Solar Works. Even in the North.

One of my primary interests in renewable energy. I'm particularly interested in solar photovoltaic energy (the kind with the panels), at both the residential and commercial scales. Here in Minnesota, we don't really have the kind of sun exposure required for some of the other forms (like those in the California and Arizona deserts that use mirrors to superheat molten salt), so solar panels are what we have.

There are some challenges that the solar industry faces here. We are very far north. The Twin Cities are at 45 degrees north and has a fairly cloudy outlook for much of the winter. It also gets a fair amount of snow. But that is not as big an obstacle as one might think. Germany has a similar cloud problem and is situated even farther north, yet it has used a combination of feed-in tariffs, incentives, and changes in the way energy is regulated and billed. This has led to a substantial growth in the solar sector. While it still relies on lignite coal (a very dirty fuel), it has shown that the proper economic, regulatory, and social conditions can lead to great success with solar in seemingly unlikely places. If they can do it there, we can do it here too. Panels can be cleared, and much snow melts or slips off due to the mounting angle. Increased panel efficiency has also allowed for more generation even on cloudy days. Besides, we have too good of a resource to pass up.

Fortunately, Minnesota's government has been proactive in pushing solar and other renewable energy development, including a strong statutory requirement for energy utilities with generation benchmarks for renewables and a separate solar-specific generation requirement. That, combined with the extension of the federal renewable energy investment tax credit (and the credit's revision to apply to projects begun, not online, by certain dates) mean Minnesota is on track for a big push into the solar photovoltaic realm. In fact, there are already a number of major projects that are getting quite far along in the development process including plans to partially power/offset electric use by Twin Cities Light Rail system and build a large solar farm to supply Xcel Energy.

The Chisago County solar development project is an exciting project in my opinion because it demonstrates several things: that solar can be produced even in the northeastern part of the state, that it is economically viable for the utility, and that it is economically valuable to the community (property taxes and lease income for solar are much higher than the going rates for agriculture in that marginal growing part of the state). Still, not everyone is happy. Some residents that were surrounded by solar leases had their homes bought out by the developers, but others who merely bordered it, or were boxed in on the sides by different developments, have been complaining. They weren't offered buyouts and are concerned about views. I tend to agree that they won't be much affected, especially with the planting and maintenance of a tree buffer, and the arrays are not noisy, polluting, or disruptive, so physical impairment of the use and enjoyment of their land should be minimal to none. It seems to me that this is another case of NIMBY-ism, though slightly more justified than the irrational windmill haters opposed to the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts. Still, they do have some marginal affect on their property interest (in their community's nature and their potential views, they seem to discount how panels can be interesting to watch, especially tracking ones, and the potential for increased birds and insects in the soon to be non-agriculture plant growth surrounding the panels). It is also not even clear that being near a solar project will harm property values because none of the area houses have yet been offered for sale, let alone sold on open market. This would bear watching in the future as a test, but there are lots of other factors that would need to be examined as well to tease out the possible effects of the solar site.

Other anti-solar movements, posing as neighborhood concern, have appeared in Sherburne County, where residents are trying to push a setback for solar arrays to hundreds of feet, essentially rendering the project uneconomical and killing it. While it is reasonable to have larger zoning setbacks when residential and commercial/industrial uses meet, it is not rational to push it to such an extent that a non-invasive, non-harmful, non-polluting use becomes impossible (i.e. it's not like they are building a loud, noisy, dusty, polluting cement factory). I don't know what direction the county zoning board will go, but I do hope that they opt for a number that still enables development of solar projects of sufficient size to be economical for the developer and meaningful for the state's energy needs.

Finally, there is the issue of residential solar development. Some people can't put panels on their home because they rent, have an apartment, or have an unsuitable roof type or orientation. For them, the solution is to buy a share in a community solar garden. This is a Minnesota specific (so far as I can tell) solution whereby a person or entity buys a share of the power from a third party solar development that can then be applied toward his/her/its energy bill. This expands access to solar greatly, helps create a market for solar energy, and provides financing for additional development. For those who do have the financing, site suitability, and space for hosting their own solar, there are many programs and incentives for financing them including tax rebates, exemptions from property tax for the value of solar panels, and other possible incentives that vary by municipality. Financing can also often be achieved using PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) programs, where the cost of the array is added to the property tax assessment and paid off in installments at low interest over a number of years. And, to ensure that changes in the neighborhood don't impede established solar, Minnesota has created a statutory solar easement (there might be a common law one as well, but I'm not sure about Minnesota, other states definitely do) that guarantees a right to the sun for properly described panels, including the right to restrict the use of neighboring land that might impair that right.

