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Nucor signs 10-year virtual PPA for 100 MW from wind farm in North Texas

April 2, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
April 2, 2021

Nucor Corporation has signed a 10-year virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with Orsted Onshore North America, LLC for 100 megawatts from Orsted’s Western Trail wind farm in North Texas.

This is Nucor’s second VPPA. Last year, Nucor signed a VPPA with EDFR Renewables North America to be the sole off-taker for EDFR’s 250-megawatt Brazos Fork solar project, which is also located in Texas.

Orsted’s wind farm project is already under construction and is expected to be in service later this year. The project incorporates Nucor steel and steel products and is designed to continue generating power even during particularly severe weather.

A virtual PPA is a financial deal under which the buyer pays a set price but doesn’t directly buy electricity from the project. Power from the project is sold into the wholesale market. If the wholesale price is higher than the price in the virtual PPA, the offtaker receives the difference. If the price is lower, the offtaker pays the facility owner to make up the difference.

Nucor and its affiliates are manufacturers of steel and steel products, with operating facilities in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Enel enters virtual power purchase agreement with Kellogg tied to Texas wind project

Through a VPPA, Enel will sell a portion of the electricity delivered to the grid from a Texas wind energy project to Kellogg Company, Enel said on March 3.

Italy-based Enel, through its U.S. renewable subsidiary Enel Green Power North America, has started construction of the Azure Sky wind plus storage project, its first large-scale hybrid project globally to integrate wind and battery storage at one site.

Through a 100-megawatt VPPA, Enel will sell to Kellogg a 360 GWh portion of the electricity delivered to the grid annually from the Azure Sky wind project, which is equal to 50% of the volume of electricity used across Kellogg’s North American manufacturing facilities.

Starbucks enters VPPAs

Starbucks Corp. in December said it was entering into solar and solar-plus-storage VPPAs to support its corporate sustainability goals.

Muscatine Power & Water seeks solar generation proposals through RFP

March 31, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 31, 2021

Iowa public power utility Muscatine Power & Water (MPW) is seeking bids for two sets of full-attribute solar generation projects through a recently released request for proposals (RFP).

MPW is seeking bids for a solar generation power purchase agreement (PPA) at an existing water wellfield and at developer-sited locations. 

MPW also requests optional bids for engineering and procurement services as an alternative to any proposed PPA at the MPW-owned Grandview Wellfield Site. 

A construction estimate is required alongside this optional bid; however, any construction contract is required to go through a separate competitive bid and award process.

The preferred commercial operation date is 2023. 

MPW is seeking to retain or resell all energy, capacity, and renewable attributes of the proposed projects. 

Projects may be solar only or solar coupled with a battery electric storage system.

Projects should be optimized to provide the lowest levelized cost of energy within the constraints provided.

MPW is open to alternate project configurations provided they would deliver a net value to the utility and its customer owners.  Key tenets of project consideration are project viability, price, congestion risk, equipment performance, and deliverability

The Energy Authority is the administrator for the RFP.

To access the RFP document, schedule, and term sheet, visit TEA’s procurement site.

TVA, partners launch solar-plus-storage project for Facebook, GM

March 30, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
March 30, 2021

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has unveiled a 173 megawatt (MW) renewable energy project that would be the largest solar-plus-storage project in TVA’s Kentucky service area.

The Logan County solar farm will provide Facebook’s regional data center operations with 145 MW of power and General Motors’ Bowling Green Assembly, exclusive home of the Chevrolet Corvette, with 28 MW of power.

Facebook’s investment in the solar project helped enable the addition of 120 megawatt-hours (MWh) of battery storage technology that will increase the resilience of the power grid.

TVA and Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. are partnering with Nashville-based Silicon Ranch to develop the project. TVA signed a long-term power purchase agreement with Silicon Ranch to develop, own, operate and maintain the solar-plus-storage facility.

