Green Energy

More than 300 households and counting have made the switch to the solar power system in Fremont, Nebraska.

Two years ago, Tom Christensen of Christensen Lumber was among the first to sign up for the city’s solar panel system.

“It stirred my interest so it seemed like a real progressive thing for the city to do,” said Christensen.

Since the summer of 2017, hundreds have joined the movement and Lottie Mitchell, the City of Fremont Executive Assistant of Communications and Grants was not expecting such a large turnout.

“At first we were a little overwhelmed with the response but it does make sense. It gives people options, it allows you to lock in your electricity rate, there are so many benefits that it’s not surprising that people wanted to sign up,” said Mitchell.

Interest has been so high that the city built a second solar farm outside of town. There are now about 8,000 panels at the two farms.

Sue Reyzlik has long been interested in solar power for her home, but she didn’t want the panels on her roof. She bought several panels that will provide about 80 percent of her electric use.

Homeowners can buy panels for $180 each or rent its use.

“I opted for the shares so I pay a slightly higher premium for solar energy but knowing that I’m using renewable energy and green energy is one of the main reasons for opting into the program,” said Reyzlik.

Fremont is nowhere near-total reliance on renewable energy. Coal remains the main source of power for the city, but at least now, homeowners have the option.

Many are choosing green.

Christy Meurer wanted to do her part to fight climate change — and if she saved a few bucks, that would be nice, too. When the 41-year-old teacher from Missoula, Montana, went looking for a place to buy wind-generated electricity, she quickly found her way to a start-up whose model may point the way to the future of U.S. power: Arcadia Power, which uses software to match clients with renewable-energy providers across the country.

“I pay a little more to get full wind power,″ Meurer said, who signed up with Arcadia in December 2017. “But it’s so important to me that it’s worth an extra $5 a month, or whatever it is.”

Four-year-old Arcadia Power, based in Washington, D.C., was created to give consumers an easier way to connect with more than 40 of the hundreds of alternative electricity providers that have sprung up around the country, said CEO Kiran Bhatraju, a former aide to Kentucky Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth.

Most alternate providers produce wind or solar energy, often on a small scale, and connect with consumers through utilities, many of which allow, but do little to encourage, customers to buy electricity from alternative suppliers, or through brokers like Arcadia.

“In a lot of cases, we’re the first green option a customer has had,” Bhatraju said. “It doesn’t break down politically. People want choice, and they want it to be similar to the power they’ve had. A good number of Republicans believe in clean air and competition. These are things Americans agree on.″

The Expedia of energy providers

Arcadia’s experience is familiar to anyone who has bought a flight at Expedia.com or shopped for car insurance at sites like Progressive.com, which offer quotes from more than one airline or insurer, said Nat Kreamer, chief executive of the trade group Advanced Energy Economy.

If Arcadia has a renewable power-generating partner near where a consumer lives, they’ll make the match to the best deal and keep monitoring the customer’s account in case cheaper alternatives emerge. The company says its average customer enrolled in its Smart Rate program saves 5% to 20% on electric bills, as Arcadia finds and negotiates lower rates with suppliers, and savings can hit 40% in states including Illinois and Maine.

If renewable power isn’t locally available, Arcadia will match the client to a conventional power source and buy for them a renewable-energy certificate, which finances new renewable-power projects that aim to save as much carbon as the client uses from power fired by fossil fuels. For example, Meurer’s power actually comes from her local utility, Arcadia says, but part of her bill is used to finance wind projects in Oregon.

“The interesting thing about Kiran’s business is that most people don’t think a lot about electricity,” said Kraemer, adding that Arcadia is among the top 10 sellers nationally of power not generated by utilities themselves. “They’ve built an experience that lets people take care of their power simply.″

So far, Arcadia’s direct-to-consumer platform integrates with more than 40 alternative-energy providers who do renewables, and it has signed up 300,000 customers in all 50 states. Arcadia has raised $40.5 million of venture capital from sources including New York-based Box Group, co-founded by David Tisch, the grandson of the late real estate legend and CBS CEO Laurence Tisch; and G2VP, a Silicon Valley greentech investment firm spun off from Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2017.

