Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI)

[OBRAM]

The state needs jobs and it needs manufacturing. This plan seems political more than practical.
How will this affect energy costs, which are already high in RI?
I think manufacturers if they have not left for the South or overseas, will do so if energy cost rise more in RI.
Unless China and India stop building coal power plants, and Brazil stops burning down the Amazon rain forest, this plan is really a drop in the bucket for greenhouse gasses.
Just tell the youth in RI, you will have to leave RI if you want a job.
Whatever happened to green cheap Hydropower from Quebec? People don't want a power line, but you need power lines to connect wind turbines.
What about 5th generation nuclear power, which is being built in other countries.
Why do we need more mass transit if people work from home and/or there are now jobs anyway?

I believe New Hampshire rejected this.

[BleedBlue87]

Energy and relax estate costs. Two big problems for Rhody. The latter is tough to solve due to NIMBYism. Energy needs to be a regional focus, including looking at nuclear at least until wind energy is at the point of being sustainable.

[Rhodymob05]

My issue with sustainability energy in this state is

A. Solar farms swallow massive amounts of land (many times through deforestation) in the smallest state.

B. Wind turbines are gigantic (200-400 feet+) and are slowly dominating the skyline inland and at the shore.

[ATPTourFan]

How much deforestation is actually happening with solar as a percentage of total acreage dedicated to it?

I’m seeing existing unused land getting populated with solar. How big of a problem really is deforestation?

[OBRAM]

I know of farmland going over to solar.
GE Haliade 13 is huge. But building offshore is very expensive and the wind does not always blow.
Maybe you get generate power and create hydrogen for later use.

[Rhodymob05]

Using open land is fine, but I've seen a number of solar projects built in rural areas, that take up a lot of wooded area.

[NYGFan_Section208]

Acres of farm land right around the corner from us...was cows and corn. Now, solar panels and turf.
The turf farms look cool, don't really mind that, but the solar splats....meh....

[UCH21377]

Shouldn't folks be allowed to do what they please with the land they own, as long as it doesn't affect others?

[NYGFan_Section208]

Shouldn't folks be allowed to do what they please with the land they own, as long as it doesn't affect others?

Totally. And if it looks meh, everyone is allowed to say "it looks 'meh'".
And compared to corn, pastures, or turf, the solar panel fields....look meh.

[SGreenwell]

Acres of farm land right around the corner from us...was cows and corn. Now, solar panels and turf.
The turf farms look cool, don't really mind that, but the solar splats....meh....

FWIW, as a Chariho graduate I'll take solar farms over cows and turf fields - and their accompanying smell of shit. Also, one thing the U.S. really needs less of is corn production.

[NYGFan_Section208]

Acres of farm land right around the corner from us...was cows and corn. Now, solar panels and turf.
The turf farms look cool, don't really mind that, but the solar splats....meh....

FWIW, as a Chariho graduate I'll take solar farms over cows and turf fields - and their accompanying smell of shit. Also, one thing the U.S. really needs less of is corn production.

Well, I guess that makes one of us...having grown up on a dairy farm, I'll take the cows...and in our local case, the corn was for the cows
ETA: Milk and beef...do not grow on trees

[OBRAM]

There are lots of parking lots that should have solar panels. Use that space before farmland. The lot at my former company in MA put in solar panels in the parking lots. It definitely is not cheap, as you need steel structures high enough so people can park under them. Many of the panels were not even sloped southward, which I found surprising. I think they must be some kind of tax incentive, but if someone knows. I would like to be filled in.

[Maine66]

There are significant tax incentives for investors in solar installations. Our town put a solar farm on top of our former land fill. It was through Revision energy. Basically, our energy costs are the same or slightly below what they were previously. Performance of the system has exceeded expectations. At the end of seven years we can purchase the system at about 10% of the installation cost and have an 80% savings on electricity costs going forward. The systems have around a 40 year lifespan. Several Maine communities have done this on their former landfills.

There are dozens of large installations being built on large tracts of land in rural Maine. Given the size of Rhode Island installations of this size probably won't happen.

Also a large transmission line is being built that will bring power from Hydro Quebec onto the grid that will be transferred to Massachusetts. It has been quite controversial but construction has begun.

[OBRAM]

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/mark ... with-maine

I wonder after this what the electric rates will be in Maine? It may be cheaper than what we have in RI.

