In Klickitat County opposition to solar-energy development highlights a tricky environmental problem spreading across the country
Mixed company: Nature and commerce find common ground at Baldock Solar Station off I-5 in Oregon. In residential areas, industrial-level solar installations are a tougher fit. Photo by Oregon Department of Transportation
By Chuck Thompson, January 28, 2021. As an exercise in rural governance, the January 14 meeting of Washington’s Klickitat County Board of Commissioners provided a near perfect distillation of why it’s practically impossible to inspire civic engagement in local politics. And why the fight against climate degradation often feels like such a discouraging and impossible endeavor.
The board’s specially convened “workshop” was undoubtedly conceived with good intentions—an hour-long one-off in which the county’s three commissioners and staff would discuss solar-energy development in the county. It’d give the public the opportunity to get up to speed on an issue that’s become increasingly important just beyond their front doors.
Rolling invitingly beneath the snowy slopes of Mt. Adams, large, uninhabited tracts of open land in Klickitat County—a pastoral idyll with a population of about 22,000 in southern Washington—have become a magnet for multinational energy companies looking to build massive solar-power installations.
When Lund Hill, the county’s first industrial-scale solar factory was approved in 2019, Washington’s Department of Natural Resources touted it as a first-of-its-kind use of state lands for solar power.
DNR Commissioner Hilary Franz emphasized that grazing permits on the 480 acres of state land used in the 1,800-acre Lund Hill project generated only $2 per acre in annual lease payments. Avangrid Renewables, the company leasing the Lund Hill land for its 500,000 photovoltaic-panel solar installation, would pay $300 an acre. Revenue from the use of the land goes to the Common School Trust, used for school construction across Washington state. Franz called the deal a “win-win-win.”
Avangrid is a subsidiary of Iberdrola, a utility company based in Spain valued at $62.5 billion. Its construction of the Lund Hill installation is expected to be complete by the end of 2021. Though not yet online, Lund Hill has kicked off a solar rush.
“All of a sudden we have got people poking around, leasing land and starting studies,” said Dana Peck, executive director of the Greater Goldendale Area Chamber of Commerce, in a 2019 interview with the Seattle Times. Goldendale is the Klickitat County seat and largest city.
“We are open for business,” confirmed Franz in the same article.
A workshop for whom?
Though Klickitat County’s January 14 solar workshop was open to the public, its Zoom audience microphones were muted. Neither public comment nor Q&A session was on the agenda. The meeting was intended as an informational forum during which the county’s commissioners would discuss issues connected to solar-power development.
As the workshop progressed, however, two things became clear. First, that the commission is united in its support of turning over huge swaths of land to out-of-state and overseas energy corporations and has no intention of taking seriously any opposition to plans for major development. Second, even if they did it wouldn’t matter. Massive solar installations are coming to Klickitat County whether anybody who lives there wants them or not.
About 20 minutes into the discussion Commissioner Dan Christopher said opponents of solar developments, “will be able to have a voice in the permit processing, but it doesn’t necessarily stop a project or a plan or our official policy. It just allows them to have a voice in that particular development and not our policy thinking.”
It’s always sunny in Olympia: Washington Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Hilary Franz. Photo by Washington DNR
If that came across as a pat on the head to opponents of commission policies, a comment Christopher delivered 10 minutes later about a proposed solar-power project known as the Knight Road substation landed a little lower.
“There’s nothing stopping this project, future projects, unless we have a complete change of policy, which the majority of the people would have to scream for,” Christopher said. “And it’s my understanding that even then if every single person in Klickitat County said no on solar, the solar company could still go through the state and you’d get it anyway.”
At this point a member of the presumably muted audience identified himself as Brian Walsh of Avangrid Renewables. Despite being told by two commissioners that the meeting was not open to public comment—and that letting him weigh in would be unfair to local residents not allowed to speak—Walsh nevertheless pressed forward, confirming to all gathered that they indeed had no final say in the matter.
“The answer to the question could you just go to Washington, the answer is true,” said Walsh, a Portland-based development director for Avangrid.
Avangrid and the commissioners’ shared supposition of state authority is based on power granted to Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC), which says it “provides a ‘one-stop’ siting process for major energy facilities in the State of Washington.” A Generalized Siting Process flow chart produced by EFSEC shows the governor having final approval of lease applications. (Kenny Ocker, communications manager for DNR, which entered into the lease of lands with Avangrid for Lund Hill, responded to an interview request from Columbia Insight about solar projects in Klickitat County by directing the query back to the county and state Department of Ecology.)