Silicon Ranch expects to hire more than 450 workers for the project, which is expected to begin construction in 2022 and be completed in the fall of 2023, pending environmental reviews.

The project is “the result of Facebook’s, General Motors’, and Warren RECC’s leadership and our joint, long-term commitment to renewable energy across the region,” Chris Hansen, TVA vice president of origination and renewables, said in a statement. “TVA’s Green Invest program is bringing together customers and renewable energy partners who are all investing in our communities,” he added.

TVA’s Green Invest program matches demand for green power from large business and industrial customers with renewable projects that TVA puts together with its development partners. Since 2018, TVA says, the program has attracted nearly $2.7 billion in solar investment and procured over 2,100 MW of solar power on behalf of the utility’s customers.

The Logan County project is the fifth renewable energy agreement TVA has signed with Facebook, which now has renewable commitments in the region totaling 742 MW of solar and 80 MW of battery storage.

Earlier this month, TVA said it is partnering with Origis Energy to develop a 150-MW solar and 50-MW, 250-MWh battery storage facility in Lowndes County, Mississippi, to support two Facebook data centers in the Tennessee Valley.

In May, General Motors said it would use TVA’s Green Invest program to power its Spring Hill Manufacturing plant with 100 percent renewable energy to reach its goal to become carbon dioxide neutral in its products and operations by 2040.

The Green Invest program is also available to local power companies in TVA’s territory. In January 2020, TVA announced a partnership with Nashville Electric Service and Vanderbilt University for a 35-MW solar project in Bedford County, Tennessee. Last March, TVA entered into a deal to secure 212 MW of solar power for Knoxville Utilities Board’s customers.

Federal agencies unveil goal to deploy 30 GW of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030

March 29, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 29, 2021

The Departments of Interior, Energy and Commerce on March 29 announced a shared goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030.

At a White House forum, Interior announced the final Wind Energy Areas (WEA) in the New York Bight, an area of shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.

The goal of the Department’s area identification process is to identify the offshore locations that appear most suitable for wind energy development, taking into consideration coexistence with ocean users, Interior noted.

The WEAs are adjacent to the greater metropolitan Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has identified nearly 800,000 acres as WEAs in the New York Bight. The BOEM will now initiate an environmental review, with public input, on these areas in federal waters for potential offshore wind leasing.

In addition, Interior said it is initiating an environmental review of the third commercial scale offshore wind project by announcing a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for Ocean Wind LLC’s proposed project offshore New Jersey.

Ocean Wind has proposed an offshore wind project with a total capacity of 1,100 megawatts.

Interior previously announced environmental reviews for Vineyard Wind (Massachusetts) and South Fork (Rhode Island) and anticipates initiating the environmental reviews for up to ten additional projects later this year.

In related action, the Department of Energy announced $8 million for 15 new offshore wind research and development (R&D) projects through the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium.

The selections include projects to develop innovative support structures, support U.S.-based supply chains needed for wind turbine production, advance electrical systems innovation, and present solutions for impacts on wildlife and radar, DOE said.

DOE established the National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium in 2018 to address research priorities for offshore wind as defined in the National Offshore Wind Strategy, which was developed jointly by DOE and the BOEM.

In addition, DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) released a fact sheet to facilitate access for up to $3 billion in funding through LPO’s Title 17 Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program.

DOE said that LPO is ready to partner with offshore wind and offshore transmission developers, suppliers, and other financing partners to scale the U.S. offshore industry.

Meanwhile, DOE and the Department of Commerce jointly announced a new partnership through the Northeast Sea Grant program that will fund $1.25 million in research into the impacts of ocean-based renewable energy on the fishing industry and Northeastern coastal communities.

DOE unveils target to cut cost of solar energy by 60% within the next ten years

March 29, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 29, 2021

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on March 25 announced a new target to cut the cost of solar energy by 60% within the next ten years, in addition to nearly $128 million in funding to lower costs, improve performance, and speed the deployment of solar energy technologies.

