The deal with Sunflower Electric Power Company was brokered by Mark Parkinson, but it required more than the new governor's signature. Before Sunflower got the go-ahead for that coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, the Legislature had to sign off on a Comprehensive Energy Bill.
While the bill passed overwhelmingly -- with only two senators and 18 representatives voting against it -- environmental groups argue that it doesn't go nearly far enough. After all, this bill was the carrot in exchange for Kansas being stuck with a gigantic pollution source.
In fact, even one of the best provisions has a big hole.
Let's say you want to produce your own power. So you shell out for a wind turbine or a solar panel and hook it up to your house. But the equipment produces more electricity than you need. You want to sell that excess to your local utility.
For several years, Kansas has had a provision on the books for this situation -- parallel generation. Kansans could enter into such agreements with their power providers, but customers got stuck with the cost of the meter and shorted with unfair prices for the power they sell into the grid.
The Comprehensive Energy Bill brought Kansas up to speed with what many other states are doing -- net metering. Maril Hazlett, associate director of the Climate and Energy Project, says the bill's provisions are praiseworthy. Utilities have to provide customers with a meter to read the homegrown power. Then they have to compensate the customers at a reasonable rate for the power they produce.
But there are two big caveats.
First, there's a cap. After they've met a measly 1 percent of peak demand buying power from citizen producers, they can refuse any more homegrown electricity. So, with 11,000MW of generating capacity in the state, Kansas residents will only be able to harness and sell a meager 67MW.
Worse, not everybody can participate. The net metering provision only applies to investor-owned utilities. It doesn't include municipal utilities or rural electric cooperatives. That means the 970,000 customers of the six IOUs are good to go. The 551,000 customers of the 40 RECs and municipal utilities don't get the deal.
It's worse than leaving out a half-million people, though. How many wind turbines have you seen in the middle of a city, where the IOUs serve dense population centers? Not many. The best spots for citizen-owned power production are served by the rural coops.
Not only are those the areas where land owners have the zoning and space to even think about erecting a wind turbine. They also span the areas with the best wind and solar resources.
Because of that oversight, Sunflower customers -- and their REC comrades across the state -- are stuck with the old system that's so cumbersome few take advantage. A cynic might think that hole was at Sunflower's urging. Steve Miller, the company's spokesman, says otherwise. "We didn't testify on net metering one way or the other," he says. "We never expressed a view, period."
Perhaps it was just a courtesy.
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It's nice to see commentary finally start analyzing the complexities of the electric energy market. No more assumptions like wind can replace coal on a one to one basis crap. I would even like to see an analysis of the cost to consumer and payback of wind energy to "other-source" electric energy bought off the grid. Not until the numbers are brought to a personal level will people understand exactly what kind of increases they will see to their electric bills by blindly pushing wind and solar. Save the environment for my kids and my neighbors kids. Are YOU really willing to pay for that?
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