As a fun thought experiment, I also pondered whether such a solar easement (express or implied) would be a property right subject to eminent domain. I believe it is because under a line of Supreme Court cases, while there is no longer a right to the sky infinitely, there is a right to as much of the sky as can reasonably be used by the occupant on the ground. This prevents airplanes (except low flying ones) from being trespassers, but it does create a right to build tall buildings, windmills, geothermal plants, gas flares, and other structures and developments that might require large amounts of overhead clearance. It also almost certainly would include a right to unimpeded access to the sun for an existing solar array (of any form) or solar heating element. If a neighbor built in a way that harmed it, that neighbor would be damaging your interest and you could likely enforce your easement (especially if recorded). If the government built in a similar way, it would have to compensate you, though what that compensation would ultimately consist of I couldn't begin to guess. There are so many things that could be considered (value of panels, value of the energy, value of future production, etc.) that it would be quite an interesting fight, one that would surely make it into textbooks, lecture circuits, and conferences around the country. I don't think it's happened yet, but with the amount of growth we are seeing in the solar industry, it's only a matter of time.

So, solar is a growth industry, and it's even growing here, in the seemingly unlikely northern state of Minnesota. We may not have the non-stop desert sun of Arizona and Southern California, but we do have an excellent resource and are only beginning to tap into its potential.

Bonneville Power, Wind, and Surplus Energy

When people think of the Pacific Northwest they may think of Seattle and Portland and their associated populace. They may also think of volcanoes, the spotted owl, old-growth temperate rain forest, or the perpetual battles over dams and salmon in the Columbia-Snake watershed. While there are many things to be said about all of those topics, today I mean to discuss something that less associated with the region (in large part because it is generally an issue only in the sparsely populated Eastern regions of Washington and Oregon), wind power.

While many are probably aware of the presence of dams in the region and their importance to regional electricity generation (and their effect on endangered salmon), it is less well known that there is a growing wind energy sector in the high desert areas of central Washington and Oregon. While both hydropower and wind are generally thought of as "renewable" resources because they do not emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, most dams are not as environmentally friendly as they are sometimes portrayed (and have a host of complications and serious effects on river health and aquatic animals and plants), though they are on the whole more desirable than coal-fired plants. In the Pacific Northwest the relationship between dams and wild salmon is particularly fraught, with long-running legal challenges and battling scientific evaluations pushing back and forth over which dams should be re-worked, which decommissioned and removed, and how much water must be allowed to flow through to facilitate both up- and down-stream migration of the anadramous fish. When America's inadequate and aging electric grid and an expanding wind sector get dragged into it as well it only serves to complicate all the issues further, but provides a valuable example of why we need to upgrade to a smart grid that is connected to a more diffuse electric generation system.

This particular issue began last spring when the Columbia River had unusually high water levels and the Bonneville Power Administration claimed that it needed to let more water through its generators than normal in order to keep river conditions suitable for newly hatched salmon fry heading downriver to the sea. Because of the way dams are designed, this meant any water let through the generators had to be used to generate electricity (spillways would not have worked in these circumstances the agency claimed because they would have caused too much turbulence for the fry to tolerate). This led to BPA hydropower surging into the grid which would have been overloaded had the agency not ordered local wind projects to suspend operations in an inversion of the usual order of operations (in which dams release more water to generate power during times when the atmosphere is too still). This, naturally, upset the wind project owners, especially since BPA did not make any efforts to direct surplus wind power to fossil fuel driven plants in the grid area, a practice called negative pricing, that is common in other areas of the country.

Now there has been a resolution to the dispute. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled that the BPA was wrong in its actions and was required to rewrite its rules for handling future occurrences of surplus power. How the monetary damages will be distributed between the wind producers and BPA has not yet been finalized.