Potential negative impacts of solar factories barely rated a mention at the workshop. Most of the session was dedicated to a fait accompli discussion of the process by which solar factories could pass though permitting process hoops.
All of this was carried out in the procedural, somnambulant monotone for which midweek, dead of winter, local council meetings are renowned. Each of the three commissioners expressed considered and rational views on the topic at hand.
MORE: 16 and counting: Inside Klickitat County’s war on cougars
In rural Washington it’s no surprise to find a county commission in favor of industrial development. As Dave McClure, the county’s natural resources director reported during the session, wind energy accounts for an estimated 100 to 120 jobs in the county with a pay range of $52,000-$115,000, well above the regional average.
No amount of professionalism or thoughtfulness, however, could shroud the workshop’s ultimate takeaway: however congenially accomplished the decisions being made by the board will have negative environmental consequences Klickitat and neighboring counties will be stuck with for generations.
This is how climate change and habitat destruction are abetted at local levels—with collegial smiles, economic logic and the best of intentions.
Opposition takes form
On a bright October morning in 2020, Klickitat County resident Greg Wagner noticed a strange car parked in the wheat field behind his house. On the side of the car he spotted the logo of Terracon, a Kansas-based engineering consulting firm with 150 offices serving all 50 states.
Not far from the car a woman was bent over, shoveling small piles of dirt into a Ziploc bag. Behind her, a backhoe was churning up larger pieces of earth.
Wagner, a retired journeyman electrician who’s lived in Klickitat County for seven years, walked outside and asked the woman what she was doing. The woman answered she was taking soil samples but, according to Wagner, declined to provide further information.
Broad view: C.E.A.S.E. founder Greg Wagner says industrial solar is a national not local issue. Photo courtesy of C.E.A.S.E.
“So I went over and asked the backhoe operator what was going on and he told me this area is going to be a solar farm,” recalls Wagner. “That’s when C.E.A.S.E. came into existence.”
C.E.A.S.E., which stands for Citizens Educated About Solar Energy, is a community organization focused on solar development Wagner founded three months ago. It’s since grown to about 200 members. Its mission statement reads: “It is not our intention to stop solar entirely. We simply want the ordinances updated and the public aware of the current dangers that utility solar farms are posing on counties across our nation.”
Wagner and other C.E.A.S.E. members have become regulars at Klickitat County commissioners meetings. Their goal is to get the local government to halt permitting of solar-power developments until impact and mitigation studies can be done, and outdated permitting guidelines can be reviewed.
Renewable energy development regulations and policies in Klickitat County generally date to 2004-05, when they were written to accommodate the influx of wind farms. With 602 wind turbines in the county, wind power is a core piece of its economic development strategy. C.E.A.S.E. wants the county to rewrite its regulations and policies in light of impacts specific to solar energy.
“All we want is a moratorium to give us time to study all the issues and convince them that to cover 5,000 acres here with solar panels is irresponsible,” says Wagner. “They (the Board of County Commissioners) don’t want a moratorium. They don’t want to scare off energy companies because they want the tax revenues. We feel like they’re listening but not responding.
“I told them C.E.A.S.E. is not your adversary, we’re here to work with the county for the good of all citizens. They just don’t want to work with us. Why is it the energy company got time to talk at the (January 14) workshop but citizens didn’t get equal time?”
Elaine Harvey is a Klickitat County resident, Yakama Nation Tribal Member and fish biologist who believes leasing land for commercial use could violate treaties that allow Yakama Nation members the use of public lands for hunting, fishing and other traditional activities. She joined C.E.A.S.E. in December 2020. Like Wagner, she’s dismayed by what she characterizes as the county government’s headlong and ill-informed pursuit of solar-energy development.
“They (the commissioners) don’t do their research,” says Harvey. “They want to invite these big companies in without thinking about the long-term consequences. These are 40-year leases.”
MORE: Rural solar project in Oregon faces local opposition, wildlife concerns
Harvey called the January 14 workshop “depressing.” Wagner called it “disheartening.” Both describe the commission’s actions as “secretive” and its knowledge of solar energy inadequate.
“County officials believe they are making big money—in reality no,” says Wagner. “(They are) just being used by big business. Our county has some of the most lenient ordinances. That is why these solar companies are wanting to build here. They can go to library.municode.com and view every state and county ordinances and then pick which county offers the least resistance.”
