State Claims Projects will Save Us Money
By Jamil Ragland, Connecticut News Junkie
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection announced its selection of four clean energy projects last Friday that it says will help improve the reliability of the grid and save ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We are pleased to announce the selection of new grid-scale solar and battery storage projects that will provide affordable, reliable clean energy to Connecticut residents and businesses,” said DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes. “These selections represent continued progress toward securing a diverse portfolio of energy resources to meet Connecticut’s growing needs.”
Three of the projects focus on solar energy and are expected to produce 518 MW once they are up and running:
Solar Nursery – 200 MW to be developed in Connecticut by New York-based D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI)
Freedom Pine Solar – 250 MW to be developed in Maine, also by DESRI.
Crooked Trail Solar – 68 MW to be developed in Maine by West Hartford-based Verogy.
According to DEEP, the solar projects will add 816,000 megawatt-hours per year to the New England grid, which is equivalent to over 3% of Connecticut’s current electricity consumption and enough to power 97,000 of the state’s homes with clean electricity.
The fourth project is Connecticut’s first grid-scale electricity storage project, and was awarded to Texas-based Naugatuck Avenue Storage LLC. It’s a 200 MW project that will be developed by Jupiter Power, which is also a Texas company, and located in Connecticut.
DEEP estimates that the projects will save Connecticut ratepayers $424 million in energy supply costs, net of the costs of the contracts, in the first 20 years of operation. That comes out to about a $0.57/month reduction for the average residential customer electricity bill.
The two top Democrats on the Energy & Technology Committee praised the projects as a commitment to clean, renewable energy for the state.
“I’m excited about adding clean energy resources to our grid,” said state Sen. Norm Needleman, co-chair of the energy committee. “Adding additional generating capacity is critical, and it’s equally as important to do so through renewable sources whenever possible and practical. This is a big step forward for Connecticut.”
“These critical investments are important demonstrations of our state’s commitment to develop non-fossil fuel energy resources to meet our future energy demand,” said state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, who serves as the other co-chair of the energy committee. “We will need even more, particularly as the cost of these resources continue to decline.”
Gov. Ned Lamont also lauded the news.
“Growing and diversifying our energy supply, especially our supply of low-carbon sources of energy, is the key to bringing down the cost of electricity for Connecticut ratepayers,” Lamont said. “These investments will also ensure we have a reliable and green grid that helps us meet demand now and well into the future.”
Energy costs are a top concern for Connecticut’s residents, especially in light of the recent credit downgrades of several of Connecticut’s utilities by S&P Global and Moody’s rating agencies.
At a news conference following the state bond commission meeting, Lamont and Dykes were asked first about a decision not to participate in an offshore wind project with Massachusetts and Rhode Island and also fielded questions about the high cost of energy in the state and their plans to address it.
“We took a pass on this round,” Lamont said, referring to the offshore wind decision and citing its cost to ratepayers. “But as you know, we’re the state right now that’s building out Revolution Wind. That’s going to turn on in about a year and a half. We contracted for solar coming down from Maine. That gets going in about a year or two. We’re looking at the nuclear deal as well. We’re doing a group purchase of onshore wind out of Maine. We’ll be able to load that up. So every state has got different priorities about how we increase capacity, which is how ultimately we’re going to bring down the cost of electricity and do it in as green a way as we can.”
Dykes said that the state was looking into ways to mitigate cost increases in energy production due to increased interest rates and supply chain challenges in recent years.
“Investing in transmission is one of those things that will help to reduce the cost of buying the offshore wind generation to the extent that we can socialize that across six states,” she said. “That helps to make that more affordable. We obviously will be looking to the new Congress around the future of the tax credits. We see those as being very important, not just for New England and the Northeast, but for clean energy development and clean manufacturing that we’ve been successful in on-shoring over the last few years across the country, so I’m optimistic about what we’ll see there.”
Dykes said that bending costs down is a long-term project for not just offshore wind, but many resources, and that the state is going to continue to use every policy lever to work with our neighbors and deliver resources at a lower cost.
Senate Republicans later claimed victory in a news release regarding the state’s decision not to partake in the latest offshore wind project with Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Sen. Ryan Fazio, who serves as a ranking member on the energy committee, and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding said, “Make no mistake: The Lamont administration made this decision because it had no answers for the questions Republicans had been asking. For example: ‘How much money would this cost already overburdened ratepayers?’”
Republicans – Fazio in particular – has drawn a line at clean energy costs that are two, three, four, or five times the price of electricity from Natural Gas, claiming that adding offshore wind to the state’s portfolio would increase costs for consumers.
They said “Republicans urged the governor not to make this purchase. We are glad the governor followed our advice” and that they looked forward to “working in a bipartisan way for reasonable and realistic energy policies that keep the ratepayers in mind and make CT more affordable. Because right now, electricity costs are too damn high.”
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