Author Archives Laura Arnold

Turning Point 49.9 MW solar PV project in Noble County (OH) with AEP all but dead; IndianaDG looked at it ‘longingly’

Dear IndianaDG Readers:

There has been much speculation about whether the Turning Point solar project with American Electric Power (AEP) in Ohio would receive the "green light" from the Public Utility Commission of Ohio (PUCO). I am not an insider on this project by any means but I have been asking solar companies in Ohio about the prospects for this project with AEP for some time.

During the Indiana Michigan Power Company (I&M) general rate case before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) in Cause No. 44075. See http://indianadg.wordpress.com/iurc/indiana-utility-rate-cases/indiana-michigan-power-company-aep-44075/. That case is now completed and awaiting a decision by the IURC. Inovateus Solar interevened and offered the testimony of Joseph Jancauskas urging that I&M develop and offer more renewable energy programs. In their concluding filings in this case I recall that Inovateus Solar advocated that the IURC create a "Green Energy" sub-docket to explore this.

Many of us here in Indiana following the Turning Point solar project with AEP in Ohio looked at this project longingly. Therefore, I am disappointed that the PUCO has rejected this proposed project at this point. Clearly, I plan to obtain and read the order on this matter and to try to understand what happened. In the meantime, if you have any information or a perspective on this recent action by the PUCO I would appreciate hearing it. OK? There seems to be more than just a little politics surrounding this.

Laura Ann Arnold

P.S. Please see next blog post: PUCO chief blasts ‘green’ energy on Twitter. This only gets better people.

Turning Point solar project in Noble County all but dead.

By Dan Gearino

The Columbus Dispatch Wednesday January 9, 2013 7:59 PM

A plan that was to give Ohio the largest solar array east of the Rockies is now all but dead, potentially costing hundreds of jobs.
American Electric Power is saying that actions today by regulators make it difficult to see how the 49.9 megawatt project near Zanesville can ever come together.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio voted 3-1 yesterday to strip the Turning Point Solar plan from a larger report about AEP’s projected power needs. The majority wrote that AEP didn’t prove the project is needed, and left it up to AEP to provide further justification.

While the commission says it remains open to exploring ways to make Turning Point happen, AEP spokeswoman Terri Flora says the vote is a severe blow that undoes years of work.

“‘Disappointed’ is the word I would use,” she said. “This is a missed opportunity.”

The Ohio Democratic Party and environmental groups seized on the decision, calling it a job-killer and an abandonment of clean energy.

“This ruling is a slap in the face to clean energy, new jobs, and southeast Ohio,” Brian Kaiser, director of green jobs at the Ohio Environmental Council, said in a statement.
While AEP was to be the key buyer of power from the project, the developers were several other companies.

AEP was hoping the PUCO would allow the utility to pay for electricity from the project by making all customers pay for a portion of the costs through a new charge in utility bills. Previously, the agency has said it would allow charges like this if there was a clear need and if the free market was not going to provide a similar resource. The PUCO’s staff had said the project was needed, part of a larger agreement with AEP.

The PUCO’s governing board decided to reject its staff’s advice, an action that leaves AEP with no clear method of paying for the project. Steve Lesser, the only Democrat on the panel, cast the dissenting vote.

The larger issue is Ohio’s continuing movement toward energy deregulation, which means projects like this would no longer be paid for by mandatory charges. Several business groups urged the commission to reject AEP’s plan because it would go against the idea of free markets.

If the PUCO had approved the plan, it would likely have been challenged in court, and the opponents felt good about their chances.

Turning Point, estimated at one time to cost $250 million, was announced in October 2010 with much fanfare by AEP and then-Gov. Ted Strickland in the closing weeks of a gubernatorial campaign. He said it would lead to 300 permanent manufacturing jobs and 300 construction jobs.

Isofoton, a Spanish solar-components company, chose Napoleon, Ohio, as the site for a factory partly to be near Turning Point. The plant is now open with a small number of employees, with plans to ramp up to 300. It is not clear how the PUCO action will affect those plans.

Critics suggested that Turning Point’s main purpose was to promote Strickland.

“It had all the trappings of a political stunt to begin with,” said Sam Randazzo, an attorney for Industrial Energy Users-Ohio, which has argued against the project.

