ALBANY, N.Y. — Here’s some of highlights of what RTO Insider heard at the Alliance for Clean Energy New York’s 10th Annual Conference.
The Long Island Power Authority is inching toward New York’s first offshore wind farm, which would supply 90 MW of electricity on a site off the eastern tip, said Mike Voltz, director of energy efficiency and renewables for PSEG-Long Island, which operates the power grid for LIPA. “We expect that power purchase agreement to go to the LIPA board of trustees in December for approval.”
David Mooney, director of the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, discussed how New York could meet its 50% clean energy mandate. Because the current hydropower penetration of 20% is not expected to increase substantially, wind and solar would make up the remainder.
“There’s enough flexibility that exists in the system to be able to manage 30% penetration of wind and solar, and that’s without adding storage to manage variability,” he said.
Charles Fox, senior director of regulatory affairs and business development for fuel cell manufacturer Bloom Energy, praised New York’s level of sophistication in discussing clean energy policy. But he said the state needs to proceed with caution.
“The process of implementation is absolutely critical. We all want to get to the promise of Reforming the Energy Vision, but it’s important to do that to recognize that not only customers but financial institutions have entrenched business models that are going to need to change to finance projects. With companies that may have power purchase agreements in seven to 10 states, and when you suddenly change the rules in one of those places, it has a reverberating effect through just the law of unintended consequences.”
Richard Kauffman, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s chairman of energy and finance for New York, took on critics of the zero-emission credit program, which would subsidize upstate nuclear plants to keep their carbon-free generation available for another 14 years.
“It would be great, as some critics would have us do, to say ‘let’s replace the nuclear plants with renewable energy. Let’s do that right now.’ It’s just not practical,” he said. “We cannot snap our fingers and have it done. We need to recognize the role nuclear will play in a transition to a renewable energy future, as no one has put forth a credible plan for cost- and time-effective replacement.”
Jim Muscato, a partner at the Young/Sommer law firm, which has represented wind developers for 15 years, said permitting has become more difficult as state agencies like the departments of Health and Transportation become involved.
“The totality of the siting process is that it will take about three years. One of the specific challenges is that the government does not speak with one voice. When getting through the preapplication process, we’ve had more government agencies get involved in the process than have ever been involved before. We’ve had 15 years successfully siting projects, but now we are working with agencies that had never been involved before.”
– William Opalka