Mass Megawatts Wind Power Inc (MMMW)

[StonewallPatriot]

Without certification from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an arm of the US Department of Energy, MMMW cannot proceed with any community solar projects that would hook up to the electric power grid; however, when MMMW gets the certification, then there is a ton of money to be made! There's a fascinating article in the Washington Post today: "Utilities wage campaign against rooftop solar" Let's get moving on this, MMMW$$$


By Joby Warrick March 7

Three years ago, the nation’s top utility executives gathered at a Colorado resort to hear warnings about a grave new threat to operators of America’s electric grid: not superstorms or cyberattacks, but rooftop solar panels.

SolarCraft workers install solar panels on the roof of a home in San Rafael, Calif. According to a report by the Solar Foundation, the solar industry employs more workers than the coal-mining industry. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

If demand for residential solar continued to soar, traditional utilities could soon face serious problems, from “declining retail sales” and a “loss of customers” to “potential obsolescence,” according to a presentation prepared for the group. “Industry must prepare an action plan to address the challenges,” it said.

The warning, delivered to a private meeting of the utility industry’s main trade association, became a call to arms for electricity providers in nearly every corner of the nation. Twaging a determined campaign to stop a home-solar insurgency that is rattling the boardrooms of the country’s government-regulated hree years later, the industry and its fossil-fuel supporters are electric monopolies.

The campaign’s first phase—an industry push for state laws raising prices for solar customers—failed spectacularly in legislatures around the country, due in part to surprisingly strong support for solar energy from conservatives and evangelicals in traditionally “red states.” But more recently, the battle has shifted to public utility commissions, where industry backers have mounted a more successful push for fee hikes that could put solar panels out of reach for many potential customers.

[Solar energy’s new best friend is .?.?. the Christian Coalition]

In a closely watched case last month, an Arizona utility voted to impose a monthly surcharge of about $50 for “net metering,” a common practice that allows solar customers to earn credit for the surplus electricity they provide to the electric grid. Net metering makes home solar affordable by sharply lowering electric bills to offset the $10,000 to $30,000 cost of rooftop panels.

A Wisconsin utilities commission approved a similar surcharge for solar users last year, and a New Mexico regulator also is considering raising fees. In some states, industry officials have enlisted the help of minority groups in arguing that solar panels hurt the poor by driving up electricity rates for everyone else.
Utility companies take on solar power View Graphic

“The utilities are fighting tooth and nail,” said Scott Peterson, director of the Checks and Balances Project, a Virginia nonprofit that investigates lobbyists’ ties to regulatory agencies. Peterson, who has tracked the industry’s two-year legislative fight, said the pivot to public utility commissions moves the battle to friendlier terrain for utilities. The commissions, usually made up of political appointees, “have enormous power, and no one really watches them,” Peterson said.

Industry officials say they support their customers’ right to generate electricity on their own property, but they say rooftop solar’s new popularity is creating a serious cost imbalance. While homeowners with solar panels usually see dramatic reductions in their electric bills, they still rely on the grid for electricity at night and on cloudy days. The utility collects less revenue, even though the infrastructure costs — from expensive power plants to transmission lines and maintenance crews — remain the same.

Ultimately, someone pays those costs, said David K. Owens, an executive vice president for Edison Electric Institute, the trade association that represents the nation’s investor-owned utilities.

“It’s not about profits; it’s about protecting customers,” said Owens, said. “There are unreasonable cost shifts that do occur [with solar]. There is a grid that everyone relies on, and you have to pay for that grid and pay for that infrastructure.”

Nearly 174,000 people work in the solar industry compared with close to 80,000 in the coal industry. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Whether home-solar systems add significant costs to electric grids is the subject of intense debate. A Louisiana study last month concluded that solar roofs had resulted in cost shifts of more than $2 million that must be borne by Louisiana customers who lack solar panels. That study was immediately disputed by clean energy groups that pointed to extensive ties between the report’s authors and the fossil-fuel lobby.