The Ohio Democratic Party is blaming Gov. John Kasich, Strickland’s opponent in that election, for what has happened. Chris Redfern, the party chairman, noted that one of the project’s leading opponents is FirstEnergy, which is a key Kasich donor.

“It’s deeply disappointing that Gov. Kasich has given the appearance his administration is more interested in rewarding his campaign donors than supporting a project that would create more than 600 jobs, including many for veterans,” he said.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said in response: "We respect the independence of the commission, and its decision today had nothing to do with us. The PUCO enforced the rules that the previous administration and environmentalists wrote, yet they now want to change the rules of the game because they didn't like the outcome. Perhaps these people should simply recognize the PUCO's independence and let them do their job."

dgearino@dispatch.com

IndyStar: Wind turbines: Birds at risk from growing wind power in Indiana; Really?

Posted by Laura Arnold / January 14, 2013 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Several wind towers are already up inside the Eon Wildcat Wind Farm in Elwood on Sept. 10, 2012. / (Matt Detrich / The Star)

Indiana has avoided extensive bird kills, but lack of regulations may add to risk (Click to see original story)

Written by Bill McCleery 8:34 PM, Jan 13, 2013

Indiana is home to one of the world's single largest concentrations of wind turbines.

But all of those giant rotors -- about 700 standing among the corn and soybeans along I-65 in Benton County -- do more than harness energy from the wind.

They also can kill birds.

"During migration, birds are traveling long distances, often at night," said Brad Bumgardner, president of the Indiana Audubon Society and an interpretive naturalist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

"Birds migrating at night simply don't see these spinning blades."

So far, wind farms in Indiana have avoided the extensive bird kills documented in other states, most notably Maryland and California, but Bumgardner and other local naturalists are concerned about the turbines' continuing development here and the lack of strong regulations to protect birds.

Developers face virtually no federal regulations aimed at preventing bird deaths at wind farms, said Kelly Fuller, wind campaign coordinator for the Washington, D.C.-based American Bird Conservancy.

Fuller's organization had lobbied the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to impose mandatory rules to protect areas near strategic migratory stopping points, but the agency declined the conservancy's petition in March and instead endorsed a 71-page list of voluntary guidelines, a document the conservancy considers toothless.

"We were rather frustrated," Fuller said. "At least 175 organizations are on record wanting some kind of mandatory standards to protect wildlife at wind projects, including the Sierra Club, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, American Birding Association and many local Audubon chapters."

Naturalists acknowledge that birds face far greater threats than wind farms, such as the neighborhood cat. Still, the federal government does not deny a problem exists.

In 2009, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimated that 440,000 birds per year were killed by U.S. wind turbines, a fraction of the 10 billion to 20 billion birds estimated in the U.S.

But biologists suggest the number of birds killed by turbines will rise as wind energy becomes more prevalent.

Assessing risk

Wind farm developers must comply with federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956.

But Fuller fears that wind farms receive special consideration even in regard to those laws.

"There has never been a single prosecution of the wind industry for killing birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act," she said, "despite copious documentation of those deaths, such as at Altamont Pass (in California). In contrast, the oil and gas industry has been prosecuted for killing as few as a single bird protected by (the act)."

A wind farm project in North Dakota, she said, is moving through the approval process to receive permission from federal authorities to legally kill, through incidental collisions, two bird species that have been listed under the Endangered Species Act: whooping cranes and piping plovers.

By the most recent measure, in autumn 2010, Indiana ranked 10th in the U.S. in the amount of energy being produced via wind farms.

The wind farm in Benton County, northwest of Lafayette, was among the state's earliest sites and now boasts one of the world's largest concentrations of wind turbines. BP, the same company with interests in petroleum and other fuels, operates the wind farm with several partners.

BP is one of the nation's leading wind farm operators and prepares its own environmental impact analyses before building wind farms, a company spokesman said. The spokesman declined to discuss the subject of bird deaths in further detail, however, saying others have greater expertise on the topic.

The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission oversees wind farms developed in Indiana.

The state has no specific environmental rules governing the state's wind farms beyond what is required by the federal government, said Danielle McGrath, a commission spokeswoman. The IURC, however, reviews petitions for compliance with other types of state regulations.