During the Zoom workshop the muted Harvey could only swallow her emotions when one of the commissioners said, “We went through this exercise with wind. I don’t know that solar is that dissimilar.”
“With wind and solar you’re talking about two different things,” says Harvey, who has a master’s degree in resource management and is a doctoral student enrolled in the University of Idaho’s Natural Resources PhD program. “They aren’t the same thing at all.”
An inconvenient truth about an inconvenient truth
The gathering controversy in Klickitat County raises a fascinating ethical dilemma for environmentalists. Most if not all have come to understand that more than a century of burning coal, gas and oil for energy has brought the planet to the brink of a full-blown climate catastrophe from which it may never recover. Solar energy has been celebrated as, if not a cure-all, a major part of the solution.
No energy source is perfect. If we want hot showers and cars there’ll always be an environmental price to pay, no matter how many layers of green paint we apply. But issues associated with industrial-level solar power are vastly more problematic than most people realize.
The complex laundry list starts with the panels themselves. Toxic chemicals used in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, polyvinyl fluoride and silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of producing crystalline silicon.
Then there are the lithium ion batteries common in solar installations.
Similar to fracking, lithium mining involves drilling a hole in the ground then using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to pump a brine of minerals to the surface. From this brine lithium carbonate is extracted. Toxic wastewater is often pumped into rivers and other water sources.
“They did that in China and killed a lot of fish,” says Wagner.
County pride: At 12,280 feet, Mt. Adams provides Klickitat and surrounding counties with clean water and stellar views. Some locals worry industrial-scale solar factories will infringe on both. Photo by Gary Dee/Wikimedia Commons
Disposal is a growing problem. Solar panels installed in the early 2000s are reaching the end of their life cycles. The most common industry practices are to burn or simply bury old panels in landfills.
“Potential leaching of these metals into the surrounding environment can pose a public health problem,” wrote Discover magazine in December 2020. “As society continues to adopt solar power, this problem may worsen in the coming decades, with almost 80 million tons of solar waste projected by 2050.”
When massive solar factories are installed, places like Klickitat County experience their own localized effects.
“Solar farms take good farmland out of production,” says Wagner. “There are issues with storm water, wildlife habitat and pollinators.”
“I live in an area that has so much diverse wildlife that’s not going to be able to use the area because they’re going to fence it all off,” says Harvey. “There will no longer be migratory corridors for certain species. We have wetlands here. If 2.5 million solar panels go in, what’s the impact to the birds?
“The chemicals they use to wash these solar panels can lead to contamination of the groundwater. It’ll eventually go to our hatcheries and the fish will all die. That can happen pretty fast. With climate change we don’t have as much snowpack as we used to, so a solar (installation) is going to impact the water availability for everybody, and they’ll need lots of water to wash those panels.”
MORE: Less snow is the new norm. That’s trouble for farmers
The problem isn’t limited to Klickitat County. In November 2020, residents in southern Oregon’s Langell Valley protested a proposed, 1,851-acre solar-power factory there.
“The view is going to be atrocious,” said one local homeowner, who lives near the site of the planned installation. “Instead of seeing cattle grazing on pasture, wetlands and deer, they’re going to see an eight-foot chain-link fence and solar panels.”
Novel solution?
Log onto the “Solar Projects” page of the Klickitat County website and Lund Hill is the only development you’ll find listed. Call the Planning Department and you’ll be told no other projects are currently being considered in the county.
“We do have one solar project approved a year ago. That is Lund Hill,” says Mo-chi Lindbland, Klickitat County planning director, who spoke at the solar workshop. “That’s the only one that we’ve received an application for and issued a permit on. Until I have an actual application I don’t have much information I can provide to the public.”
Although Lindblad is aware of companies such as Invenergy, Cypress Creek Renewables and NextEra Energy—all large energy concerns C.E.A.S.E. emails say have been actively scouting the area—she politely deflects any talk of actual projects in the works.
“At least two of them did express interest and asked the county about the permitting process,” she says. “But we have those inquiries all the time. Unless I have a permit application I don’t have much input that I can share.”
Fluid situation: Fish biologist Elaine Harvey is worried about the impacts of contaminated runoff from solar factories. Photo courtesy of Elaine Harvey
There’s nothing inaccurate in any of that, but Lindblad’s assessment of solar energy development in Klickitat County presents a mere fraction of the picture. To locals like Wagner, it suggests a “total lack of transparency” and aggravating reluctance by county leadership to address issues that opponents of new solar installations find unacceptable.
