This news from Dr. DiPippo of the Alternative Energy Committee.
Hi all,
I just heard from Simon Thomas that our application to the IRS for $2 million of CREBs has been APPROVED!
The cut-off sum was $2.5 million. We are not alone in Mass as 4 other projects were also approved.
This is huge for us in terms of financing the project. Everything just got even better than Pete calculated. This means that we will be able to float bonds at about 1% to cover about 20% of the anticipated total cost, thus saving us roughly $50 thousand per year over the financing period. Now all we need to do is get a bank to take the bonds. BofA has the main bank in this market. Ed: Cover yourself with glory before you leave us!
All the more important for us to get that NSTAR interconnect study commissioned since there will now be a flood of towns seeking net metering with NSTAR and the other Discos.
Best regards,
Ron DiPippo, Ph.D.
Information on Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) at this link.
The town is planning a public forum ...
... on the Dartmouth wind turbine project in order to inform the public. Tentatively date is the first week of December. I will publish the time, date and location when it is finalized.
Discos above is short for electric power distribution company, not nightclubs that play Bee Gees music.
Cue negative comment from Frank1 ........ Now!
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11 comments:
There are two things the voters of Dartmouth should be thinking about .
Number one is how the proposed Wind Energy Siting Reform Act affects your property rights,open space and town zoning laws .
Number two is the shadow flicker,noise and setbacks to these turbines.Lets remember this quote from the local newspaper:
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090902/PUB02/909020417
Chairman Dr. Ronald DiPippo felt the same way as Race. "I don't want to impose an impact on anybody living near this turbine; I've said that from the beginning," the chairman said. "If it's a problem for even one or two houses, we'll just shut the bloody thing off," the retired physicist told neighbors at the meeting Wednesday night"
How much money has and will be spent on these things already?
Turbines now!
State energy officials believe there is still plenty of room and time to get projects completed, risk is a hard thing to sell to taxpayers these days. With each turbine costing $4 million or more, and requiring multiple town meetings to gain approval, and several years to permit and install, some towns worry the cap could be exhausted before they finish building, dramatically altering the financial scenario they laid out for voters.
Cab Dartmouth make the cut time?
YES WE CAN!
The Town of Dartmouth is considering a turbine, but doesn't know whether it will go up in time to qualify for net metering for sure . Dartmouth should worry the net metering cap could be exhausted before they finish building, dramatically altering the financial scenario they laid out for voters. There is no absolute guarantee and risk is a hard thing to sell to taxpayers these days
wake up frank1- the turbine folks have said over and over again the turbines do not go without a guarantee of net metering. how many times do they have to say something before you hear it?
October 2,2009
http://www.env.state.ma.us/dpu/docs/electric/09-71/10509drthcom.pdf
The intent of the Green Communities Act and in particular the Net Metering Tariff was expected to fix this problem. Unfortunately, the draft Tariff as currently written fails to establish a coherent rate structure or objective standards for Rate Class setting. This, we believe, is a big problem for the following reasons:
1
1.
Finance plans for community wind projects do not have large margins and are predicated on locking in a favorable rate under the Tariff. These projects take a tremendous effort to get approved at the local and state levels. If the return is too small, communities will simply choose not to pursue these projects and instead focus on other initiatives;
2.
To satisfy lenders/bond issuers, as much uncertainty as possible needs to be eliminated as early as possible in the process, so a well-defined process is highly important;
3.
Forcing communities to negotiate with their distribution companies in an open-ended process adds an administrative/legal burden that many towns will have a hard time funding and many distribution companies would likely prefer not to be involved in;
4.
The distribution companies are entitled to cost recovery regardless of the Rate Class used, so specifying a favorable rate for community wind projects will not adversely impact the distribution companies financially;
5.
Establishing a single Rate Class sufficiently favorable to effectuate community wind and other eligible projects will not harm ratepayers. The primary goal of the Green Communities Act is to create an economic framework that allows renewable energy projects to be built, and moves us closer to meeting Renewable Portfolio Standard objectives. This benefits all ratepayers in the long-term. Given that the cap has been set at 1% of the distribution companies’ historical peak load, sensitivity analysis shows that even if the Tariff mandated the highest possible Rate Class for net metering, this would represent a de minimis impact on ratepayers’ bills. However, if too low a Rate Class is established, or if the matter is left to the distribution companies’ discretion, potentially viable projects will not be built, and the goals of the Green Communities Act will very likely not be realized;
6.
Giving the distribution companies veto power on setting the Rate Class would give the utility the power to kill good wind projects or punish municipal customers they may have issues with on other fronts - simply put, they may choose to be difficult, as has certainly been the case in other matters.
frank, do you go to AEC meetings?
My previous post was written by someone in the AEC to state officials . Things are not always as they are told to the public !
NSTAR just cut its rates again !
This commercial wind turbine business is absurd. The whole point of modern power systems has been to move beyond the flickering flutter of variable energy sources. Prostituting modern power performance to enable subprime energy schemes on behalf of half-baked technology is immoral. As is implementing highly regressive tax avoidance “incentives" to make it appear that pigs can fly. No coal plants will be shuttered and little, if any, carbon emissions will be reduced as a result of this project—or thousands of them. Today NSTAR cut power rates again.
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