The best news of the year: the Public Service Commission unanimously ratified a rule for state-wide “net metering”, requiring utilities to buy back from consumers electricity they are able to produce from sustainable sources like solar or wind.
Make no mistake: according to the Herald, the State of Florida is not exactly fast off the dime on this common sense measure to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels: 40 states have similar measures.
Still, there are many questions unanswered in the media reports, but what the PSC voted for, yesterday, is a huge step: customers who generate more electricity than they need through solar panels or other renewable methods will get credit, up to 2 megawatts of power generation.
The news reports do not indicate at what price, Florida’s utilities will be required to buy back electricity. The mainstream media ought to detail economic barriers that prevent or obstruct businesses and consumers from quickly adopting these new technologies—like the issue of insurance—and what measures would promote distributed power generation.
At a national level, the presidential candidates are talking about reviving an economy at the early stages of a severe recession through reforming energy infrastructure, production and consumption. How states and local governments adapt to create a “Marshall Plan” for a new energy future should be a top priority for examination, by the mainstream media.
This observation leads to news reports of the opening of the Florida legislative session—and of tension between Governor Crist and Speaker Rubio.
On the Miami Herald editorial page, County commissioner Katy Sorenson takes Rubio and the Republican legislature to task, “Legislature has failed local governments, residents”. She makes an interesting observation, “Rubio fundamentally believes that local government should not be in the business of government.”
But the majorities of the county commission—here, and elsewhere—have not been in the business of government for a long time, either: they have been in the business of zoning, permitting, and abetting unsustainable growth. Now that revenues are disappearing faster than bees, the economic model which has betrayed Florida taxpayers ought to be the focus of media attention.
Both Senate president Ken Pruitt (who decried "doom and gloom" observers like me) and Governor Crist (who slid by bad economic times in his opening speech to the legislature) seem to believe that the Republican majority can remain intact by just acting as though we can all sleep-walk through reality. The Democrats, though, don't seem up to the task of pointing out the obvious.
It is long past time to acknowledge the central fact: that these hard economic times were driven by the loosening of regulations (from the creation of toxic financial waste, to enabling incestuous relations at all levels of the banking and real estate industry, to local zoning, permitting, and dodging of environmental rules) at all levels of government that spurred the inflation of the biggest asset bubble in US economic history, unleashing a building boom that has now crashed in cinders and for which taxpayers will shoulder the burden.
It is apparent that the mainstream press has little interest in looking backwards, or, that it will take an even more ferocious economic storm to put reporters on the track of analyzing what happened and whose politics were responsible. We are doing our best, on Eyeonmiami, to connect the dots.
It is the homebuilders, condo developers, the Growth Machine and the facilitators who should be under the microscope, this political season in Florida and across the nation.
If Florida Hometown Democracy had passed and the measure qualified for a state-wide referendum in November, neither political party would have been able to dodge these issues— precisely why special interests worked like bandits and bank robbers to take the opportunity of a fair consideration of the measure away from voters.
On that score, apparently Democrats in public office are as relieved as Republicans.
Type the rest of the post here
8 comments:
Add me to the list of people that are happy that the PSC finally got moving on making changes that will encourage individuals to install solar systems at their homes.
We need the state to expand the refunds available to homeowners to cover the installation of these systems as well.
Another excellent article. There are so many tidbits in this article that could be expanded to full stories, it boggles the mind.
Hometown Democracy...sorry it didn't pass.
Not that what the PSC did was not a very good thing the Federal Government has required utilities to “buy excess” power. What the PSC did was to let customers offset the “real” cost to them, not the cost avoidance that benefited the utility. The news paper kind of overlooked this. They make it look like there was no recovery of cost until the recent change.
Again this is a good thing but as usual news was kind of a half truth.
See below:
From Net Metering & Related Utility Issues
At http://www.bergey.com/School/FAQ.Net-Metering.html
Under existing federal law (PURPA, Section 210) utility customers can use the electricity they generate with a wind turbine to supply their own lights and appliances, offsetting electricity they would otherwise have to purchase from the utility at the retail price. But if the customer produces any excess electricity (beyond what is needed to meet the customer’s own needs), the utility purchases that excess electricity at the wholesale or ‘avoided cost’ price, which is much lower than the retail price. The excess energy is metered using an additional meter that must be installed at the customer’s expense. Net metering simplifies this arrangement by allowing the customer to use any excess electricity to offset electricity used at other times during the billing period. In other words, the customer is billed only for the net energy consumed during the billing period.
Expanding on the comments by exFPLer:
The new rule also simplifies things by changing the definition of "small" renewable generator from 2kw to 10kw. Additionally, small generators now no longer have to meet onerous demands by energy utilities for supplemental insurance, a manual breaker from the power system costing thousands of dollars, and clarified that the owner of the renewable energy equipment also owned the "renewable energy credits" made by that clean energy.
The new rule also finally allows businesses to take advantage of on-site renewable power.
Now the Legislature has to put real money into the rebate program. The $3.5 million in cost-match funds was tapped out in around 6 months.
Florida has a chance to catch up to the rest of the country now.
http://www.floridapsc.com/home/news/index.aspx?id=370
It's a bright and sunny day for renewable power in Florida.
exfpler -- missed you. glad you are back to keep us honest...
I’m always here just don’t have something to say most of the time. By the way today in todays WSJ there is an article by Rebecca Smith titled “Finding Where the Wind Blows” about the challenges of controlling the electric grid when weather conditions affect wind power. It says in part:
“An electrical emergency in Texas last week has grid officials and power companies re-examining how they manage wind energy, an increasingly popular but potentially fickle power source. Wind turbines don't emit greenhouse gases, unlike conventional power plants. But wind power requires astute handling or it can affect reliability and power prices. Grid officials have fretted for some time that construction of enormous wind farms could jeopardize grid stability.
In response to its shortfall, Texas officials now are speeding up plans to improve wind forecasting. U.S. officials also are looking at other nations that manage far larger wind resources deftly.”
Think of this challenge when and if a large percentage of power were to come from “net metering” customers. Also think of this when, as we had recently, a large disruption were to happen in the grid. How would the grid react with large fluctuations of power supply coming and going?
I’m not saying this cannot be done, just what if any improvements need to be done to the “grid” to provide large independently produced power? You don’t just turn on and off power plants. Plants take time to come on line and sync with the grid. There are “peaking units” that can come on line quickly but they are very inefficient. They are jet engines that spin turbines. Lots of noise and pollution.
Now if we had constructed our grid like the Europeans have we would not have these problems with adjusting to the flux in outputs.
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