This week I am going to spotlight a recent article by Julian Spector, who has visited the Wood River Valley for the Sun Valley Institute conference, and who is a top researcher into battery storage energy trends.
Julian wrote about a utility similar to ours, Arizona Public Service, which also killed net-metering in their state, also made it difficult for renewable projects to be built (remember Idaho Power’s anti-wind-energy campaign and moratorium on PURPA projects?), also expensively lobbied legislators (Idaho Power sends political donations to every legislator, I believe) and paid for huge campaigns to elect public utility commissioners. (Our PUC commissioners are appointed, but in previous political campaigns many of our commissioners have received significant $ donations from Idaho Power.)
“APS spent millions of dollars on statewide regulator races in 2014 and 2016. Though not strictly illegal—the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, with all the same rights to political speech that personhood entails—this influence campaign did not look good, and it ultimately justified public skepticism about Arizona’s utility regulatory compact. If the monopoly picks its regulators, how regulated is it?”
But here is the good news:
“It’s happening: Arizona Public Service doesn’t want to use fossil fuels anymore.
The utility that two years ago planned on gigawatts’ worth of new gas capacity decided last week it would achieve 45 percent renewable power by 2030, exit coal power by 2031 and stop emitting carbon altogether by 2050.
APS committed to 100 percent carbon-free because it became sufficiently confident in its ability to accelerate solar deployment and integrate it using energy storage. It arrived at that point by starting small, testing storage technology in a scoped and scientific way, and liking the results. This is exactly how utility pilots are supposed to work.
Back in 2016, APS finalized a pilot whereby it would stick two 2-megawatt batteries, supplied by AES Energy Storage, onto feeders with ample rooftop solar. They would use the batteries to balance the power quality. Experience with those batteries helped APS move ahead with its first commercial application: the Punkin Center project, in which the battery offset a traditional wires upgrade to a remote but growing community; the battery cost less than half what the conventional solution would have, saving ratepayer dollars.”
Not surprisingly, this shift by the Arizona utility happened after a change in the utility’s CEO. Idaho Power’s CEO, Darrel Anderson, gets paid almost $4.5 million a year (total 2019 compensation $4,474,464). But he wants to stick small ratepayers and Blaine County residents with a $65 million bill to build a transmission-line-to-nowhere here. Instead, we could spend that money on a pilot project for a real solution for us that provides battery backup power and solar generation in a power outage.
Julian notes that the Arizona utility was pushed by a Tom Steyer-funded ballot initiative in Arizona state and gives us here in Idaho this advice: “Any ambitious clean-energy plan is a fiction until it isn’t. Notions that seemed unrealistic a couple years ago have now entered a major utility’s plan of action. That’s worth remembering for policy discussions in other states: Even if an idea fails to pass, like Steyer’s ballot initiative, it can push the conversation forward.”
Anyone interested in a ballot initiative campaign?