Lowering the cost of solar energy is essential to accelerating deployment and achieving President Biden’s goal of a 100% clean electricity grid by 2035, DOE said.

To reach that goal in the next 15 years, hundreds of gigawatts of solar energy need to be installed as much as five times faster than it is now.

To that end, DOE is accelerating its utility-scale solar 2030 cost target by five years — setting a new goal of driving down the current cost of 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 3 cents/kWh by 2025 and 2 cents/kWh by 2030.

Traditional solar panels convert sunlight into electrical energy using photovoltaic (PV) solar technologies, which by 2035 could represent between 30% and 50% of electricity supply in a decarbonized electricity sector, DOE said.

Funding announced March 25 through DOE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) will support advancing two materials used to make solar cells:: perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films.

Perovskites are a family of emerging solar materials that have potential to make highly efficient thin-film solar cells with very low production costs.

DOE is awarding $40 million to 22 projects that will advance perovskite PV device and manufacturing research and development, as well as performance through the formation of a new $14 million testing center to provide neutral, independent validation of the performance of new perovskite devices.   

DOE is also offer a $3 million Perovskite Startup Prize. This new prize competition “will speed entrepreneurs’ path to commercializing perovskite technologies by providing seed capital for their newly formed companies,” DOE said.

The federal agency is also offering $20 million for CdTe thin films. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will set up a consortium to advance cheaper CdTe thin-film solar technologies, which were developed in the United States and make up 20% of the modules installed in the U.S..

The consortium will advance low-cost manufacturing techniques and domestic research capabilities to increase opportunities for U.S. workers and entrepreneurs to capture a larger portion of the $60 billion global solar manufacturing sector.  

In addition, DOE announced $7 million as part of a new funding opportunity for projects to increase the lifetime of silicon-based PV systems from about 30 years to 50 years to lower the cost of energy and reduce waste. The aim is to improve PV system components, such as inverters, connectors, cables, racks, and trackers.

The announcement also supports several concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) projects. Unlike PV technologies that directly convert sunlight into electricity, CSP captures heat from sunlight and uses that thermal energy to spin a turbine or power an engine that then generates electricity.

N.Y. stakeholders, including LIPA, adopt plan for power line for offshore wind farm

March 29, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
March 29, 2021

A group composed of the New York State Public Service Commission and more than a dozen stakeholders, including the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), last week agreed to and adopted a plan to build a transmission line that would link a proposed offshore wind farm to the state’s power grid.

The 7.6-mile transmission line would connect the proposed 132-megawatt (MW) South Fork wind farm sited 35 miles east of Montauk Point to a substation in the Town of East Hampton in Suffolk County on the east end of Long Island. The transmission line is due online by 2023.

On September 14, 2018, Deepwater Wind South Fork, the developer of the wind farm, filed for a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need for the construction of approximately 3.5 miles of submarine cable from the New York State territorial waters to the south shore of East Hampton and approximately 4.1 miles of underground cable from the south shore to an existing East Hampton substation.

In addition to requiring that the cable will be buried at least 30 feet below the surface of Wainscott Beach, where the project is to make landfall, other conditions will limit construction periods to off-peak seasons to ensure construction-related impacts are minimized.

The joint proposal was agreed to by Deepwater Wind, staff of the Department of Public Service, the Department of Environmental Conservation, Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the Department of State, the Department of Transportation, the Town of East Hampton trustees, PSEG Long Island, which operates LIPA under contract with the state, Concerned Citizens of Montauk, the Group for the East End, Montauk United, Win With Wind, and others.

The South Fork wind farm and the transmission project were selected by PSEG Long Island through a 2015 competitive bidding process that sought new sources of power generation to cost effectively and reliably supply the South Fork of Suffolk County with electric power.

LIPA’s board of trustees in 2017 approved the project, which will the nation’s largest offshore wind farm and the first offshore wind farm in New York.

