By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI.org
News staff
PROVIDENCE — Last year
National Grid was the most influential opponent to legislation extending Rhode
Island's innovative renewable-energy program. Recently, it led support for a
bill (S2690) that would extend the program
another five years.
At Statehouse hearings
last June, National Grid said it preferred to wait and see if the state’s
renewable-energy sector needed further incentives to justify an extension of
the distributed generation contracts (DG) program.
At a March 12 hearing
of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Agriculture, National Grid said
it now has the clarity needed to endorse the program. Mike Ryan, National
Grid's vice president of government affairs for Rhode Island, said five months
of meetings with environmental and renewable-energy representatives included
“some rather loud discussion at times."
These conversations
included comprise, prodding and hard work. “But together,” Ryan said, “I think
we’ve come up with a piece of legislation that is going to have us stand out as
leaders in, at least, New England.”
To make the DG program
inclusive to residential installers, a committee will determine fixed-price
incentives that would help installers predict costs and revenue. The incentives
would adjust regularly to match market prices, and the prices would be approved
by the state Public Utility Commission (PUC).
Key changes to the
program, said Ron Gerwatowski of National Grid, are technical modifications
that would reduce liability and financial obligations for the power company.
The fixed-priced contracts are now called tariffs that fall under the oversight
of the PUC rather than a legal long-term contract shared between a developer
and National Grid.
In four years, the
program has accepted 30 projects — 28 solar and two wind. The solar programs
have been for large systems, such as the East Providence landfill and several
rooftop projects on large commercial structures, including one of the largest
in New England, at the Quonset Business Park.
The original five-year
program capped power at 40 megawatts from new wind, solar, small hydropower and
anaerobic digestion, which creates electricity from organic waste.
Competition for the
annual allotments of power was so strong that new renewable-energy projects
were turned away, said Janet Besser of the New
England Clean Energy Council, an advocacy group for renewable-energy
developers. “The early pilot program was well oversubscribed and, in fact, we
saw less development here in Rhode Island because many bidders didn’t bid
because their chance of winning the bid were so small," she said.
The new program expand
to 160 megawatts across five years.
Jerry Elmer, attorney
for the Conservation Foundation, said the pilot program worked as intended by
boosting Rhode Island's renewable-energy sector. Elmer helped craft the DG
pilot program and the latest legislation. He cited statistics from the Office
of Energy Resources saying the program launched 29 renewable-energy projects
and created 175 jobs during its first 18 months.
The Senate bill was
held for further study. A hearing on the House version of the bill hasn't been held.