they drive out the smaller generators, even those who imstalled on-site generation early. They are BIG because no one wants to deal with contracting and approving many small projects even if they might contribute more as reliable generation, storage or on-site use/demand management reducing use.

VT admitted it was economic, but not that the stabilization of price is to price unaffordably high. With the loss of Pilgrim Nuclear and VT Yankee (foes of NH Seabrook are right behind and testifying in the same breath as foes of Pilgrim), utilities will have even greater dependence on natural gas for baseload and "firming up" those intermittant resources. We are already burning much more coal but those are scheduled to shutter. The economic driver is by the investment banks that arrange these deals and tax equity investors - they get their money whether TerraForm was undone as the "warehouse" a month later or not. It was for that reason that I found the story of Allco so interesting. Not for those impacted - and that will include a lot of people already "energy impoverished" throughout New England (hear CT Attorney General ahead of Governor's Conference - the default rate is extraordinary and those defaults cost the rest of the consumers, not the utility), and those whose livelihood and health/welfare are impacted locally.

I sure hope you can get LePage to understand that this is NOT good for rural Maine economy.

Soon there'll be another (maybe more coordinated) tri-state regional request for proposals. You can help nip them in the bud as NH did in '13 and as FMM was active in doing in MA. Siting issues, approvals, economic viability of the entity, do ultimately matter!!