While having a truly national energy grid would be greatly helpful in eliminating these sorts of situations, where local production is so great that it threatens to overwhelm the system and cannot be exported because of transmission bottlenecks or other issues, that will not completely solve the problem or eliminate conflicts or risk. Denmark has had problems where its large coastal wind installations have generated so much power the nation's grid cannot absorb it all and it must actually pay its neighbors to take it off its hands. While this is rare in the United States and Canada, it can occur and is common in some areas (as I mentioned above). A national grid run by a unified, central system (whether governmental, intergovernmental, public-private partnership, or concerted private action) will largely eliminate the need for such practices except under the most exigent circumstances (though people still need to agree that power lines can and should be built and then decide where to put them so that they are effective but also do the least harm to both the built and natural environments). Additionally, we must continue to invest in research on ways to store energy produced during daylight or windy hours for use during off-hours that might still have high demands from consumers. This must include traditional ideas of storage like batteries as well as research on more innovative ideas like molten salt reserves, thermal gradients, repurposing, and other methods that may not yet have been devised. And, to show that I am not vilifying BPA, I'll finish by recognizing some of the innovative work it is doing in this area. While that doesn't excuse their behavior (and I feel justified saying that since the FERC smacked them down), or get them out of vigilant monitoring, there are far worse environmental and economic actors out there, especially in the realm of energy production. And it goes to show how complicated things can get when you start combining incredibly powerful and important agencies and laws with unexpected circumstances and infrastructure devised to serve the needs of a bygone era.

Yet another news roundup

More substantive posts are coming, I promise, now that work is back to a normal level.

This is an interesting development, and one I think is very promising. The federal government is the largest landowner in the nation, and the biggest consumer of energy. Within that, the Department of Defense is by far the biggest, representing 80 percent of all federal energy use and 1 percent of the entire nation's. It has also made clear its desire to move in a more sustainable direction for both economic and security reasons. So it is very promising that they are seriously discussing developing large scale solar installations on DoD lands, many of which are already "disturbed" and therefor unlikely to harbor endangered or threatened wildlife. Whether used to satisfy base needs or sold to the grid (which would require very little new infrastructure as bases already well connected), it would be an excellent way to scale up the idea of the parking lot "solar grove" that has been proposed by other would-be renewables developers. Also, as a massive landowner and supplier/purchaser and research funder, the DoD would be able to leverage a huge gain in solar efficiency and productivity with comparatively small (when looking at private R&D) investment.

Farms (and logging/silviculture) have long been a source of water pollution that is difficult to regulate under the Clean Water Act. CAFOs (feedlots) are generally considered point sources, but the the others generally are not subject to the same permitting and data requirements and so relatively little is known about specific contributions and even less is often done to reduce agricultural runoff, a serious problem that causes huge dead zones at the mouths of major rivers worldwide. While it is only a tentative first step, and doesn't go very far, it is good to see that Minnesota is making a small effort to induce farmers to clean up and reduce their runoff voluntarily. Count me as a skeptic. I hope that it works, I really do, and that it proves to be a wildly successful program that can be a model for other states, but I strongly believe that it will generally be a disappointment for a few reasons. First, the funding is far too low to have any major impact. Second, the funding is uncertain going forward; there really isn't any long-term commitment to keeping this program running. Third, enforcement will be difficult without either more staff to do compliance testing or much better data collection with stiff penalties on those trying to game the system. Good for Minnesota for making a small effort, but it has the ability to do so much more given its position as a 100% headwaters state.

Are you sick of motherfucking snakes in the motherfucking Everglades? (I apologize for that.) If so, you will be happy to learn that the Fish and Wildlife Service is officially listing four species of constrictors as "injurious" and prohibiting their import, export, or transport and/or sale across state lines. While it won't result in the pythons in the Everglades magically dying (though recent cold weather in Florida is certainly a helpful occurrence) it will create a ban with some serious enforcement teeth. From the moment the regulations become active, it will be a crime under the Lacey Act to buy, sell, bring into the US, or transport across a state boundary, any of the four species listed (Burmese python, northern and southern African python, and yellow anaconda). That in and of itself is a positive development. We haven't gotten rid of the invaders yet but we are have now taken real, enforceable steps to stop making the problem worse.