[Maine66]

OBRAM

I don't think there will be a significant decrease in the short term as most of the Quebec power is going to Mass. Right now around 1/3 of electricity costs are in the regulated delivery charge. The rest is the power itself. Every year, I think, the state puts out a standard offer bid and most customers opt for that. They can however purchase from a private provider. In our case we go with the standard offer and out electric bill has two parts.

The standard offer has been pretty competitive in the last few years due to the large supply of natural gas and the NH nuclear plant still on line. A big problem is a significant shortage of gas pipeline capacity which limits the available gas from the Pennsylvania gas fields. Things would be better if Coumo opened up the southern New York portion of the Marcellus gas field. He is also part of the problem with regard to pipelines.

Solar will become a bigger player if all these plans come to pass. However a lot will be needed when the NH plant comes off line.

[ATPTourFan]

I sure like my solar panels. They more than pay for themselves.

[OBRAM]

I have a nice south-facing roof, however, when the solar panel guys came to my house it was determined that my electric bill was too low to make it worth the panels. I don't use AC, which is a big reason my electric bill is on the low side. I don't believe that I can sell power back to the grid and actually have a negative bill, but I am just not sure.

[Maine66]

Obram:

Have you thought about heat pumps? The more modern technology has greatly increased their efficiency. We have a 250 year old house and one part just never got comfortable. We installed one three years ago and it's made a huge difference. Also the state gives a substantial rebate. (between $500 and $1,000.) With a modern house there are substantial savings. Our propane bill went down but there was an increase in electric costs.

[UCH21377]

I played golf with a guy this summer that is installing these and he was really high on them. Now supposedly can work to -20 which was the problem in the past. Put up some solar panels to help cover the extra electricity. Seems like a good idea for the future. Especially when oil goes back up.

[rhodyruckus]

I'm a professional in the construction industry and this has been a godsend for developers we worked with back 15 years ago whose subdivision projects failed due to the housing crash and once the economy recovered in the 2010s, the tighter environmental regulations. There is a negative as more tree cutting will occur than would have happened to build a roadway and houses for a subdivision. However there are positives as well, besides the renewable energy produced a solar field may not be perfect to look at but it is a "silent neighbor" as opposed to all the car trips and activity resulting from a subdivision. Also recharge rates for the underlying ground are kept because instead of paving and homes for a subdivision, the panels are suspended above grade.

The ideal sites to avoid tree clear-cutting (a valid concern) are canopies over parking lots, abandoned commercial developments, and quarry/field sites where you do not need to degrade the tree cover less than what is existing. But the catch-22 is abandoned commercial lots tend to cost $$$$ due to their locations and it is cheaper to buy many acres of rural land and clear that versus conduct a lot of structural work, using a smaller lot area, etc. So much of the site selection is based on the power offload needed. Like if there is an agreement to provide X organization with 10 megawatts of power, a good rule of thumb would be you need around 50 acres of solar panels (1 megawatt = 5 acres +/-). From a real estate standpoint, it will be a lot easier to find one 50 acre site to accomplish this rather than five 10 acre sites. But to manage a 50-acre site is very difficult environmentally, so project managers and developers have to weigh those factors.

[Rhodymob05]

Interesting to note, Texas is having major power issues do to the wind turbines freezing in the snow storm.

[adam914]

That's not exactly telling the whole story.

[SGreenwell]

Interesting to note, Texas is having major power issues do to the wind turbines freezing in the snow storm.

As someone who now lives in Texas, that's not the issue at all. The issue is a deregulated power system without a strong oversight board, firstly, and then the failure of various sources of power - natural gas, nuclear, etc. Wind and solar power failed like everything else, but they failed at lower rates.

[Rhodymob05]

Interesting to note, Texas is having major power issues do to the wind turbines freezing in the snow storm.

As someone who now lives in Texas, that's not the issue at all. The issue is a deregulated power system without a strong oversight board, firstly, and then the failure of various sources of power - natural gas, nuclear, etc. Wind and solar power failed like everything else, but they failed at lower rates.

Which is odd, I'm not an electrical engineer, but I would assume our non sustainable energy power sources would be similar to RI, and we never have issues like whats being reported in the south. Either way, Best of luck.