Clean-energy use is on the rise

Clean energy’s share of U.S. electricity consumption is rising rapidly, according to government data, and renewable electricity in particular was a key element of the U.S. government’s strategy under President Barack Obama to combat climate change.

Renewable fuels will likely power 18% of U.S. electricity this year and reach 19% in 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says. Production of renewable power in the U.S. has doubled since 2008, but trails the 24% of power the International Energy Agency says is generated from renewable sources in developed nations as a whole.

In April the amount of U.S. electricity from renewables passed the proportion of juice produced by burning coal for the first time, EIA says — 23% vs. 20%. Coal represented half of U.S. generation as recently as 2005. Growth in renewables has been driven by rapid construction of wind-powered electricity turbines, itself accelerated by federal tax credits and state regulations requiring utilities to produce or distribute renewable power.

April’s numbers were higher than EIA’s projections for the year, and EIA chalked up the big springtime number partly to seasonal factors — many coal plants are used less or not at all in temperate months when demand for electric-fired heating and cooling is lower.

Last year about 15 gigawatts of new wind and solar power was put into service, EIA says, and 47 gigawatts of coal-fired utility plants have been closed since 2015, giving brokers like Arcadia more sources of renewable energy to buy and sell.

A lot of renewable power, and especially solar, comes from moderately-sized community projects like those run by Summit, N.J. based Nautilus Solar Energy LLC. Arcadia is already big enough to help partners of Nautilus’ size completely sell out solar-generation projects as they come on line, said Eric LaMond, a structuring manager for Nautilus.

Arcadia matched 730 customers to a new 3.5 megawatt Nautilus-built solar project in West Greenwich, Rhode Island in less than three months, LaMond said. That’s slightly more than the project’s estimated capacity, he added.

Arcadia stands out among brokers because of an easy-to-use phone app and clear billing service, LaMond said.

“We’ve signed them up for additional projects in Rhode Island and we’re negotiating in New York,” LaMond said. “Our plan is to use them as much as possible.″

There’s “no reason there can’t be millions of customers on the platform,” Bhatraju said. “Digitizing energy, giving people access to clean energy, is a giant trend.”

That may be true, Meurer says. But the thing she likes most is Arcadia’s online tracking estimate of how much carbon emission she’s prevented by supporting wind power using her 800-sq.-ft. home: She just crossed 2 tons, a fact she thinks her elementary school charges could well emulate.

“I do everything I can to be a good example to them,″ she said.

TOMS RIVER – The former Ciba-Geigy Superfund site could soon be home to a massive solar farm that could generate up to 35 megawatts of electricity.

Toms River Merchant Solar LLC plans to lease about 166 acres of property at the Superfund site from BASF — which purchased the land from Ciba in 2009 — and install solar panels on the land.

The project would be the largest solar field in New Jersey, according to the state Board of Public Utilities.

The Washington, D.C.-based Solar Energy Industry Association says 1 megawatt of solar-generated electricity is enough to power an average of about 190 homes.

Toms River Merchant Solar is expected to present the solar farm proposal to the township’s Planning Board on Sept. 18. The planning board meeting starts at 6 p.m., and is held in the L. Manual Hirshblond Meeting Room on the second floor of town hall, 33 Washington St.

Ground-mounted solar panels would be installed in the areas of the 1,200-acre site that were used for Ciba’s industrial dye-making operations. The massive Ciba site is located off Route 37, near the Garden State Parkway, with its main entrance now on Oak Ridge Parkway.

Toms River Merchant Solar is a subsidiary of EDF Renewables, a renewable energy company that has developed dozens of solar projects throughout the country, including several in New Jersey. EDF’s other renewable energy projects in the state include the Bayshore Recycling Solar Project in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, and the Matrix Solar Project in Perth Amboy, developed as part of PSE&G’s Solar 4 All program.

Linda L. Gillick, who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said while the committee has not endorsed the solar field proposal, the group feels “this is step in right direction to help the environment.”

