What are the Alternatives to Electricity Rate Hikes?

Ft. Collins, CO – The electric co-op that serves over 30,000 residential and business customers in rural portions of Larimer, Weld, and Boulder counties in Northeast Colorado, has increased its electricity rates 24 percent over the last three years. But the Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association (PVREA) is hardly alone. In response to these un-relenting rate hikes and over-reliance on coal-fired power, the Colorado non-profit group PV-Pioneers, has proposed an alternative plan that would encourage reductions in demand by focusing on energy efficiency and the principle of avoided costs.

The proposed plan suggests that the REA could finance Home Energy Makeovers for members who need them the most, and can afford them least. REAs and co-ops are in a position to make these loans because of their ability to secure no-interest federal loans themselves. The program would allow structural energy efficiency improvements including permanent housing weatherization improvements, replacement of inefficient appliances, or even just the replacement of incandescent with compact fluorescent or LED lighting.

PVREA's current assistance program - like many energy assistance programs across the country - help people pay their bills when they cannot afford to pay themselves. These programs can be incredibly helpful. But the problem is they create little incentive to permanently reduce those bills. They really mask the problem, rather than addressing some of the root causes.

This program is being presented as an alternative to rate increases that PVREA will have to absorb if its wholesale provider, Tri-State G&T continues its search to find somewhere to build a new coal-fired power plant. Just last month, Tri-State made national headlines when they, along with Sunflower Electric of Kansas, were denied an air permit by the Kansas Department of Health for a proposed expansion of the Holcomb coal-fired power plant in Southwestern Kansas.

The PV-Pioneers is a Colorado non-profit group made up of Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association members from Larimer, Weld, and Boulder counties. The group works to keep future rates down, to promote energy efficiency programs and to facilitate the generation of locally abundant renewable energy resources.
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Global Weirding (part II)

The irony of this photograph will be lost unless you reference the one I took a couple of days ago for a previous post...


And I still haven't found Saturday's newspaper in my driveway.

Video: Wind Energy gets no love...(very funny)

I forgot what a great advertisement this is. I put it here so I could find it very easily the next time I need a good laugh... (courtesy of CorporateCitizen07 )

Hopes for Michigan Feed-in Tarriff Fading

Not too much has been heard about Michigan's HB 5218 since it was introduced by Rep. Kathleen Law earlier in this legislative session. HB 5218 was the first proposed legislation containing a 'feed-in tariff' for renewable energy in the U.S. If you don't know, a feed-in tariff or 'fee-schedule' is a policy mechanism which guarantees a premium rate payed to any entity that adds renewable energy to the power grid. Feed-in tariffs have been wildly successful at building the distributed generation of renewable resources very quickly in Germany and Spain -- but not without substantial cost and commitment.

But the latest out of MI is that the proposed tariff because it has not gained the same amount of support as a different bill that would require Michigan get 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015. I think nearly any move toward promoting renewable energy is a move in the right direction - and it is also quite possible that Michigan just wasn't ready for the economic commitment to such an aggressive policy as a feed-in tariff. The point will be moot if the U.S. Senate includes a 15 percent RPS possibly in their version of the bill which may be voted on as early as Saturday. Then again, if President Bush follows through on his veto promise, then Michigan might have something after all.

So what's the deal with feed-in tariffs, and why haven't they caught on in the U.S.? I will suggest that there are two very formidable structural impediments standing in their way:

1. The modern grid was not built with distributed generation in mind. Distributed generation brings fluctuations in generating capacity that would need to be addressed by making substantial investments in infrastructure.
2. There are corporate and interests heavily invested in keeping things pretty much as they are. Power providers and utilities are trying to solidify the futures of their enormous corporations by institutionalizing the process by which power is generated, bought, and sold.

Basically what it will take in this country to move to a more decentralized grid is a whole new politics. We need to reassess how to think about electricity generation and distribution in this country. Decentralization of the power grid will be the future of electricity in the United States, the only question is how long it'll take to get us there.

Global Weirding

Monday night was one of those nights that I thought my house was going to blow off of its foundation. The wind is hardly uncommon up here. My house is located at an elevation of about 6,000 ft. (kids stuff by CO standards), but it sits on an exposed hillside in the foothills of the Rockies which just gets pounded by the prevailing NW west sweeping down towards the Plains.
Usually after a night like that during the month of December I would expect to wake up and either start a fire in the woodstove or go outside and try to find the newspaper which is somewhere in my driveway under 8" of snow. However today was not your usual day, it was 70 freaking degrees...in the shade! Now the record for Fort Collins is 70 degrees, but I am located almost a 1000 feet above that. Just to be sure my cheap little thermometer wasn't wrong I crosschecked my data with a rather reliable weather source - a NOAA weather station located on top of Horsetooth Mountain only a half mile away and about 400ft higher. Well it turns out my thermometer may have been a little off after all, the NOAA site said the high was actually 72 degrees!

Video: 30 Years of Rhetoric in 3 Minutes

I found this on YouTube - a Barack Obama campaign ad that highlights how politically useful it is for presidents to tout the need for American energy independence.



Obama says he'll bring energy leadership... Somebody needs to.