“This is the solar-panel monopoly that Klickitat County is entering,” says Harvey. “We are enabling the big polluter companies who buy solar farms (for carbon tax credits) and are destroying the atmosphere, and told we gotta live with it. I just think we’re their little pawns.”
“It’s very doubtful a company from Spain worth $62 billion cares very much about Klickitat County,” says Wagner, referring to Lund Hill developer Iberdrola. “We’ve got a big problem in our county but it’s a problem that exists all across America. It’s not a ‘me’ issue here in our county it’s a ‘we’ issue everywhere. There has to be some common ground.”
Maybe that common ground is a place that’s already been consumed by energy production. Harvey has a suggestion.
“Why are we disturbing good habitable land and good agricultural land when you’ve got Hanford nearby?” she asks, referring to the decommissioned nuclear production complex about 90 miles northeast of Goldendale. “Nobody lives there. It’s uninhabitable. There are big, open pieces of land that are contaminated already, just put the solar power over there.”
It’s an interesting idea, but those counting tax revenues in Klickitat County would likely not receive Harvey’s suggestion favorably. Hanford is located in neighboring Benton County.
Even so, it’d be nice if somebody took the time to look into it. Maybe one of those big multinationals looking for a deal could be persuaded to come to Klickitat County’s aid, one way or the other.
Chuck Thompson is the editor of Columbia Insight.
I share the concern of people living in places like Klickitat County. Any kind of energy installation should go through an environmental analysis and the people should have the right to give their input and that it be considered in decision making. However, this article states what seems to be a scientific fact about the dangers of solar panels and gives Discover magazine as their source. I live in a very conservative county in Oregon. I “battle” with my Republican State Representative all the time about stating scientific facts without using a source that can justify that claim. I did not see any sources for the information in their article.
Thank you for raising this complicated and important issue, Chuck. No energy source is without its costs, and we can’t afford to knee-jerk endorse every proposal greenwashed with the label “renewable.”
A similar push is happening right now in the Oregon legislature. Rep. Daniel Bonham of The Dalles is leading efforts to once again allow nuclear power reactors in Oregon despite the absence of any long-term storage for their waste. Check out his House Bill 2330, and write to him to let him know your thoughts on such an initiative.
Blessings to Greg Wagner and C.E.A.S.E., which I joined about a month ago and to Elaine Harvey and all those working on this issue. Those of us who remember the EOZ battles came away with a sick feeling, which on-going wind development has only made worse. These solar projects need careful assessment and evaluation. Dana Peck was the economic development director during the EOZ process, and here he is, back again, leading the County down the garden path. It’s awful. We need to explore dispersed solar and alternative energy. These large projects, like the large dam projects of 50 years ago, will not have a net benefit for energy savings.
This article is misleading.
1.Grid-tied PV solar arrays don’t typically use battery backup, so the lithium ion problems mentioned in the article are irrelevant. Grid-tied solar energy is simultaneously used as its generated. Working next to hydro power is especially compatible, as the dams can be shut off when the sun isn’t shining (at night), which allows the reservoir to act as a battery
2.Solar panels are environmentally better than coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, and wind. Sure, producing anyhing uses resources, but solar panels last a long time, as they don’t have any moving parts.
3. Disposal of anything in landfills has its problems, but our modern landfills are designed to keep the contents dry, so that they don’t leach into the soil.
I see this as a case of folks not wanting to see change in our current methods of generating electricity. Currently, we burn coal, gas, oil, to generate electricity. These all contribute to climate change. Nuclear is ludicrous for obvious reasons. Hydro kills fish, and silts up the rivers. Wind is less damaging. If we want to continue to use electricity, solar us our best choice.