Gillick has chaired the committee since 1996, when it was formed to investigate the elevated levels of childhood cancer that plagued Toms River in the mid- to late-1990s. Gillick and other residents and activists have long expressed concern about any potential development on the Ciba site.

The Ciba solar project received conditional approval earlier this year from the state Board of Public Utilities. It would be built on a “brownfield” site, property that has been previously contaminated.

A similar solar farm has been operating for several years at the site of the former French’s Landfill in Brick.

The BPU said Toms River Merchant Solar must meet requirements put in place by the DEP, including assurances that the solar field does not exacerbate pollution on the Ciba site and does not interfere with the ongoing groundwater clean-up there.

The Ciba property is still zoned for industrial use, and the solar field project requires no variances from township land-use codes. Roberts said installation of the solar panels will require the removal of some “isolated stands of trees” near the solar field.

The solar farm proposal for the former Ciba site says the solar panels would generate 5 megawatts of electricity for customers enrolled in New Jersey’s Community Solar Energy Pilot Program, while the remaining 28 megawatts would go into the grid connected to Jersey Central Power & Light Co.’s distribution system.

The EPA has been overseeing cleanup at the Ciba site since the property was placed on the federal Superfund list in 1982. Ciba is one of two Superfund sites in Toms River; the other is Reich Farm, located off Route 9 in the Pleasant Plains section of town.

More than 10 billion gallons of polluted groundwater has been extracted from the ground, treated to remove contaminants, and then recharged onto the ground in the property’s northeast corner, according to EPA. Groundwater cleanup is expected to continue for at least another 20 years.

Learn more about the clean-up in the video above this story.

Ciba-Geigy, initially called Toms River Chemical Co., made millions of pounds of industrial dyes and resins on its property from 1952 until all manufacturing operations ceased in 1996. 

Pollution history

Once Ocean County’s largest employer, the company would eventually become known as a notorious polluter. 

In 1992, two former Ciba executives and the corporation pleaded guilty to illegally dumping pollutants into two landfills on the company’s property, and agreed to pay fines. All industrial operations on the site ceased in December 1996, the same year a groundwater treatment operation began there.

Ciba spent more than $300 million to treat groundwater and clean up toxic waste on its property, and spent millions more to settle three lawsuits related to toxic waste on its land and the polluted groundwater that it caused.

A 1999 state and federal study determined that some Toms River residents had been exposed to chemical pollutants from the site that had leached into private wells and the public drinking water system decades ago. 

The same study determined that the site no longer posed an environmental threat because polluted wells have been sealed and groundwater treatment is in place.

Most of the buildings that housed Ciba’s dye-making operations have been razed. The sprawling property — larger than the city of Hoboken — is mostly vacant, except for two to three employees who oversee the mostly automated cleanup of groundwater contamination.

Cleanup of toxic soil and the removal of thousands of waste-filled drums was finished in 2010, and BASF finished construction of a more efficient groundwater treatment system in 2013, and began operating it in 2014.

About 200 homes are located north of the property, and another 250 to the south. The West Dover Elementary School is adjacent to the site.

TEESS, a 50/50 joint venture company, established by Total S.A. (Paris, France; www.total.com), and Envision Group (Shanghai, China; www.envision-group.com), a global leading smart-energy-technology company, launches its commercial activity to develop on site distributed generation solar projects for B2B customers in China.

TEESS will offer its clients a unique combination of distributed solar-energy systems and digital solar-energy solutions running on Envision’s AIoT Operating System EnOS. This offer will allow the clients to decarbonize their energy while reducing energy costs, optimizing and digitalizing energy management, and enhancing the safety and reliability of energy utilization.

“Companies of the industrial and commercial sector account for approximately two thirds of Chinese power consumption. More and more Industrial & Commercial clients are committed to 100% renewable power. Our joint venture is there to help these clients to fulfill this target,” says Alex Sun, CEO of TEESS. “Our shareholders, Total and Envision, have an unparalleled expertise in renewable energy generation and digital energy solutions worldwide. We aim to combine our respective strengths in digitalized and distributed solar energy sector, to become the No.1 choice of Industrial & Commercial companies in China to support and enable their renewable power transition.”

