Home Safely -- May 1, 2015; Solar Gardens Along The Road To Germany

I got home safely, arriving this morning about 10:00 a.m. I could have gotten home at 4:00 a.m. but decided to sleep at a nice rest area somewhere north of Dallas. Lots to write about, but will save it for later.

All I can say is that there are few things more relaxing and more enjoyable than a cross-country trip across the United States. Wow, it was wonderful and beautiful. I had forgotten how friendly midwesterners are. When servers in McDonald's come by to refill your cup of coffee -- not once, or twice, but three times -- you can't help but be reminded how friendly folks are in this part of the country.

Environmentalists who enjoy the scenery, need to visit northeast Hays, Kansas, to see how huge wind farms have forever changed the landscape of that area ... and it will only get "worse." Unless, of course, you like wind turbines. It is really, really sad. You have to see it for yourself to see how out-of-state environmentalists have "altered" the landscape of Kansas forever.

Speaking of which, I see that Minnesota continues to put up wind farms in North Dakota. Bakken.com is reporting:

Xcel Energy says it will spend $300 million to purchase and complete a wind farm in North Dakota under development by Geronimo Energy. The purchase salvages a project that might otherwise not have been finished because no wind energy company emerged to buy and operate it.

Xcel planned to buy electricity produced by the wind farm in Stutsman County, North Dakota. But the utility didn’t necessarily want to own it. Xcel has two other large wind farms under construction.

Geronimo executive Betsy Engelking tells the Star Tribune that an unfavorable tax ruling in North Dakota made it difficult to find an outside buyer. If Xcel completes the project before the end of 2016, it’s expected to qualify for the federal wind production tax credit.

But then this story. Apparently Xcel likes renewable energy ... just not too much (they don't want to "take the road to Germany"). Bakken.com is also reporting:

Xcel Energy Inc., alarmed that its Minnesota community solar program has unleashed large-scale corporate solar development, on Tuesday said it will enforce size limits on projects — a controversial step that would cancel more than 80 percent of those proposed so far.

Even with a size limit, Xcel officials said Minnesota will boast one of the largest community solar programs in the nation. Such programs, which Xcel pioneered in Colorado, let customers subscribe to shared solar arrays built by energy developers in farm fields or on large commercial rooftops.

Such deals by large energy users represent “a very different product than the one that was intended by the Legislature,” Aakash Chandarana, Xcel regional vice president of rates and regulatory affairs, said in an interview.

Although Xcel supported the 2013 Minnesota law that authorized community solar gardens, the utility has complained that solar developers are proposing clusters of up to 40 adjacent solar gardens on single sites.

“That is going to bring us back to facilitating really what is supposed to be a community-based program as opposed to a program where you have got the equivalent of a large power plant being built on our distribution system,” Chandarana said.

More than 500 solar gardens have been proposed in Xcel’s Minnesota service area. All are still under review by Xcel. If the large clusters of projects are excluded, Xcel said it still expects about 80 MW of solar gardens would be developed by the end of 2016.
The solar industry likely will challenge Xcel’s directive before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, which established the solar garden rules.

“It is a shocking development for the utility to take such a brazen approach to kill solar in Minnesota,” said Mark Andrew, president and founder of GreenMark Solar, which has been planning 25 MW of community solar projects, some of them at clustered sites.

Lynn Hinkle, director of policy for the Minnesota Solar Industries Association, said he believes Xcel is contradicting a 2014 PUC order allowing multiple solar gardens on a single site. “I don’t know how anybody else could interpret it any differently,” he said.

Chandarana said about 15 solar developers have submitted applications to install nearly 560 MW of solar projects in Minnesota. That’s the equivalent of a large power plant. He said Xcel had expected that about 20 MW of solar gardens would be built each year for the first five years.

Laura McCarten, a regional vice president for Xcel, said the company’s scaled-back program still would be “one of the largest community solar garden programs in the nation — comparable to what the state of California expects to see by the end of 2016.”

Much, much more at the linked article.