Other studies commissioned by state regulators in Nevada and Mississippi found that any costs are generally outweighed by benefits. For one thing, researchers found, the excess energy generated by solar panels helps reduce the strain on electric grids on summer days when demand soars and utilities are forced to buy additional power at high rates. Other experts note that the shift to solar energy is helping states meet new federal requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while also producing thousands of new jobs. The residential solar industry currently employs about 174,000 people nationwide, or twice as many as the number of coal miners.

“Independent studies show that distributed solar benefits all ratepayers by preventing the need to build new, expensive power plants or transmission lines,” said Matthew Kasper, a fellow at the Energy & Policy Institute, a pro-solar think tank. “Utilities make their money by building big, new infrastructure projects and then sending ratepayers the bill, which is exactly why utilities want to eliminate solar.”
Solar-panel costs plunge

Residential solar panels have been widely available since the 1970s, but advances in the past decade have transformed home solar energy in many areas from an expensive novelty to a cost-competitive alternative to traditional power.

The average price of photovoltaic cells has plummeted 60 percent since 2010, thanks to lower production costs and more-efficient designs. Solar’s share of global energy production is climbing steadily, and a study last week by researchers from Cambridge University concluded that photovoltaics will soon be able to out-compete fossil fuels, even if oil prices drop to as low as $10 a barrel.

SolarCraft workers Joel Overly, left, and Craig Powell install a solar panel on Feb. 26 in San Rafael, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In the United States, utilities have embraced solar projects of their own making, building large solar farms that produce nearly 60 percent of the electricity that comes from the sun’s rays.

“We are pro-solar,” said Edison’s Owens. “We are putting in more solar than any other industry.”

But the arrival of cheaper solar technology has also brought an unexpected challenge to the industry’s bottom line: As millions of residential and business customers opt for solar, revenue for utilities is beginning to decline. Industry-sponsored studies have warned the trend could eventually lead to a radical restructure of energy markets, similar to earlier upheavals with phone-company monopolies.

[Pebble Mine debate: EPA becomes target by planning for rare ‘veto’]

“One can imagine a day when battery-storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent,” said a 2013 Edison study. “To put this into perspective, who would have believed 10 years ago that traditional wire line telephone customers could economically ‘cut the cord’?”
Support from conservatives

The utility industry’s playbook for slowing the growth of residential solar is laid out in a few frames of the computer slide show presented at an Edison-sponsored retreat in September 2012, in a lakeside resort hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo. Despite a bland title—“Facing the Challenges of a Distribution System in Transition”—the Edison document portrays solar systems as a serious, long-term threat to the survival of traditional electricity providers.

Throughout the country, it noted, lawmakers and regulatory agencies were “promoting policies that are accelerating this transition — subsidies are growing.” The document, provided to The Washington Post by the Energy & Policy Institute, called for a campaign of “focused outreach” targeting key groups that could influence the debate: state legislatures, regulatory agencies and sympathetic consumer-advocacy groups.

Two-and-a-half years later, evidence of the “action plan” envisioned by Edison officials can be seen in states across the country. Legislation to make net metering illegal or more costly has been introduced in nearly two dozen state houses since 2013. Some of the proposals were virtual copies of model legislation drafted two years ago by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a nonprofit organization with financial ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

SolarCraft worker Craig Powell carries a solar panel on the roof of a home in San Rafael, Calif. The average price of photovoltaic cells has plummeted 60 percent since 2010. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Most of the bills that have been considered so far have been either rejected or vetoed, with the most-striking defeats coming in Republican strongholds, such as Indiana and Utah. There, anti-solar legislation came under a surprisingly fierce attack from free-market conservatives and even evangelical groups, many of which have installed solar panels on their churches.

