Maine biomass commission first meeting

A special commission formed by the Maine Legislature to study the economic, environmental and energy benefits of the state's biomass industry holds its first meeting this week.

The Maine State House, where the 2016 biomass resolve was enacted.

This spring, the Maine legislature enacted a resolve establishing the Commission to Study the Economic, Environmental and Energy Benefits of the Maine Biomass Industry. Known as Resolve 2015, chapter 85, the legislation established a study commission to examine the state's biomass energy resources, as well as public policy and economic proposals to create and maintain a sustainable future for the industry.

The Commission to Study the Economic, Environmental and Energy Benefits of the Maine Biomass Industry holds its first meeting tomorrow.  According to the agenda published for the first meeting, following introductions and a review of the resolve itself, the group will hear presentations from and hold discussion with a variety of people interested in biomass.  Presenters on the agenda include a Commissioner of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, the state's Public Advocate, and the executive director of the Efficiency Maine Trust.  Other speakers represent loggers, the wood pellet fuel industry, users of biomass energy fuels, the pulp and paper industry, and woodlot owners.  The agenda states that the meeting will also include a public comment period.

According to the agenda, possible future meeting dates for the Maine biomass commission include August 16 and August 30, 2016.

E2Tech solar forum 2016

Today the Environmental and Energy Technology Council of Maine, better known as E2Tech, held its E2Tech forum on solar energy.

A panel of solar policy experts shared their perspectives on the issues facing Maine.  The panel included:

• Timothy Schneider, Maine Public Advocate
• Fortunat Mueller, ReVision Energy's co-founder
• Brian Conroy, Avangrid's Director of Network Projects & Initiatives
• Rep. Sara Gideon, Assistant Majority Leader in the Maine House of Representatives
• Chris Rauscher, Sunrun's Director of Public Policy

Panelists and audience members discussed some of the recent and ongoing solar energy policy discussions and outcomes in Maine, including a stakeholder process before the Maine Public Utilities Commission to explore an alternative policy complementary to net metering.  That process is expected to wrap up this winter with a report to the legislative committee with jurisdiction over energy matters.

The event also featured Preti Flaherty's launch of its First Light initiative.  Grounded in the Preti team’s experience helping consumers benefit from distributed or “behind the meter” generation, the firm has created a special focus on the commercialization of solar power by and for all consumers.  This strategic initiative will help qualified new entrants, as well as larger, existing companies, navigate legal and business challenges to harness the power of the sun. It will also help site owners participate in solar energy as project hosts, through site leasing and power purchase agreements or other arrangements.  Contact Todd Griset for more information about qualifying for the Preti First Light program.

Maine considers net metering alternative

The Maine Office of the Public Advocate has proposed a new mechanism to encourage the development of solar energy capacity in the state.

Under Maine’s existing law, customers with onsite generation may choose “net energy billing” treatment. Similar to “net metering” policies in other states, Maine’s program gives eligible consumers credit for the power they send back to the grid from their onsite generation. Presently, the value of that credit varies with the applicable retail electricity rate.

But according to the Public Advocate, Maine’s version of net metering raises concerns including net metering customers’ uncertainty over the future value of power, the potential for cost-shifting to non-net metered customers, and a lack of transparency.

In its white paper, “A Ratepayer Focused Strategy for Distributed Solar in Maine”, the Office of the Public Advocate offers an alternative to Maine’s existing net metering program. It envisions policies to support development of two types of solar energy projects in Maine: customer-sited systems and wholesale systems.

For customer-sited systems, the white paper proposes a “Solar Standard Buyer” to serve as an aggregator of the attributes solar energy can provide. Customers would enter into a Customer-sited Solar Contract or CSC, a fixed-price, 20-year contract with the solar aggregator. As under Maine’s existing net metering structure, the “payment” to customers would be based on a per kWh rate that would appear as a monthly bill credit on the customer’s bill. Under the Public Advocate’s vision, the level of compensation would be capped at $0.20/kWh.

As more solar capacity comes online in Maine, the Public Advocate proposes incremental “step downs” in the CSC contract price paid to solar customers. Both the payments to customers under a CSC and the revenues received through this aggregation and sale would be credited to all customers through transmission and distribution utilities’ existing stranded cost mechanisms.

For wholesale systems between 1 megawatt and 5 megawatts in scale, the white paper envisions that the Commission would solicit competitive bids, with the ultimate purchaser being the Solar Standard Buyer. The white paper notes an expectation that economies of scale will enable these larger, utility-side solar projects to reduce the price per kilowatt-hour to Maine’s non-participating ratepayers. It proposes to compensate developers of wholesale systems at a fixed rate, with contracts procured by the state’s utilities through bi-annual competitive processes.

The Public Advocate suggests that its proposal is consistent with recent analysis of the value of solar energy in Maine. Pursuant to the 2014 “Act to Support Solar Energy Development in Maine”, the Maine Public Utilities Commission developed a methodology for determining the value of distributed solar energy generation in the state. Its Maine Distributed Solar Valuation Study, released this spring, provided a methodology for estimating the cost and benefits of solar, values for each cost and benefit, and options to encourage solar adoption within Maine’s existing utility framework.

According to the Public Advocate’s white paper, its proposal could drive up to 300 MW of new solar capacity in Maine by 2025.  It has been characterized as an addition to net metering, not a replacement.  But the Maine Public Utilities Commission continues to evaluate Maine’s solar energy policies.  Its process could have outcomes ranging from continuation of Maine's net energy billing programs to the creation of some new mechanism to address solar and distributed generation's integration into the grid.

4/8/10

These are wild times for those of us involved with the Maine legislature, as they worked well past midnight last night... and didn't quite finish up their session. Everyone returns Monday for the final push. The House passed the $85 million bond package, but the Senate came up several votes short. Sadly, despite advocacy from Efficiency Maine Trust executive director Michael Stoddard and industrial energy consumers, the bonding for energy efficiency spending was stripped out of the package. Moving forward, one of the big issues with the bond package is that if it doesn't pass, dozens of businesses in Aroostook County, the largest county east of the Mississippi, will soon be without rail access, when the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway will abandon 230 miles of track, unless the state can raise the funds to buy it. (The head of the Federal Railroad Administration Joe Szabo is coming to Maine to investigate the issue.) The vote may be based on principles, but it is also largely a partisan issue.

Also in Maine news: a good editorial by my friend Gordon Weil, arguing that Maine's Public Advocate -- the executive office tasked with looking out for the interests of utility ratepayers before the PUC and legislature -- should have more independence from the Governor. Gordon gives a first-hand account of how, in 1981, Governor Brennan created the office, and named Gordon as the first Public Advocate. Gordon also describes how in recent years, the public advocate has served more as an advocate for longer-term policies pushed by the Governor, as opposed to looking out for keeping rates low; indeed, in several contexts recently, organized industrial energy consumers have served as the sole advocates for low rates, in the face of proposals that would significantly increase all ratepayers' expenses.

Did Connecticut set its renewable portfolio standard too high? The energy committee has approved legislation that would halve Connecticut's goal of obtaining 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Connecticut is nowhere near on track to meet this goal; renewable developers point to a lack of financing as the problem. What can policymakers do to address the capital and credit crunches?

On the federal level, as we move closer to legislation that will promote significantly larger deployment of grid-scale renewables, there is concern about the lack of transmission development -- and federal transmission oversight -- that may be needed to connect generation to load.