Hi Brian: The article is not misleading: nowhere does it state that Lund Hill or future solar factories planned for Klickitat County will use lithium ion batteries or be tied to the grid. The piece states generically that lithium ion batteries are “common in solar installations.” This is true and becoming more true at industrial levels, as is outlined in this Yale Environment 360 article from December 2020 titled “In Boost for Renewables, Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is on the Rise”: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-boost-for-renewables-grid-scale-battery-storage-is-on-the-rise. A quote from that article: “California is currently the global leader in the effort to balance the intermittency of renewable energy in electric grids with high-capacity batteries. But the rest of the world is rapidly following suit.” As for planned solar factories in Klickitat County, as, at least according to the county’s Planning Department, no plans have been unveiled to the public, I’m curious how you are in a position to know whether future solar factories there will be augmented with battery storage or not. If you have knowledge that residents of the area are not privy to, I’m sure they’d be eager hear it. Thank you for reading Columbia Insight and thank you for your comments. —Chuck Thompson (editor)
hi. klickitat county planning director mrs lindblad submitted the approve lund hill solar plan to C.E.A.S.E. and it stated 50-40ft x 8ft battery storage containers. when C.E.A.S.E. stated the dangers associated lithium-ion batteries that they catch fire explode and release deadly fumes, she came up with a second final plan which stated there would be no battery storage. after 2 final plans C.E.A.S.E. ask for the final plan on record and she said there wasn’t one. how do you build a solar farm without the final plan ? so with this confusion, secrecy at the county level and energy companies secrecy it makes it difficult know exactly what the plan is. batteries are in use at many facilities and are in the future for all solar farms. brian needs to do more research on the environmental impact of solar panels and disposal. after that he will realize his statements are incorrect. C.E.A.S.E. are folks wanting change when it does more good than harm. if solar was that change we’d support it.
There is no need for batteries on a solar array that is connected to the grid, especially with one of the biggest batteries in the world next door: The Columbia River.
In the early 2000’s, I installed the biggest commercial solar array (at the time) in the Gorge. It has been generating electricity for almost 20 years now, with no problems. It can be seen behind our former business in Hood River (next to Tum a Lum). Being connected to the utility grid allows any excess energy that isn’t used by the business to be sent back to the grid to be instantly used by a neighbor.
A few years ago, I had a 6000 watt array installed on our commercial building in Bingen. Its a stationary one, and has been silently producing electricity ever since, without causing problems to anyone.
As with large commercial wind turbines, batteries aren’t typically used in these applications because they would add a huge and unnecessary expense.
The idea of putting extremely large solar farms at Hanford makes a lot of sense. There are readily usable transmission lines there to transmit the electricity and the land is, indeed, becoming available as clean up proceeds. Because the economics of solar farms has become so favorable, it could be done in a very short period of time, replacing CO2 producing resources very quickly – more quickly than any other alternative.
Solar power is intermittent. They rely on large amounts of fossil fuel cradle to grave. They are not a green alternative instead the whole idea is greenwash at it’s finest. Just because solar battery storage facilities may not be used for Lund Hill. Nothing in our ordinances say that they can’t be used in future projects. Many of the panels used in production are linked to slave labor camps in China. I pray that people wake up to realize that we are being played by corporate masters. This will be like the next Enron scandal. I’m frightened by those who don’t see it.
HOME BRIAN DISPUTE THIS VERIFIED BATTERY INCIDENT. NOW TELL US BATTERIES AREN’T DANGEROUS AND
SOLAR FARMS DO NOT USE THEM
ABOUT
BLOG
ARIZONA’S RENEWABLE ENERGY FUTURE
Search…
Technology
Economics
Education
Architecture
Resources
All the other information
Government Stuff
Utility Solar Battery Fire in Arizona
The Fire Department was called about 6 p.m. Friday (4/19/19) about smoke rising from the APS McMicken Energy Storage site. The responding firefighters were evaluating the lithium battery when there was an explosion that left the firefighters with serious chemical and chemical-inhalation burns. One of the firefighters was in critical condition at the Maricopa Medical Center’s burn unit in Phoenix and in surgery until 1 a.m. before becoming stable.
This incident illustrates that utility scale battery systems can be very dangerous. Further information is not available as of the posting of this article. As more information becomes available, the Solar Center will provide updated coverage.
The battery system is one of two identical battery systems installed in late 2016 and became operational in early 2017.
There is a good article on these battery systems on the APS website at On Edge of Phoenix, APS Tests the Relationship of Solar and Batteries
The McMicken unit is contained at the head of the feeder in an existing substation.
Note, these are smaller, earlier batteries that those described in our earlier APS battery article: APS announces ‘Solar after Sunset” battery storage inititative
Recent APS presentation slide on these systems, still no further incident details.
Still no report as of 7/5/20
APS EPRI SPP
Many others have taken note of this fire such as Littleton (NH) fire chief raises concerns about battery energy-storage facility
Copyright © 1999-2020 by the Arizona Solar Center, Inc. All rights reserved.