[RhowdyRam02]

My understanding is that wind has failed in Texas because they didn't winterize the wind turbines, thinking it wouldn't be necessary. That's actually a defensible position, you can't necessarily engineer everything for a 100 year type weather situation. Wind became a scapegoat even tough it was one of a few sources of power that failed and wasn't the biggest failure because the Republican governor took this opportunity to grandstand against the Green New Deal and because gas/oil is king in Texas

[RhowdyRam02]

Another issue is the massive deregulation of the Texas energy market. They're the only US state that is essentially on its own grid for deregulation purposes while the western states are on one grid with Alaska and the eastern states are on another with Quebec. That's why even though other states are just as effected by the extreme weather only Texas has this crisis

[adam914]

My understanding is that wind has failed in Texas because they didn't winterize the wind turbines, thinking it wouldn't be necessary.

That's my understanding of it as well. I've read a bit about how other countries (I remember Sweden specifically I think) don't have this issue with their wind turbines because they have the technology installed to prevent it.

[ramster]

Crazy year.


"Already 73.2% of the lower 48 states is covered in snow, and we will build on the existing amount of snow on the ground with this storm," Rayno said.

The 73.2% snow cover, which was measured on Tuesday, set a new record as the highest percentage of the contiguous 48 states to be covered by snow since records began back in 2003. The old record was 70.9% on Jan. 12, 2011.

Prior to the new storm's arrival, many areas of the Northeast had a snow depth of 6, 12 and even 18 inches of snow or greater.

[SGreenwell]

Another issue is the massive deregulation of the Texas energy market. They're the only US state that is essentially on its own grid for deregulation purposes while the western states are on one grid with Alaska and the eastern states are on another with Quebec. That's why even though other states are just as effected by the extreme weather only Texas has this crisis

Yeah, the energy options out here are somewhat wild - We have Centerpoint, which kind of works like National Grid, but they're like a management company for X amount of energy-generating companies. Like, we're given options when it comes to how much of our energy we want generated by gas, by oil, by wind, by solar, and we essentially pay offsets for it. (Our actual pipe going into the house is gas.)

However, you can also contract with companies that'll offer you power at market rate. Since this is Texas, this is fantastic about 90 percent of the time, but plenty of people don't realize they're going to get absolutely eff'ed during the middle of summer, or, if we suddenly have a week of arctic temperatures. One woman on the news noted that a single day of electricity now cost her $600. While I'm generally a free market person, there are some commodities that I think you do need to set some boundaries on.

[UCH21377]

I'm hearing Cruzing down to Cancun is an option.

[phipsiGD'11]

Would government regulation really have prevented this issue?
I'm from Westchester NY and in 2004 we had the blackout that crippled the entire metro NYC area for days. And that was only "because of a heat wave" which wasn't even all that out of the ordinary. Certainly not as uncommon as multiple 14degree days in Dallas.

Even this past August, my area was without Power for longer than a week. Specifically I was without power for 9 days and internet for I think 11. That was for a tropical storm, not even a hurricane.

I don't think government oversight helped in either of those situations.

[rhodyruckus]

Would government regulation really have prevented this issue?
I'm from Westchester NY and in 2004 we had the blackout that crippled the entire metro NYC area for days. And that was only "because of a heat wave" which wasn't even all that out of the ordinary. Certainly not as uncommon as multiple 14degree days in Dallas.

Even this past August, my area was without Power for longer than a week. Specifically I was without power for 9 days and internet for I think 11. That was for a tropical storm, not even a hurricane.

I don't think government oversight helped in either of those situations.

The key difference is the blackout in NYC was due to energy DEMAND overloading the grid, which the grid did not have the capacity for. If I'm not mistaken, Texas has grid capacity out the wazoo to provide the energy. However, in their case the deregulation allowed the providers to take a gamble and not winterize the main facilities themselves. It was a bad bet, the lack of insulation, heaters, etc. submarined the power supply before even traveling through the grid. Although I'm sure there were also downed lines and so forth due within the grid due to the wind/ice/snow.

[RhowdyRam02]

Also, because of the deregulation they're not hooked up to another grid. If they were they could have gotten energy from elsewhere while they couldn't provide their own. That's why only Texas had these issues even though a larger portion of the country was dealing with the same weather

[phipsiGD'11]

I know they can't tap into another grid but didn't realize at the time of my previous post about them building with out winterizing. Thank you.

I guess it is easy to say from the warmth of my couch, but I think I would still be ok with the outage if the other 99% of the time I get very low electricity rates. But I also own a generator that can be fueled with propane, gas, or natural gas and a couple day supply of propane/gas.