“Total is delighted to partner with Envision to enter Chinese booming distributed solar energy market. As a historic player of the solar sector, we are keen on growing our footprint in low carbon electricity in China and enable local industries to reduce their carbon footprint,” says Julien Pouget, Senior vice-president Renewables at Total.

Salt Lake City residents are receiving a leg up in rooftop solar energy.

Empower SLC – a community engagement effort to save energy and money on a community-wide scale – is launching a discount on solar to all Salt Lake residents in an effort to provide Utahns with clean solar power while the solar tax incentives and export rates are strong. Through this, community members can unite and negotiate a group discount from a competitively selected, pre-vetted solar installer that will make going solar more affordable and easier to install.

“We want to help more people power their lives with clean solar energy,” stated Kate Bowman, Solar Project Coordinator for Utah Clean Energy, in a Wednesday press release. “The key to achieving our goal is reducing the up-front cost and simplifying the process for going solar, and Empower SLC Solar enables entire communities to easily access solar. We’re beyond thrilled to be bringing this program to Salt Lake and Salt Lake County residents.”

Utah Clean Energy – a statewide clean energy advocacy group – is heading up the program in partnership with the Salt Lake Community College Energy Institute and a community-led Volunteer Steering Committee. Following a rigorous and highly competitive Request for Proposals and interview process conducted by the committee, local solar contractor Auric Energy was selected from a pool of applicants to be the official contractor for Empower SLC Solar, stated the press release.

The agency released the following statement after the selection:

At the SLCC Energy Institute, we train students entering the workforce in the installation of roof-top solar. We are excited to partner with Utah Clean Energy and the Empower SLC Solar initiative, which will provide benefits to the homeowners installing solar as well as to help build new or enhanced careers within the industry. SLCC’s new Westpointe Center has as its mission to support such economic opportunity for individuals and companies.
Empower SLC Solar is offered to all Salt Lake County residents with an emphasis on helping to bring more solar to traditionally underserved communities on Salt Lake’s west side. According to the press release, the community bulk purchase program provides “historically” low costs for solar, saving participants approximately 20 to 25% off the installed price for eligible incentives for an average residential solar project.

State and federal incentives can combine to provide even greater discounts, stated the press release. Homeowners may be eligible for both a state and federal solar tax credit for their solar installation. The timeline will also give homeowners the opportunity to take advantage of the federal tax credit before it begins to step down in 2020.

Empower SLC is open to all eligible and interested individuals in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County on a first-come, first-serve basis. All commitments to install must be made by Dec. 31, 2019.

Interested individuals can take the first step in the process by taking the eligibility survey at empowerslcsolar.org or attend one fo the several scheduled and free solar workshops to meet with installers. According to the press release, there are no formal commitments until contracts are signed with the contractors.

The prairies and rolling hills of South Dakota will soon become dotted with wind turbines after the approval of eight major wind-energy projects that will bring 700 more turbines and an investment of $2.6 billion to the state by the end of 2020.

Two other projects now in the regulatory approval process would bring 188 more turbines and another $640 million in investments, bringing the total of new turbines to 888 and the investment by energy companies to $3.26 billion.

The rapid expansion of wind energy will reach across the state, with the majority of new turbines targeted for the northeast corner, but with other projects planned in Hand and Hyde counties in the center of the state and one 45-turbine project now under construction near Newell in Butte County in the far northwest.

Just two years ago, despite being home to the third-most-active winds in the nation, South Dakota ranked No. 19 for wind-energy production among the 50 states, with 15 wind farms and a total of 584 turbines able to generate 1,014 megawatts of electricity.

New national ranking data is not yet available, but the approved and docketed projects would raise the total of wind farms to 25 and nearly triple the number of wind towers in the state. The electricity-production capacity would rise to more than 3,600 megawatts. Though it is variable, one megawatt of electricity can power about 1,000 homes; South Dakota ranks third in the nation for the number of homes, about 300,000, that are powered by wind energy.

