GridSolar
Clean, affordable energy from the sun
Clean, affordable energy from the sun
The GridSolar Project
Central Maine Power Company has filed with the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) a proposal to spend about $1.5 billion to upgrade its transmission grid to handle what it forecasts to be significant increases in peak loads over the next 10 years, which it estimates to be as high as 800 MWs. This is the Maine Power Reliability Project or MPRP. Importantly, this huge investment would be made to meet increases in CMP’s peak load, but, once committed, the investment would be “sunk” and irreversible, whether or not it is actually needed.
CMP asserts that the MPRP is required because this increase in peak load growth will necessitate importing additional electricity over the transmission system. According to CMP, these increased loadings will cause the system to fail to meet national reliability standards that federal law requires all utilities to meet.
The CMP view of the electric grid is consistent with its limited role as a transmission utility. It sees the grid as a network of high voltage, high capacity transmission lines interconnecting load centers with large generating stations. This was the vision that created the existing network in the 1970s as new nuclear plants and a like number of large oil plants (e.g., the expansion of the Yarmouth Wyman Plant) were built in New England.
GridSolar offers a different vision of the electric grid – one where distributed generation is better able to meet the demands that will be placed on the grid as a result of increases in peak loads.
• The increases in peak load are just that – increases in load during the few peak hours each year. CMP projects load to increase, but by 2017 its transmission network will fail to meet national reliability standards during only 850 hours of the year – less than 10% of all hours.
• Most of these peak hours occur during hot days when the sun is shining. Accordingly, solar generation is a good match for air conditioning load. It is not a perfect match, of course, but during those hours when load is high but sunlight is low, solar generation can be supplemented by propane or natural-gas fired generation and/or demand-response programs where businesses are paid to reduce their use of electricity and potentially batteries.
• GridSolar proposes to install distributed solar generation in relatively small installations at sites in southern, central, western and coastal Maine (about 2 MW at each location). This generation will be interconnected directly to the CMP distribution grid, and will meet peak load growth without the need to import generation over transmission lines from remote large generating units.
• If the cost of the CMP MPRP project is paid instead to GridSolar, GridSolar will deliver the electricity generated from the solar generation to the MPUC (and therefore Maine ratepayers) for 3 cents per kWh for 20 years. At full build out, this represents a savings to Maine ratepayers of $60 million a year at current market prices of electricity, and this savings will grow if the price of oil, natural gas or coal increases over the next 20 years as most experts believe they will.
• GridSolar proposes to install 100 MW of solar generation over the next 5 years, but is prepared to install as much as is required to meet future peak load growth in Maine. At this level, Maine would have more installed solar generation than any state in the country except California – and could become a leading player in the use of solar generation to address grid reliability issues.
• The economic development opportunities are significant – this type of initiative can be coupled with the attraction of solar cell production facilities, research and development monies and infrastructure grants to vault Maine to the head of the line with respect to solar development in the country and, in fact, the world.
• GridSolar proposes to install distributed solar generation in relatively small installations at sites in southern, central, western and coastal Maine (about 2 MW at each location). This generation will be interconnected directly to the CMP distribution grid, and will meet peak load growth without the need to import generation over transmission lines from remote large generating units.
• If the cost of the CMP MPRP project is paid instead to GridSolar, GridSolar will deliver the electricity generated from the solar generation to the MPUC (and therefore Maine ratepayers) for 3 cents per kWh for 20 years. At full build out, this represents a savings to Maine ratepayers of $60 million a year at current market prices of electricity, and this savings will grow if the price of oil, natural gas or coal increases over the next 20 years as most experts believe they will.
• GridSolar proposes to install 100 MW of solar generation over the next 5 years, but is prepared to install as much as is required to meet future peak load growth in Maine. At this level, Maine would have more installed solar generation than any state in the country except California – and could become a leading player in the use of solar generation to address grid reliability issues.
• The economic development opportunities are significant – this type of initiative can be coupled with the attraction of solar cell production facilities, research and development monies and infrastructure grants to vault Maine to the head of the line with respect to solar development in the country and, in fact, the world.
The GridSolar alternative to CMP's plan offers many benefits to
Mainers:
- The GridSolar Project is a lower cost option for Maine’s ratepayers
- It provides solar generated electricity instead of electricity from fossil fuels
- It does not involve the need to expand or create new high voltage transmission rights-of-way
- The project does not commit the State to spend $1.5 billion in anticipation of possible increases in electricity demand.
- Solar generation will lower greenhouse gas emissions by more than half a million tons a year (equivalent to taking 100,000 cars off the roads).
- Maine will become a leader in solar technology and can utilize this leadership role to attract solar manufacturing and fabrication companies to Maine.
