Rural Electric Co-ops and Wind Power

The Realities of Consumer-Owned Wind Power For Rural Electric Co-operatives, a 16-page Power Point PDF, was presented originally as Power Point slides by

Steve Lindenberg, U.S. Department of Energy; and Jim Green, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; WINDPOWER 2006; Pittsburgh, on June 4-8, 2006.

P3
The Market for Small Wind Turbines is in Rural America
• Better access to good wind resources
• Zoning is less often a barrier
• Larger parcels provide adequate space for wind turbine installations
• Most of rural America receives electric service from rural electric cooperatives

P8
Net Metering for Wind Only 22 states have net metering for all rural customers [map]

P9
Wind Interconnection Dispute in Iowa
FERC ruling in February 2006 backed away from the net metering enforcement action of June 2005. Provisions of EPAct 2005 are changing the scene; outcome is uncertain for net metering

p10
Understanding the Co-ops

p13
Times Are Changing
• Member preferences turning to renewable energy
• Price of electricity is going up
• Opportunity for rural economic development–Wind is an untapped resource
• Wind power is a hedge for an uncertain future with respect to:
Price of coal; Price of natural gas; Carbon taxes; [Congressional mis-steps one and two].

P 15
Conclusions

p 16
Carpe Ventum
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Carpe Ventum? The Latin roughly means "Seize Wind." Does the Latin phrase spur us to install a wind turbine compared to an English phrase? Does the Latin make us more clever, smarter, or more likely to be a successful wind farmer? For me, all "carpe ventum" did was send me looking for a Latin-English dictionary and after looking at two Google pages of them, then futzing with "that looks right." Gad, no wonder we have less and less time to accomplish useful things; we're often required to do preparation tasks in order to understand something that has been "clarified."

It's best to have cheese with whine, so I'd better stop now.
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Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) is a five-page PDF produced by The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) a national service organization dedicated to representing the national interests of cooperative electric utilities and the consumers they serve.

{Surprisingly, the PDF is encrypted to prevent abstracting the document for easier comprehension. Perhaps not fully serving consumers' interests.}

The doc is an overview of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58) where the tax credit bond serves as a tax credit to the bondholder. The doc has these headers

• qualified projects
• qualified issuers
• how CREBs work
• availability
• application process
• terms of CREBs
• credit rate
• spending the proceeds of CREBs
• board action needed for re-imbursement
• parties involved in issuing CREBs
• partnering with private entities
• marketing CREBs
• CREBs versus the Production Tax Credit
• steps to take immediately and
• other resources.
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Even though we enjoy 1,030 billion kWh of wind power every year, there is the rare boring day-
6 PM Jun 05, ENE at 3 mph
1 PM Jun 05, Variable at 3 mph
10 AM Jun 05, NNE at 7 mph
5 AM Jun 05, Calm
9 PM Jun 04, N at 16 mph.

Do contact me if you want to buy any of this blog's content or would like to have other specific wind power-related content uncovered.

'Til next time. Best Wind.