“Conservatives support solar — they support it even more than progressives do,” said Bryan Miller, co-chairman of the Alliance for Solar Choice and a vice president of public policy for Sunrun, a California solar provider. “It’s about competition in its most basic form. The idea that you should be forced to buy power from a state-sponsored monopoly and not have an option is about the least conservative thing you can imagine.”

Where legislatures failed to deliver, power companies have sought help from regulatory agencies, chiefly the public utility commissions that set rates and fees that can be charged by electricity providers. Here, the results have been more encouraging for power companies.

[Report: Effects of climate change ‘irreversible’]

Last month’s decision to slap monthly surcharges on solar customers in south-central Arizona was hailed as a breakthrough for the utilities in a state that has turned back several similar attempts in the past two years. The Tempe, Ariz., Salt River Project, one of Arizona’s largest utilities, approved the new fee despite furious opposition from solar users, including about 500 people who packed the commission’s hearing room for the Feb. 26 vote.

Solar companies already have filed suit to stop a similar fee increase approved last year by Wisconsin commissioners, and others are watching closely to see if New Mexico’s Public Service Co. will adopt a proposal to impose a monthly surcharge of up to $35 on solar customers there.

Regulators in each of the three states have cited fairness as the reason for the proposed increases. But solar advocates say the real injustice is the ability of electric monopolies to destroy a competitor that offers potential benefits both to consumers and to society.

“It’s really about utilities’ fear that solar customers are taking away demand,” said Angela Navarro, an energy expert with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “These customers are installing solar at their own cost and providing a valuable resource: additional electricity for the grid at the times when the utilities need it most. And it’s all carbon-free.”

Related:

Wind and solar energy have tripled since 2008

Solar energy is playing well in conservative parts of the U.S.

The best idea in a long time: Covering parking lots with solar panels
Joby Warrick joined the Post’s national staff in 1996. He has covered national security, intelligence and the Middle East, and currently writes about the environment.




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McKite
1:28 AM EST
The portrayed behavior of the utilities industry is emblematic of the big U.S. industry at large: when given a choice of embracing new developments and fighting them as threats, they opt for fighting them, in particular by using their ability to influence legislation. This behavior may well hasten the downfall of the U.S. economy as opportunities to advance and improve performance on the macro level are forsaken for short-term protection on the micro level.

For the utilities industry, this behavior is particularly deplorable since the industry exists to serve the community in its geographic scope and enjoys competitive protection from the community's government.

I wonder if there is a utility that is active in both, central power generation plus distribution and decentralized solar generation offers.

As I am making plans to build a new house, I will make sure active solar is part of the design as well as power storage. Why would anyone put themselves at the mercy of an industry that can't depart from the status quo?
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
1:10 AM EST
@dalyplanet
"I am generally in agreement Hans-Joachim although I think there needs to be two pronged approach. CO2 free baseload and everything else."

As soon as a Danish share of renewable energy is reached (they have 30% wind electricity), the baseload becomes 0%.
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Randje K Randje
12:12 AM EST
My heart bleeds for the power industry brokers. Their brazen sense of entitlement outstrips and outpaces any conservatively drawn welfare-state- mentality-caricatures I've ever encountered. The simple fact is that power-for-money ought never have seen the light of day upon this planet. Economies driven by social necessities are predatory, abberrant, and greed-driven. They invariably act to seize control of governmental bodies and regulatory agencies and a few men doggedly suck the life-force out of the economy, while flagrantly breaking the rules of their own professed economic ideology. I give you the Koch brothers, if you need an example of corrupt power suppliers runnning full throttle to gain control of America's political system. If the horse-and-buggy industry had wielded the same influence, they would have fought the advent and introduction of the automobile into our culture at every turn. And in retrospect, they might have been doing us a good turn while trying to do themselves one.
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middletnen
3/8/2015 11:29 PM EST
Oil pollutes my air and I don't like it. I never gave them permission to pollute my air. Profits of every Oil Company is therefore illegitimate and must be turned over to the peoples' whose air they have polluted.