"The IURC looks for certain items within a petition that show it is a well-conceived project," McGrath said, "and an avian risk assessment is a typical item that's often included."

McGrath provided a petition recently submitted for plans to build a wind farm in portions of Madison and Tipton counties northeast of Indianapolis. It included such an assessment, with specific references to at-risk species in the area: black and white warbler, black rail and peregrine falcon.

In each case, the petitioner made the case that the project posed minimal risks to those species.

Fuller remains convinced that mandatory federal rules ultimately are needed to protect U.S. wildlife.

"States have a varying patchwork of regulations, covering things like the distances wind turbines have to be set back from houses to whether or not projects have to undergo any environmental review at all," Fuller said. "Some states such as Minnesota have a fairly rigorous review. Others such as Texas don't have any."

Location, wildlife experts say, is everything when it comes to whether wind farms pose major threats to migrating birds. So far, they say, planners have done a good job, whether by design or coincidence, in finding sites for Indiana's wind farms outside major migratory paths.

"It seems that wind farms placed in open-country cropland with little habitat for migration or breeding are likely the ideal locations for wind farm development," said Wes Homoya, a Purdue University researcher.

Deadly consequences

No one disputes that wind farms can prove devastating to birds that unwittingly fly into the spinning blades.

Biologist Michael Retter recalls one spring day in 2006 when, working as a consultant to a wind-energy company, he was walking amid acres of 240-foot-tall posts on which 110-foot-long blades spun in the wind. His job: to look for dead birds.

A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Looking closer, he realized it was the detached wing of a large raptor, lying on the ground and flopping in the wind.

Then he found the rest of the bird. It was a red-tailed hawk.

"I remember it was sliced into three pieces," Retter said.

Retter is not permitted to disclose at what specific wind farm he was working that day, he said. Fortunately, he said, such discoveries were rare the year he was charged with checking for carcasses. The hawk was one of just two dead birds he found underneath the giant rotors. The other was an American coot, a species of waterfowl.

Retter said he worked at two biological consulting companies at three different wind farms in Illinois and Indiana over three years and never heard of any study linking Indiana wind farms to extensive bird deaths.

"This wind farm was not in a major migratory route, like a coastline, ridge top or mountain pass," said Retter, now a West Lafayette-based editor with the American Birding Association. "It's relatively safe."

The wind farm in Altamont Pass, Calif., has drawn scrutiny for causing thousands of bird deaths annually, including about 75 of the relatively rare golden eagles each year.

Bumgardner, who currently works at Indiana Dunes State Park, agreed that location can be everything.

"In the larger scheme," he said, the number of bird deaths "is fairly small compared to the hundreds of millions (caused by) cats, windows and power lines. ... The great term here is 'comparable risk.' You must put it all in perspective."

Bumgardner advocates regulating wind farms as other businesses and building projects are regulated.

"In areas of high bird migrations, such as coastal areas (including Lake Michigan)," he said, "we (should) zone them to not allow windmills, say, within 20 miles of the shore. Wind farms already have mapping done that shows where they want farms based on wind speeds observed, distance to transmission lines. ... It's merely a new layer on top of that to help minimize bird deaths while recognizing a clean energy source."

Birds of prey, such as eagles and hawks, account for about one-third of deaths from wind turbines across the United States, said Don Gorney, a well-known Indianapolis birder and former president of the Amos W. Butler Audubon Society. Warbler species account for another third, he said, and all other species account for smaller proportions of deaths.

Gorney believes wind farms are compatible with bird conservation if sensible guidelines are followed. Homoya, the Purdue researcher, agreed.

"It's interesting to point out that (one) study found that in terms of gigawatt-hours of electricity produced, there are roughly 13 times more bird deaths associated with fossil fuel energy production than with wind farms."

Homoya has studied how Benton County wind farms affect the American golden plover's use of a nearby migratory stopover site.

"Results are pending," Homoya said, "but anecdotally it appears that effects are minimal."

The next round of controversy in the development of wind energy, meanwhile, might already be brewing.

Whatever their effects on birds, some biologists say, the giant turbines could pose an even greater threat to another type of creature: bats.