PSEG Long Island, in a statement, said the wind farm and transmission line will serve the public interest by contributing to the goals of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and Clean Energy Standard.

New York State has a mandated goal of achieving economy-wide carbon dioxide neutrality and a zero-carbon dioxide emissions electricity sector by 2040. The state’s energy plan includes a $3.9 billion investment in 67 large-scale renewable projects across the state, the creation of more than 150,000 clean energy jobs, and a commitment to develop over 1,800 MW of offshore wind by 2024.

NREL study outlines how Los Angeles can meet goal of reliable, 100% renewable electricity

March 24, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 24, 2021

Meeting Los Angeles’ goal of reliable, 100% renewable electricity by 2045, or even 2035, is achievable with rapid deployment of wind, solar, storage, and other renewable energy technologies this decade, according to a years-long analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The results of the study were released by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Cynthia McClain-Hill, President, Board of Water and Power Commissioners, Marty Adams, General Manager and Chief Engineer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a number of Los Angeles City Council members and Dr. Martin Keller, Executive Director, NREL, on March 24.

They participated in a virtual press event to release the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Energy Study, known as LA100. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm also made remarks during the event.

Three years ago, “we teamed up with NREL to figure out exactly what it would take” to move even faster towards the city’s 100 percent renewable energy goal, Garcetti said. “Together we’ve run over one hundred million simulations to answer that question,” he said.

“We worked with representatives of local communities, listened to our constituents to prioritize environmental justice and how we do this and to identify multiple pathways to get to one hundred percent and here’s what we found,” Garcetti said.

“First, one hundred percent renewable energy is absolutely achievable,” he said. “In fact, it’s within our reach. It can actually make our system more reliable than it is today and more affordable than it is today for Angelenos of all backgrounds.”

Second, “the more that we electrify other sectors, the more our capital investments will reduce costs and increase our health benefits, lifting a burden that too often falls on low income communities of color.”

And third, “We need to get moving on these investments right now. This study isn’t something in the shelf. It is a greenprint for us to jump into action.”

McClain-Hill said, “that we now have several viable paths to achieve 100 percent renewable energy for Los Angeles and maintain a reliable power grid, even in the most extreme conditions, has clear national implications.”

She added, “it is also a testament to the important role that our storied Department of Water and Power continues to play in manifesting the future of Los Angeles.”

The study “makes it clear that it’s possible to achieve our goal while remaining true to the core principles of reliability, environmental stewardship, environmental justice, resiliency and affordability. That’s critical because our challenge and our charge goes far beyond achieving 100 percent renewable energy,” said McClain-Hill.

“Our charge is to support our community by reducing carbon emissions in ways that build and uplift the quality of life for everyone,” she said. “LA100 shows we can do that by creating jobs and opportunities and engaging our customers in being part of the solution. For the Department of Water and Power, this is our roadmap for building a stronger and more vibrant Los Angeles.”

For his part, Adams said that with the completion of the LA100 study, LADWP “now has the tools and the roadmap to continue on the path to one hundred percent renewables and we plan to start right away by developing a set of next steps and the actions that are called for are actions that were in all the scenarios of the study.”

Details on study

“The combined effects of energy efficiency, electrification, and demand response yield large benefits to greenhouse gas reductions and public health and help cost-effectively manage the clean energy transition,” NREL noted in a news release related to the study.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development.

In addition to identifying pathways for Los Angeles, the study illuminates the potential for other municipalities, large and small, to embark on similar analysis and contribute toward national efforts to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035.

NREL said that the study provides insights into how LADWP can meet clean energy targets established by Garcetti and the Los Angeles City Council in 2016 and 2017. LADWP currently generates more than half of its electricity from renewable and zero carbon resources.

The  analysis stops short of making specific policy or project recommendations but identifies “no-regrets” investments the city can consider now to reap potential benefits to reliability and greenhouse gas reductions in the coming decade: namely, deployment of new solar, wind, batteries, and transmission within and outside of the city, paired with upgrades to the local distribution system and smart-grid operational practices that make more efficient use of these investments, NREL noted.