Any new energy project is subject to extensive review and typically draws significant opposition. Most of the new wind farms approved for construction faced questions by neighbors about the impacts of 500-foot tall towers, noise and light flicker from rotors that operate in a 380-foot diameter, and the potential effects on property values and local birds and wildlife.

Those who support renewable energy and the economic benefits of new industry, however, are exuberant over the spate of new wind farms approved for construction. The eight project approvals all came between June 2018 and July 2019.

“For rural South Dakota, this is an awesome boom,” said Steven Wegman of the South Dakota Renewable Energy Association. “No one ever spent $300 million in Codington County in a construction season.”

One wind farm approved in Clark County, the Crocker Wind Farm, will pay leaseholders $46 million over the next 20 years, according to documents filed by developer Geronimo Energy. That project, which includes up to 120 turbines and an expected investment of $600 million, will also create 10-20 full-time jobs, support a “community fund” of $1.6 million, and generate $36 million in tax revenues for the state, county, township and local schools in its first two decades of operation.

Many people who travel on Interstate 90 across South Dakota have likely seen the expansion of wind energy in the state after a pair of small wind farms came online last year.

The Aurora Wind Farm, with nine turbines, began generating electricity in Aurora County south of the interstate in October 2018. That same month, the Brule Wind Farm began generating electricity with nine turbines that are clearly visible south of the interstate near Kimball. Those projects were the only significant wind farms to begin operation in South Dakota from January 2016 to October 2018.

Several factors have led to the rapid expansion of wind-energy projects since then.

Wind-energy developers are rushing to bring projects online as quickly as possible to obtain the financial benefits of the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit for new wind projects. Congress has voted to begin phasing out those credits starting in 2020 and ending in 2025.

The rush to obtain the full value of those tax credits has dovetailed with the recent completion of two 345-kilovolt power lines that created new capacity to move electricity produced in South Dakota and North Dakota to markets in neighboring states. The two new lines now extend from Ellendale, N.D., to Brookings and can then carry energy on a separate line to the Twin Cities.

In advance of those projects, South Dakota lawmakers in 2015 approved a measure to reduce the state tax on production of each kilowatt of wind energy by roughly a third.

The other factors driving the wind-energy expansion are an increased push by many states to encourage or require further usage of energy from renewable resources and a dramatic decrease in the cost of harnessing wind energy. In the early 2010s, it cost energy companies about $3,500 to build turbines and machinery to harness a kilowatt of electricity. That cost has fallen below $2,000 per kilowatt of capacity, Wegman said.

In recent years, South Dakota lawmakers and officials have tried to lure wind-energy companies to the state, where the wind blows at full capacity about 40% of the time, the third-highest rate in the nation. Suddenly, the state has the full attention of energy companies.

“It’s about time; we’ve been in the wading pool for a long time, and now the tide has come in,” said Wegman. “A lot of small towns and counties and townships are going to get an economic boost that they’ve never, ever had since South Dakota became a state.”

The approval process for new wind farms can take years and cost energy companies several million dollars in up-front costs.

Eight major wind projects were approved in a 13-month period by the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, an incredible pace for the three-member elected board that reviews and rules on energy-construction projects and also regulates utility rates.

Hanson said the PUC, the developers and local officials and residents have worked hard to reduce the impacts of the wind farms and turbines.

Several of the approved projects have dozens of conditions placed upon developers in response to concerns or complaints levied by local officials and neighbors of the projects. Counties where wind farms will be built have control over some siting issues, including the critical matter of setbacks that determine how close towers can be to roads, neighboring homes or municipal boundaries.

“It’s not always the way we want it,” Hanson said. “We may love something or we may hate something, but in the end we have to vote based on what the law tells us to do.”

The rapid growth in wind-energy production is welcome news for the eight South Dakota companies that provide equipment, support and maintenance services to wind-energy developers and operators, said Mike Sherman, president of Renew Energy Maintenance in Sioux Falls.

“It definitely benefits our company and creates opportunities for us to add employees,” Sherman said.