Follow Bill McCleery at twitter.com/BillMcCleery01 or call him at (317)444-6083.

_________________________________________________________________

Wind turbines: a risk to birds

Typical size: Towers, 200 to 260 feet tall; rotors, 150 to 260 feet in diameter.
Blade tip speeds: 138 to 182 mph.
Rotor revolution: 11 to 28 rpm.
Energy output: 4.6 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year for modern 1.5-MW turbine.
Birds killed annually by U.S. wind turbines: 440,000; expected to increase to 1 million annually by 2020 with further construction of wind farms.
Sources: National Wind Coordinating Collaborative, American Bird Conservancy

_________________________________________________________________

Indiana latest to see proposed ban on UN environmental proposals, ‘Agenda 21’; Rep. Neese (R-Elkhart) introduces ban

Posted by Laura Arnold / January 14, 2013 / Posted in Uncategorized / 1 Comments

Republican Rep. Tim Neese of Elkhart has proposed a ban on implementing any environmental proposals stemming from the U.N.'s "Agenda 21."

Written by Tom Lobianco Associated Press 4:25 PM, Jan 13, 2013

A decades-old, innocuous-sounding United Nations document has quickly become a rallying point for those on the right who fear the U.S. government will be overthrown by the U.N., and Indiana is the latest state to join the debate born of the tea party.

‘Agenda 21’ calls for better management of global resources and better care for the environment, amid concern over how global warming will harm people. And, as a U.N. document, it has no power inside the U.S. aside from being a recommendation.
But with the rise of the tea party and help from people like former Fox News host Glenn Beck and conservative radio talk show host Alex Jones, the proposal has become a symbol of an assumed attempt for the U.N. to establish a global empire.
The battle is slowly moving from the fringes of the right into statehouses across the nation. Indiana is one of five states that will ponder a ban on implementing the proposal this year. Alabama and Tennessee became the first states to approve bans last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

State Rep. Tim Neese, an Elkhart Republican and author of a proposal to ban implementation of the UN document, doesn’t see it in quite the same terms as tea party members who have adopted this as a core battle. But he does see it as a broader issue, one that concerns the protection of private property rights and Indiana’s state sovereignty.

“I don’t see it as a battle with environmentalists, as long as people have the ability to choose,” he said. “So when any type of special interest tries to — through a policy whether it be a legislative body or local or state official — to mandate that a specific type of material has to be used. That’s where I think the Agenda 21 policy is going beyond what is neutral.”

Neese’s proposal was sent to the House committee on interstate and international cooperation, where it has a chance to be heard this session. A companion measure filed by Sen. Dennis Kruse, an Auburn Republican, was sent to the Senate rules committee, where it is likely to die.

The General Assembly will have plenty of property control and sovereignty issues to deal with this session, all proposed by Republicans. One measure would allow gold and silver to be used as currency in Indiana, another would bar federal officials from apprehending someone without consent of the local sheriff and a Senate proposal would grant Indiana the power to nullify federal law, specifically the federal health care law.

Of course, the only thing that ultimately grants a state power is the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment.

These “Agenda 21” measures are unlikely to develop legs, given that Indiana’s legislative leaders are looking to skirt as many hot-button issues as possible this session, focusing instead on the budget, education and jobs.

Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council, said he’s surprised to see the “Agenda 21” proposal from lawmakers he’s previously worked with on other issues, “when they have been pragmatic and foresighted on tackling here-and-now challenges.”

“Indiana faces real environmental challenges with real economic impacts, like the blue-green algae problem, which is hurting our recreational sector and drinking water supplies,” Kharbanda said.

Environmental struggles have almost always consisted of charges that regulations will destroy economic growth and cost American jobs. Only recently have conservative Republicans’ arguments morphed into the threat of a global takeover of the United States.

Beating that drum is Beck and his new novel, named “Agenda 21.” In it, the U.N. creates a global government, abolishes the United States and forces Americans to run on treadmills to generate clean electricity for the New World Order.

“This is a massive movement, and its real intentions are being masked with environmental issues. The bad news is this was set up by those who want to establish a global government system,” Beck said in June 2011 on his Fox show, shortly before it was cancelled.

“Once they put their fangs in our community, they will suck all the blood out of it and we will not be able to survive.”

