Allco Wants to Turn Former Toxic Waste Dump into Solar Energy Farm
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 03.26.08
New York-based Allco Renewable Energy wants to build the largest solar energy farm east of the Mississippi river. Their chosen location is in Coventry, Rhode Island, on land that gained infamy in the 1970s as an illegal hazardous waste dump and which became a Superfund site in the 1980s.
At first the solar energy farm would have 8 megawatts of production capacity, but Allco is also considering installing wind turbines if the site is suitable. But there is already some controversy: Allco wants some guarantees that it will be able to sell its power to the local utility for a certain time and at a certain rate, something that is not yet certain.
National Grid [the biggest local utility] said the legislation would be too costly to ratepayers, and is opposing the bill.“We agree with the spirit of the bill,” said Francis X. McMahon, president of Advocacy Solutions, who came to represent National Grid at the hearing. “But the costs would be extravagant to ratepayers.” [...]
Allco is supporting the Sullivan bill, which sets the rate at which electricity from solar energy would sell for: 48 cents per kilowatt hour. That is about five times the rate that National Grid now pays for electricity under its current standard offer contracts. The additional cost would be passed on to all ratepayers.
We admit there are probably lower hanging fruits, places where building a solar energy farm would make more economic sense (places where there's more sun, where electricity supply is tighter and rates are higher, etc). Maybe it would make more sense to come back to Rhode Island once solar technology has improved some more and has gotten less expensive. Maybe wind turbines would make more sense?
But maybe not. We don't have all the details. Maybe the project would displace very dirty energy production that might become more expensive in a few years because a price will be put on carbon (carbon tax).
There is no clear cut answer here, but we applaud efforts by Allco to get things done and clean up the US grid a little bit. Lets just be careful not to turn the general public against clean energy by giving them the impression that it is too expensive (that's why Google's clean energy project, with a stated goal of making renewable energy cheaper than coal, is so important).
::Solar farm developer seeking legislative support, ::Hazardous waste site may house solar energy farm, :: Energy developer plans solar farm in Coventry
See also: ::Ausra: Solar Power Around the Clock, Enough for 90% of U.S. Grid, ::Torresol to Build 3 Solar Thermal Power Plants in Spain for $1.24 Billion, ::Solaria: Finding Clever Ways to Make Cheaper Solar Panels
Why don't they simply sell the "green power" to those that want it? Aren't most utility arrangements that offered green alternatives sold out of those alternatives?
Stop subsidizing solar projects in non-optimal areas!
The industry is supply constrained.
For every panel that goes up in a cloudy area like RI or WA, that's one less panel that goes up in NV, AZ or NM where they belong! The exact same panels in NV will produce 3x as much power as they will in RI based on DOE solar maps.
RI is a high wind area, they should be building wind turbines.
Can we have 48 cents per kilowatt hour instead of the usual 10 cents per kilowatt hour?
.....
Sometimes green gets confused with green.
I am annoyed that they are builing "solar farms" at all. Why don't they put solar panels on every existing and future buildings/houses instead of wasting space for one singular purpose? Same thing goes for wind farms. Why not encourage personal use of wind turbines? Everyone knows about the huge industrial ones but I've yet to see any mention of small ones that can be attached to the roof (like I saw on an episode of Ed Begley's show, too lazy to look up at the moment). It doesn't seem that difficult but then again I'm just fantasizing, I don't know anything about electricity or how much it would cost to do that.
I'm surprised more people aren't against the large amount of land having to be bulldozed for these electricity farms. And the picture shows that these solar farms are mostly concrete, which isn't environmentally friendly at all. At least the wind farms here in west TX aren't on concrete slabs and don't require the destruction of trees because there aren't any, ha!
Um, Rhode Island isn't all that windy. Check out a windmap.
There are lots of photovoltaic panels installed in far cloudier, less sunny places than RI, which are producing lots of electricity and will repay the investment.
Better to put the panels next to existing demand and minimize transformer and transmission losses. Encouraging development of the Mohave Desert, the interior of Australia, Peruvian deserts, and the Sahara, probably isn't the way to go.
Let's start building more PV factories to fill that demand. Preferably in the US so we can maximize those green-collar jobs.
The problem is "they" is us. You already can put solar panels or a wind turbine on your rooftop. I put up a lot of solar panels and it was very expensive. If that's not to your liking, many businesses are not paying a dime for their solar panels but are signing long term power contracts for the power the panels produce. In either case, the solar power from panels is generally more expensive than from solar farms at this time. That may not be true in a few years, though.
As for wind, the problem is physics. Small wind turbines are pretty much useless unless you have an awful lot of wind (as wind energy is related to the cube of the swept area). And a really large tower. Both of which are hard to come by in most residential neighborhoods.
My parents are from Rhode Island and National Grid currently offers energy that comes from wind power. My parents unfortunately did not switch because it was a significant increase in price.
I agree alternative energy sources should be integrated into existing structures, but many people are opposed to it. In Rhode Island neighbors took action against someone in a somewhat rural area that had their own wind turbine (because of the "bad sight" and the noise generated). So it can be tough...
"Why don't they put solar panels on every existing and future buildings/houses instead of wasting space for one singular purpose?"
"Why not encourage personal use of wind turbines?"
Both suffer similar limitations: logistics and efficiency.
A centralized power farm controlled, wind or solar, is a lot easier for the owner/investor to collect money from. The power goes out at one point, so it is easy to measure. Panels or turbines scattered all over the place would have to have some means of monitoring and communication to account for the collective power production. The single facility is also easier to maintain. Machines break. It is easier for technicians to stay in one place to maintain/repair 100s turbines or panels in one location, than 1,000s of them scattered over thousands of square miles.
Second, the centralized power farm is more efficient. Solar farms can use tracking panels like the ones in the picture and be built with optimized conditions. Individual buildings have individual characteristics and surroundings that may limit where and what type of panels can be mounted and how much light reaches the panels. Wind at rooftop level is disturbed by buildings, trees, and such around it that reduces windspeed and increases turbulence. The large, industrial turbines reach up into the less disturbed, more steady wind currents.