Top
Brian nothing to say now about battery danger ? Do your research batteries have injured and killed people at many solar farms. Well documented. You compared the 6000 watt system you installed to systems that produce 400 mw. No comparison.
What’s wrong with solar power, more than you know….
I am probably naive but I found nothing in Brian’s article to substantiate anything wrong with solar. I just compare everything to the COMBUSTION of fuels and see no problem with solar that would be of a great concern. It’s my belief at the present time we only have a few sources of clean energy production and the use of the sun seems like a no brainer. I do feel terrible for the urban few that will have to look at the solar array. But, what a great place to put them.
rick, cypress creek renewables one of the solar companies hoping to build in klickitat county plan to have several acres of battery storage buildings full of large batteries. with many homes close by they are endanger when the batteries spontaneously combust explode and release deadly fumes. what a great place to put them. that’s correct as long as they aren’t in your backyard. educate yourself and you would not make such a statement.
Regarding Patricia Arnold’s comment: Pat correctly identifies Dana Peck as both the architect of Klickitat County’s EOZ and the County’s point man to oversee its adoption. What’s missing with the finger pointing are the individuals and environmental groups that negotiated a settlement that lead to the implementation of the EOZ. Resolution 10910: “A resolution of Klickitat County, Washington Relating To The Settlement Agreement Of March 15, 2005″identifies these individuals and groups. We don’t know the details of the settlement agreement, but we do know from the Resolution that part of the settlement was a stipulation that “In seven years…”, the county would “reevaluate” the EOZ to determine whether any amendments to the comprehensive plan and/or development regulations were in order; of course, the county was not required to to take any action. The public hearings have come and gone, and yes, predictably no action was taken. After fifteen years, I would think these individuals and environmental groups would be clamoring for a EOZ update. Their silence is deafening.
Klickitat is the most diverse of the Gorge counties: It’s east-west elongation–Rock Creek to the White Salmon River; easily the best of the lot.. The Columbia Hills, a National Audubon Society ” Important Bird Area” was one of the most important raptor areas in the Northwest. The Golden Eagles that once used that area have been slaughtered. Klickitat County is being horribly disfigured by publicly subsidized, centralized, profit-driven, global investor- owned mega wind and solar development. It’s cowboy capitalism at its finest, propping up the elusion of eternal growth, with little regard to conservation, sustainability, comprehensive planning, or that some real people and their property will be in ruin. The overlay zone gives developers largely unrestricted access to 2/3 of the County’s land area. Yes, there are trade offs to energy development! But I would think two Columbia River dams, turbines stretched from the the Mary Hill Museum to Bickleton, and now, big Solar planned from Goldendale west to the Klickitat Canyon is enough renewable for one county, don’t you think. Oh, can that settlement agreement be shared. If so, please send a copy to Columbia Insight for posting.
Batteries need to be spaced farther apart, so that if one catches fire, it doesn’t spread to the others.
I think the headline is misleading.
What’s wrong with solar, may be more than we know, but we still don’t know from this article.
All the statements against it here are conjecture.
re: The goal of CEASE is “to get the local government to halt permitting of solar-power developments until impact and mitigation studies can be done, and outdated permitting guidelines can be reviewed.”
Dude: That’s exactly the intent of the EFSEC process.
The law requires EFSEC to report the whole truth and nothing but the truth in an Environmental Impact Statement.
We defeated a giant oil train terminal in Vancouver, by working with EFSEC. It took 4.5 years.
Our City Council took an official position in opposition to the oil terminal, which made it easier for EFSEC to reject the project.
Chuck, don’t you have a tax-payer funded golf trip in AZ you should be getting back to?
If you live in a private home, installing panels is the best thing you can do!
Have you ever looked at the solar panels on roofs and wondered exactly what they do, and how? Well, those hi-tech expanses of shimmering glass are actually just one component in a complex network that harnesses the sun’s renewable energy to deliver electricity to the home within.
Let’s take a simple, step-by-step look at how solar power works.
Solar is a safe alternative that can replace current fossil fuels like coal and gas for the generation of electricity that produces air, water, and land pollution.
The self-consumption ratio is the relationship between PV output and the amount of PV output consumed by loads. This ratio can range from 0 to 100 percent, with 100 percent solar self-consumption implying that the loads consume all of the PV energy produced. If the self-consumption ratio is less than 100%, some PV production is not consumed locally. In such instances, the PV surplus is potentially injected into the grid, where it can be valorized through various economic schemes such as net metering, net billing, or outright PV electricity purchase.