Do the oil companies say sorry about ruining your air, let me compensate you with some money, some cash. Does the Big Oil company say of course I foul your air, even if you don't use my product, even if you aren't my customer so then I will work to make sure that Oil that we process won't' do that in the future. Does any government say I will protect you from oil pollution? Where I am I to turn to make the Oil company stop polluting my air, my children's air.

Take away the profits of the OIl companies, if they want to continue to produce oil that fouls my air they cannot make a profit off of their actions at the same time.

Let other energy industries bloom that do not pollute my air, Let Solar and Wind and Hydropower companies keep their profits since they don't pollute. And if ever Oil companies want to make a profit let them clean the air they first polluted and never pollute again be the low bar of their continued existence.
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L8
3/8/2015 11:23 PM EST
First off nuclear plants are terrorist targets, solar panels are a lot less dangerous. Next WE energies in Wisconsin wanted to charge people extra if they wanted their energy to come from their clean solar panels, and wind turbines what a racket! Tesla will develop new batteries, and people will start storing their power instead of selling it to the power companies at peak. It's already possible to live off the grid by storing the extra power made during the daytime, and better batteries will make this all work better. The power company is whining but the population is increasing every year, more and more homes are being built, which means technically there is more customers to offset the customers that do go to solar. Either way power needs to made by some source, and to be a middle man using power created by one neighbor to feed another neighbors needs and charging that other neighbor for that power is cheaper for the utility company who doesn't need to send as much power down the lines from the power plant. As electricity travels down the lines its loses power along the way, so the power company has to send a lot more power because of power losses, but when your power comes from your neighbor there is less current lost because there is less line travel involved. The power company is shooting themselves in the foot with this fight, because better batteries will be built, more people will leave the grid, and the power company won't get anymore free power from these people to supply to their neighbors with, so they will have to send extra power down the lines to supply them. The power company makes out from solar by having less maintenance costs, they don't have to repair the customers solar panels the customer does, and solar costs stay the same. Fuel costs to feed their power plants on the other hand constantly changes. Solar helps Utility companies by keeping energy generating costs more predictable, and less dependent on fuel costs which fluctuate constantly.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 10:28 PM EST
@eric654
"Are you referring to what happens when a plant goes down? I'm talk about load variations which solar providers would fall under since they carry load."

I'm talking about both. Predictions for solar and wind are now good enough, that we (in Germany) normally don't need gas plants for balancing, we can do it with hard coal plants (which need some hours for firing up).

_Unpredicted_ fluctuations of solar or wind are some hundred MW, possibly (but that's an extreme event!). Since we need 3.2GW of hot and synchronized standby anyway (= the two biggest plants), a few hundred MW of unpredicted fluctuation get a shrug.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 10:31 PM EST
So the atomic power is simply wasted when there is high solar on the line.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 10:36 PM EST
@dalyplanet
"So the atomic power is simply wasted when there is high solar on the line."

At the moment ... no. It has happened a few times in winter storms, that nuclear plants had to be throttled, but the next shutdowns of nuclear plants will take care of that.

But you are right, that nuclear and a high share of renewables does not mix, because nuclear plants aren't controllable enough.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 10:36 PM EST
Or excess power is shunted to Norway sometimes at negative rates (paying) to pump hydro storage, to be purchased back often at very high rates while conventional generation spins up to stability.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 10:44 PM EST [Edited]
Technically, it makes a lot of sense to store renewable energy in Norway, because pumped storage can reach 90% efficiency, better than any other storage method known to mankind. Plus we have that efficient 450kV DC Norned link.
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mopsie
3/8/2015 10:16 PM EST
Just your good old capitalist greed at work, as usual
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 10:12 PM EST [Edited]
@eric654
"Mentioned only briefly in the doc: "The variability of wind power necessitates a higher safety margin." probably applies to solar as well."