“Unlike other forward-looking studies of high-renewable power systems, LA100 uniquely considered reliability as a fundamental requirement for the future grid,” NREL said.

“Reliability of the grid is paramount — especially in a future when more consumer products like cars are electrified. Our models subjected the grid to multiple stresses — from higher temperatures due to climate change, to wildfire risks that could take out transmission lines for weeks or even months at time,” said Jaquelin Cochran, manager of NREL’s grid systems analysis group and principal investigator of the LA100 study.

Quarterly meetings over three years with the study’s Los Angeles-based Advisory Group, comprising members representing neighborhoods, customers, labor, business, environmental, academic organizations, and institutions, tailored the research to constituents’ needs and concerns, “pioneering a new, more holistic approach to energy analysis that centers the community in the conversation,” NREL said.

The analysis showed multiple paths exist for the city to reach its goal. Each scenario follows a similar trajectory up to 80%–90% renewable generation. Wind and solar resources, enabled by storage, provide the majority of energy required to meet future load: 73%–92% depending on the scenario.

Where the pathways diverge is in how to cost effectively and reliably meet the remaining energy demand that cannot be easily served by wind, solar, and batteries, NREL noted.

For the last 10% (going from 90% renewable electricity to 100%), all scenarios rely on some type of renewably fueled combustion turbine built inside the city that can come online within minutes and run for several days when needed.

Such technology is still used infrequently, like peaking plants today, NREL said. Because there are few commercially available, near-term options for this type of grid service, meeting the challenge of the final stretch toward 100% “highlights future research directions at the local scale and beyond — such as developing the infrastructure required to produce and store hydrogen, or multi-day demand response programs that could provide a lower-cost alternative,” NREL said.

It noted that LA100 establishes a methodology that could inform other municipalities “similarly interested in a clean, equitable, and reliable energy future.”

Along with expertise from partners at the University of Southern California, Colorado State University, and Kearns & West, the study relied on NREL’s objective, holistic capabilities to analyze potential pathways the community can take to achieve Los Angeles’ goal, NREL said.

There is no single model that can perform a study of this scope, so the analysis combined dozens of them — spanning detailed electricity demand modeling, power system investments and operations, distribution grid modeling, economic impact analysis, and life cycle greenhouse gas analysis, among others.

Using NREL’s supercomputer, experts ran more than 100 million ultrahigh-resolution simulations to evaluate a range of future scenarios for how LADWP’s power system could evolve while maintaining its current high degree of reliability.

The study found that decarbonizing the power sector through renewable deployment helps create the enabling conditions for electrifying the buildings and transportation sectors.

“Together, these changes yield large reductions in carbon emissions and air pollutants, which lead to health and other benefits for disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged communities alike, compared with today. However, ensuring prioritization of environmental justice — per the Los Angeles City Council motivations driving the study — would require intentionally designed decision-making processes and policies/programs that prioritize disadvantaged communities,” NREL said.

FERC clarifies determination of 80-MW capacity cap for QFs

March 22, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 22, 2021

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on March 18 revised its policy for measuring the power production capacity of certain resources seeking to be qualifying facilities (QFs) under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA).

At its monthly meeting, FERC reversed a split decision in a September 2020 order denying Broadview Solar LLC’s application for certification as a QF under PURPA.

The Commission reinstated its longstanding “send-out” analysis, which determines a facility’s power production capacity based on the electricity that it can actually deliver to the interconnecting electric utility.

“Today’s order restores a common-sense understanding that QF status should turn on the power production capacity of a facility as a whole, not the capacity of any individual component part,” FERC Chairman Rich Glick said in a statement. “The primary benefit of QF status afforded under PURPA is the right to sell power to a chosen utility, so the amount of power that a QF can actually transmit to the utility should be the touchstone of our analysis.”