Before anyone can sink their “fangs” into the U.S., they’ll have to deal with a highly partisan and highly dysfunctional Congress. They would also have to get in line behind continued budget battles and another fight over raising the debt ceiling.

Washington has enough trouble with the basics these days without wading into other policy areas — like energy and the environment.

25x’25 Webinar on Distributed Renewable Energy Set for Jan. 16; Focus on Steps by Germany and Other European Countries

Posted by Laura Arnold / January 11, 2013 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Join me for what looks like a terrific webinar next week presented by 25X'25.

The next 25x'25 Webinar is set for noon to 1:15 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Jan. 16, when the discussion will focus on "Energy for Economic Growth: Policy Tools for Expanding Distributed Renewable Energy Generation."

Webinar presenters will review the steps that Germany and other European countries have taken to promote renewable energy. 25x'25 will also use the event to release the report, "Energy for Economic Growth: Pathways for Accelerating and Expanding Distributed Renewable Energy Generation in America."

Webinar presenters include Dr. Georg Maue, First Secretary Climate and Energy Policy, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany; Günter Hörmandinger, First Counselor-Environment, Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America; Jerry Vap, Project Chair, 25x'25 Energy for Economic Growth Work Group; and Tim Fink, Project Manager, 25x'25 Energy for Economic Growth Initiative. Ernie Shea, Project Coordinator for 25x'25, will moderate the Webinar.

To register for this free webinar, click HERE.

Here is a recent PowerPoint presentation I found from Dr. Georg Maue that might provide a sneak preview of his remarks.

http://www.grottos.us/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/4_Germany_GROTTO.165104542.ppsx

Solar for All – Jan/Feb 2013- Sierra Magazine – Sierra Club; Read Comments and Join the Conversation

Posted by Laura Arnold / January 10, 2013 / Posted in Uncategorized / 1 Comments

Solar for All - Jan/Feb 2013- Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club. < Please click this link and read this article first.

Dear IndianaDG Readers:

I highly recommend reading this recent article in the Sierra Club Magazine. I also recomment, however, that you also read this comment on the article from Bob Tregilus who is a fellow member of the Steering Committee of the Alliance for Renewable Energy (ARE) along with people like John Farrell with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Paul Gipe with Wind-Works.org.

A conversation has also started recently on the List Serve for the Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network (SIREN) concerning this article. "Solar for All" provides a good foundation and starting point for a serious discussion here in Indiana and perhaps our neighboring coal dependent states.

Hopefully, this article from Sierra Magazine as well as the comments below will foster more discussion about the right path for our energy policy. Let me know what you think.

Laura Ann Arnold

Bob Tregilus · Co-Host at This Week in Energy (TWiE) podcast

Hum, sorry, this comment grew during editing...anyway great article Paul, however, in your conclusion you state: "But if my neighbors and I figure out how to launch our solar co-op, and the folks on the next block do the same, and the next block after that, eventually our utility is going to start running out of customers, and will exert what political juice it has to slow the process. But that can only last so long. Remember grid parity—when solar power becomes as cheap as or cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels? When that time comes, neither lobbyist nor bureaucrat will be able to hold back the clean energy tide..." Actually, the utilities are already, and have been--for many years--purposely "slowing the process" by intentionally creating uncertainty though manipulating the byzantine mix of renewable energy policies a...t the federal, state and local levels, a few of which you discuss in your article.

And you fell into their trap, however, by describing the German feed-in tariff (FIT) as a subsidy. A subsidy (under a U.S. definition) refers to a taxpayer financed program, but FITs are simply payment for generation at a fair price that ensures the operator a reasonable return on their investment. The German FIT program is paid for by ratepayers through their utility bills, just like all other energies they purchase each month.

(Sidebar: People forget there's a wide mix of energy we purchase even beyond the better known sources such as gas and coal. There's also ancillary services, such as spinning reserves, peak power and so forth--some of which are far far far more expensive than renewables are, and in Germany, they use their FIT purchased energy *first* so as to offset those more expensive forms, thus saving money. It's called the merit order effect, but I'm digressing into the weeds.)