While it might have been stated in some doc, it is plain nonsense without any foothold in reality. Of course wind energy and solar energy fluctuate, but >95% of that fluctuation is predictable in advance.

This isn't the 1990s, when prediction models weren't good enough.

Germany now has 8.6% wind and 5.8% solar (2014). We need plenty of reserve for it, but not a single kW of standby reserve. The worst event for grid stability in the last years was the emercency shutdown of Neurath G and F, August 30th 2012, with more than 2GW lost within minutes. The network rode through it at 49.94 Hz instead of 50. No unpredicted fluctuation of solar or wind comes close, by a huge margin.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 10:47 PM EST
Germany still gets more power from burning trash and trees than from solar despite having the largest by far nameplate solar installed per megawatt consumed.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 10:59 PM EST
"8.6% wind and 5.8% solar" is slightly less than 100%, yes.

And if you look at a map,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db...
it's not too much of a surprise, that California or Arizona might get more kWh from a kWp.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 11:06 PM EST
And Northern California, Washington and Oregon have the Bonneville Dam and others to dance with. In the south there is the Hoover Dam. But solar and wind are not the full replacement or even half the replacement even in rich countries. In developing countries replacing the expected 1200 to 1700 new coal boilers before they are built will not come from solar and wind.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 10:56 PM EST
I applaud Germany and its people for leading the way on this difficult transition. Germany shows the way for what is possible with wind and solar.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 11:06 PM EST
There are 2 ways to look at it:

1) It is utterly expensive. No question.

2) It isn't more than people might transfer to a development aid agency at christmas time. And I'm convinced, that jump-starting solar energy will have more of an effect in the 3rd world, than all the development aid given by Germans in the last 50 years.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 11:26 PM EST [Edited]
I am generally in agreement Hans-Joachim although I think there needs to be two pronged approach. CO2 free baseload and everything else. The US can provide the CO2 free baseload engineering and should. Germany has no interest and the US has thousands of highly trained, under utilized engineers in this field. We have engineers that designed an airplane that never has to land, and huge aircraft carriers that run 30 years on a single load of fuel.

I do appreciate and consider your informed comments.
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5amefa91
3/8/2015 10:01 PM EST [Edited]
The grid for distributing power from a few gigantic coal powered generators is an obsolete 20th century technology. In 2015 we can already see it's end coming up. As little as the utilities like it, they are about to be disrupted. Solar is getting so cheap per Watt that we don't really need net metering to justify it.

Cogeneration of electricity and heat using Sterling cycle natural gas engines are over 90% efficient overall, so that is an additional option for home owners.

Like or not, the future comes, and it is distributed generation.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 10:14 PM EST
There are thousands of generation sources, tens of thousands across the US. Utilities do not care what the regulators tell them to use because their profit is guaranteed. At this point in time there are conversations as to the cost and reliability issues for incorporating rooftop solar.

If there is large scale incorporation of rooftop solar at high cost so far, and no resultant drop in CO2 emissions, what is the purpose?
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John-ManuelAndriote
3/8/2015 10:00 PM EST
It's exciting and encouraging to see an issue that is fundamentally American--self-reliance--on which both conservatives and progressives can agree. Not only that but it's good for the environment. Let the utility companies squeal as their monopolies get busted up just like Ma Bell.
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westrim
1:01 AM EST
Unfortunately, there are many other issues where they should agree, but conservatives have been successfully misled by big business and/or allowed their mistrust of government to decide their position rather than bare facts and merits.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 9:27 PM EST [Edited]
@dalyplanet
"How does rooftop solar improve grid stability?"

The noon peak is eliminated. This even works in a country like Germany, which does not have domestic air condition.

Eliminating the secondary 17.00 peak is a different story, this would need lower battery prices than we have at this moment.
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eric654
3/8/2015 9:30 PM EST
More complicated than that, see my link below. Stability doesn't just refer to amounts of power and load. Eliminating the peak saves money by letting the utility lower the safety margin. But stability defined in the PDF doc has more meanings than that.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 9:41 PM EST [Edited]
"Eliminating the peak saves money by letting the utility lower the safety margin."