Broadview’s facility involves a coupled array of solar panels with a gross capacity of 160 MW of direct current (DC) electricity and a 50-megawatt battery energy storage system.

The maximum output of the project’s 20 invertors, which convert the DC electricity into alternating current, means that only 80 MW can be produced and transmitted to the interconnection with NorthWestern Corporation’s transmission system.

This case provided the Commission the first occasion to interpret how PURPA’s limitation on a facility’s “power production capacity” applies to a facility such as Broadview’s, which has a large array of solar PV cells but is physically incapable of producing more than 80 MW of power for delivery to the purchasing utility. In setting aside the prior order, FERC concluded that it erred by departing from PURPA, its own regulations and precedent.

Calif. CCA signs contract for aggregated residential demand response program

March 16, 2021

by Peter Maloney
APPA News
March 16, 2021

East Bay Community Energy (EBCE) in California has signed an agreement with OhmConnect that aims to lower electricity costs for its customers while reducing usage during critical peak hours.

EBCE’s goal in the deal is to incentivize its customers to shift their energy use away from peak evening hours when solar power fades and more expensive and polluting fossil generation needs to be called on.

The roughly 150,000 active consumers using OhmConnect’s app receive alerts when grid conditions warrant reductions in energy consumption. OhmConnect users that lower their usage compared with their historical usage earn credits, or points, that are redeemable through the company’s web site for prizes, purchases or cash. One point is worth about $0.01.

OhmConnect is “providing us a pretty traditional hedge,” but they are able to execute it through demand response rather than through a generating unit somewhere, Howard Chang, chief operating officer of EBCE, said.

Basically, OhmConnect is providing EBCE, which serves most of Alameda County, with a demand response program. “In essence, they are paying customers to reduce load,” Chang said.

EBCE’s contract calls for OhmConnect to hedge the community choice aggregator’s power needs for certain hours when electricity prices tend to be higher, specifically during evening ramp hours and in the summer. OhmConnect assumes the risk associated with the curtailment and with sourcing the energy supplies from the California Independent System Operator.

The contract calls for OhmConnect to cut EBCE’s demand by 25 megawatts (MW) in 2021. “It puts the performance risk on them,” Chang said. Though the current contract is short term, if it proves successful, “we would hope to continue it into the future,” Chang said.

“This deal demonstrates that the transition away from fossil fuels will not only enhance grid reliability but will also lower costs and empower consumers to drive the clean energy transition,” Nick Chaset, CEO of EBCE, said in a statement.

By aggregating its customers, San Francisco based OhmConnect hopes to create the largest virtual power plant in North America by aggregating and coordinating the curtailment activities of its customers. In one week of August 2020, OhmConnect said its “Resi-Station” technology reduced energy usage in California by almost one gigawatt hour.

EBCE operates a community choice energy program for more than 550,000 residential and commercial customers in Alameda County and 11 incorporated cities and expects to add 75,000 customers this year. EBCE began its service in June 2018 and plans to expand to the cities of Pleasanton, Newark, and Tracy in 2021.

Public power representatives invited to apply for community solar working group

March 13, 2021

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
March 13, 2021

Public power representatives and collaborators in need of expertise or a community of practice around community solar projects are being invited to apply for an expert-led municipal utility community solar working group. 

Guided by Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy staff expertise as part of the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP), a selected group of representatives from the public power community will work in parallel to scope community solar projects for their jurisdictions. 

By the end of the nine- to ten-month working group, each participating utility will have developed a business case for an exploratory project or for a site-specific project.

Working session topics will include: 

In order to get the most value out of the working group, participants will be asked to commit to spending approximately 3-5 hours per month preparing for and engaging in working sessions, taking advantage of networking opportunities and discussing community solar options and priorities with others in their respective organizations.

At a minimum, participants will be expected to:  

For those interested in applying for the working group, complete and interest form here. Interest forms must be submitted by March 19.