So price fixing isn't a subsidy, it's simply the way highly regulated energy markets work: state public utility commissions set prices (or approve them) all of the time. Therefore, through manipulating that sacrosanct American myth of "free markets" (oy vie) the utilities have assured that the U.S. will fall further and further behind in the deployment of renewable energies. They clearly don't want consumers playing in their sandbox.

Other examples of how they (and our complicit energy "experts") have been "slowing the process" are:

(1) Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) which create de facto caps on the deployment of renewable energies. Here in Nevada, because of poor design, our utility went out and bought a ton of RE credits (RECs) (mostly from Idaho) such that they are now complainant with the state RPS through 2018 or so. (The Germans don't have any RPSs. Their FIT program is open ended, the more capacity, the merrier!)

(2) Net-metering caps. Most states only allow a small percentage of one to two percent of peak load to be net-metered. There are exceptions however. Colorado, for example, has no aggregate capacity limit. However, most states do. In Nevada, it's set at two percent. Net-metering, therefore, will certainly "hold back the clean energy tide."

(3) The third party leasing rent-to-own outfits like Sungevity, but more importantly, Solarcity, which just went public with an IPO, fight tooth and nail to protect scarce capacity carveouts (from the state RPSs) so as to bolster their chosen business models as the expense of all others. The same goes for the utility-scale folks. The in-fighting, due in part to the small de facto caps of the RPSs, have significantly slowed the deployment of renewables in the U.S.

(4) Most importantly is how we connect distributed renewable energies to the grid in the U.S. You somewhat danced around the problem in your article (however, you did touch upon it--big kudos for that!) but the most salient difference between the American net-metering program and the German feed-in tariff is that net-metering is *retail* energy whereas the FIT is *wholesale* energy. Thus, net-metering does little more than offset onsite loads and in the process it shifts the rate burdens of lost customers onto other ratepayers. Those rate burdens also include all of the utility's overhead as well since compensation is at the retail rate. A FIT, on the other hand, as wholesale energy feeds the energy directly into the electric grid and is used--by law--first. That means $0.30kWh solar from some grandmother's cottage in a German village somewhere in Bavaria is used to displace $1.00kWh peak energy from an ancillary service provider.

Of course, there's tons more nuances to all of this as I'm sure you are aware. All of that said, you actually do touch upon an.

It's true, sort of, but not if the current set of polices remain in place, and sadly, that seems to be thrust of our energy "visionaries" such as Sen. Harry Reid, Pres. Bill Clinton and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., all of whom have been at the forefront praising Germany for their successes, but then immediately telling Americans how we need to bolster our failed programs of the past.

The Sierra Club, and in particular, the Beyond Coal campaign, is complicit in that as well by placing far far far too much emphasis on utility-scale renewable energies--and all of the parasitic costs that go along with solar strip mines in our deserts--rather than on energy democracy--distributed locally owned generation that scales the technologies and soft costs, resulting in reduced prices.

Germany got to where they are by leveling the playing field and allowing everyone to participate equally--and meaningfully--in energy production. It's energy justice, or as many like to call it: energy democracy. That is the cornerstone of what the Germans call energiewende--loosely translated as "energy transition," but at the heart of energiewende is energy democracy.

Recently, RWE, E.ON and the other major utilities in Germany have all publicly announced that they will build no more coal or gas plants and that they are shifting their business models to delivery and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI, aka, smart-grids).

Where the U.S. is heading is a major collapse of the investor owned utilities (IOUs), very similar to what is presently happening to the newspaper industry. The key is electric drive transportation. The IOUs won't be able to "hold back the clean energy tide" when there are enough repurposed electric vehicle batteries on the market. Couple a 2-3 kW home solar PV array with a used 23kWh (in its used condition, maybe 16kWh) capacity Nissan Leaf battery for storage stuffed under a bench in the back of someone's garage--and you no longer need the stupid utility.

Sadly, that will be a huge waste of resources and is the most expensive way to do renewables.

Community ownership would be so much more efficient. There are some towns in Germany that are ***way*** over one thousand (1,000) percent powered by renewable energies. Here's one that is 4,000 percent (the Germans laugh at our zero net energy buildings, rather they talk about energy plus buildings: that's what the difference between retail and wholesale energy on the DG side can do):

http://www.go100percent.org/cms/index.php?id=105.