That's completely wrong. Reserves are not related to demand, but to the supply side. In central Europe, the rule is: "Hot standby = supply by the two biggest plants".

In Germany, where the biggest single sources are 1,6 GW nuclear reactors, this means 3.2 GW in hot and synchronized standby.
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eric654
3/8/2015 9:51 PM EST
Are you referring to what happens when a plant goes down? I'm talk about load variations which solar providers would fall under since they carry load.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 9:55 PM EST
There is no noon peak

there is a 7 pm peak in summer and a 7 am 7 pm peak in winter
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GeoType
3/8/2015 9:24 PM EST
I've always been able to generate heat w/ my wood stove when power went out during a winter ice storm, etc...no problem.

When the derecho came thru in July 2011 I had no way to generate cool [AC].

After day 2 I broke down and bought a 5500 watt generator.
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Hans-Joachim_Zierke
3/8/2015 9:31 PM EST [Edited]
The USA has SAIDI figures in the 200-250 range. (System Average Interruption Duration Index, minutes)

Singapore has the best figures in the world, and Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland top the European list with results around 20.
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GeoType
3/8/2015 9:37 PM EST
We lost power for 8 days after hurricane Hugo. I don't know how many minutes that is...but it's got to be a lot.
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pam8
3/8/2015 9:43 PM EST
8X24X60
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GeoType
3/8/2015 9:49 PM EST
it seemed like much longer..
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TLN2
3/8/2015 10:00 PM EST
Try running 12 elevators up 100 stories on that!
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5amefa91
3/8/2015 9:11 PM EST
Power reliability hereabouts sucks. And it sucks due to dis-investment deliberately done by the Utilities.

Backups are getting to be necessary.
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GeoType
3/8/2015 9:32 PM EST
where is that?
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5amefa91
3/8/2015 9:38 PM EST
Here.
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Palladia1
3/8/2015 10:28 PM EST
I think the question, "where is that" was an attempt to solicit a geographic location.

YOU may know where "here" is, but it is not a helpful answer.
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SteelWheel25
3/8/2015 8:52 PM EST
The utility companies has passed on every single cost to doing business to the customer and the state government as done very little to protect its citizens from the monopoly. And now the citizens are seeking alternatives and suddenly the electric company is looking out for our best interest by killing our alternatives. You can bet your last dollar that the politicians will help them do it.
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Fate1
3/8/2015 8:54 PM EST
Consider that the electric company is not free to do whatever they want. Anything they do must be approved by the regulators, and upgrading the grid or providing home solar will raise rates. They may be looking to keep solar in a bottle but even if they see it as a new revenue source, they have hoops to jump through.
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gnsherman56
3/8/2015 8:59 PM EST
That is suppose to make someone feel better, that they have enough money to jump threw hoops? Get real, this is the problem in America that the playing field is not equal.
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5amefa91
3/8/2015 9:09 PM EST
Actually, in California the utilities found that the rooftop solar improves the stability of the grid. It is a cost savings not an expense item for the grid managers.
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dalyplanet
3/8/2015 9:10 PM EST
How does rooftop solar improve grid stability?
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Ibleedredwhiteandblue
3/8/2015 8:48 PM EST
When storage technology improves homeowners will have even less need to use the grid on cloudy days and at night. The utility companies should be in a panic.
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Fate1
3/8/2015 8:52 PM EST
But electric companies could be providing panels and other equipment, for sale or rent. I checked out Solar City. They provide the panels for free, they own them, but they are deemed an electric provider and you pay THEIR rates. I didn't like that part. Plus if I have a leak I have to pay them to remove the panels to fix the leak or install a new roof. That did not bother me much, but this new company being my sole energy provider and I pay their rates? Not comfortable with that.