Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant. Photo by Jim Richmond.
Green Mountain Power’s 23-year agreement to purchase power from a New Hampshire nuclear power plant is a sure bet.
The Vermont Public Service board approved the power purchase agreement between the Vermont utility and NextEra Energy Seabrook Friday, approving a certificate of public good.
The agreement serves to replace a portion of the power that from two expiring Green Mountain Power contracts: one with the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station and one with Hydro-Quebéc. The two expiring contracts account for approximately three quarters of the utility’s power supply. Earlier this year, the board approved a new contract with Hydro-Quebéc which will allow Green Mountain Power to purchase electricity from the Canadian utility through 2038. The Seabrook agreement will replace part of the gap between its projected needs and committed energy supplies (including Hydro-Quebéc). According to the order, the agreement would meet approximately 24 percent of the company’s annual energy requirements in its early years.
“This is part of an overall energy vision to get low-carbon, low-cost, reliable energy for our customers,” said Dotty Schnure, a spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power.
Green Mountain Power first announced the agreement in May. It will guarantee a 4.66-cent per kilowatt-hour to Green Mountain Power customers. The agreement provides for two different schedules for amounts of energy. From 2012 to 2014, the agreement provides for 15 megawatts of energy. From 2015 to 2034, it provides for 60 megawatts with periodic reductions in quantity.
Schnure said these reductions are designed to reduce the amount of energy the company receives from the nuclear facility in Seabrook, N.H., and replace it with renewable sources.
Despite some opposition to the idea that Green Mountain Power was replacing one nuclear facility with another from out-of-state, the public service board proceedings drew little opposition. The board received three letters in opposition to the agreement, all stating that Green Mountain Power should purchase electricity in-state from Vermont Yankee rather than out-of-state from Seabrook.
The decision finds the agreement will provide an economic benefit to the state by providing relative long-term price stability, reliability, and a competitive price compared to alternative sources.
The Vermont Department of Public Service also supported the agreement as providing an economic benefit to Green Mountain Power customers.
Liz Miller, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service, said she was not aware of any opposition that arose during the Public Service Board review process.
Because the agreement does not involve any construction of an in-state facility, certain criteria do not apply like approval from local planning commissions. Because the agreement would account for more than 3 percent of Green Mountain Power’s portfolio, it required approval from the Public Service Board.
The decision to purchase power from Seabrook to replace Vermont Yankee came more than a year after the Vermont Legislature voted against renewal of the facility’s certificate of public good, and a federal judge has yet to rule on a case between Entergy, the facility’s owner, and the state. Local environmental groups had opposed the decision in May to purchase nuclear power from an out-of-state facility to make up for some of the energy that Green Mountain Power would lose from Vermont Yankee.
James Moore, clean energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group said the organization was still opposed to the agreement. Although he said he was not surprised that the Public Service Board had approved it.
Moore said the reasons for opposing the deal remain the same. His organization promotes using more local renewable resources as opposed to nuclear power.
“Nuclear power is inherently dangerous and creates a toxic legacy for our kids,” Moore said.
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Apparently, nuclear energy from Seabrook (which has an NRC issued 20-year license extension, as does Vermont Yankee) is safe and reliable, but from Vermont Yankee it is not. VY offered about the same 4.66c/kWh in its revised offer.
Wind energy from Lowell Mountain, a noisy, highly visible, environmental disaster for its ridge lines, will be about 9.5c/kWh with the equivalent of 50% subsidies, about 15c/kWh without subsidies.
That project is about the Vermont wind energy oligarchs grabbing as much federal subsidies as quickly as possible, whereas the Seabrook and Vermont Yankee energy require ZERO investment by Vermonters.
That project, and others like it, exist because of the tax-sheltering write-offs for the top 2% of households, with all other households and businesses paying for it with higher electric rates.
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Mr. Post:
You only have Vermont’s current Governor to blame. He decided to fuel his bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor in 2010 by exploiting the anti-VY fear and hatred of the left wing of the Vt. Dem. party.
He’s doing exactly what he said he would do: try to shut down VY and build wind farms. Absolutely no surprises here. I hope you didn’t vote for him.
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Willem Post says that “VY offered about the same 4.66c/kWh[as Seabrook] in its revised offer.”
Perhaps he could cite a source for that statement, since to the best of my knowledge, it is blatantly false.
Entergy’s spinoff Enexus (which never made it through the regulatory process) offered Vermont utilities 115 MW of VY power for 6.1 cents (rising annually with an inflation index) in December, 2009, in exchange for GMP and CVPS’s rights on the Revenue Sharing Agreement signed in 2002, and conditioned on the acceptance of the Enexus deal. Obviously, this is NOT “about the same” as Seabrook’s 4.66 cents contract. As far as I’m aware, this is the ONLY offer which was ever made public for a significant block of VY power, albeit a considerably smaller one than current VT utilities currently purchase. For what should now be obvious reasons (i.e., they could buy the power much cheaper elsewhere), VT’s utilities rejected VY’s offer.
The only other offer of which I am aware was to the Vermont Electric Coop for 10MW (about 4% of the power Vermont currently buys from VY) at 4.9 cents for one year. This offer did not include capacity (which the other contracts do). In addition, the price was really a teaser for only one year, since the 2nd and following years of the contract would be at market rates. And the offer was for a TINY fraction of the power used in the state. The offer was overwhelmingly rejected, not as Edd Foerster suggests, by the “current governor,” but by VEC’s board. There is no evidence that it was offered to anyone else that I’m aware of.
Finally, it is worth noting that Willem Post writes “Apparently, nuclear energy from Seabrook (which has an NRC issued 20-year license extension, as does Vermont Yankee) is safe and reliable, but from Vermont Yankee it is not,” as though this played any role in the decision. The NRC, not the Public Service Board, the legislature, or the utilities makes the decision about whether nuclear energy is safe, but has NOTHING to say about the price of power, the reliability of the source, or any of the many other issues which enter into power contracts. Both the PSB and the legislature are well aware of this fact; it’s time for Mr. Post to get it as well.
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“The NRC, not the Public Service Board, the legislature, or the utilities makes the decision about whether nuclear energy is safe,”
. . . a fact that Greenberg, Shumlin, Sorrell, and a good portion of Vermonters refuse to recognize, but are unwilling to be honest about.
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Unlike others who post in this column John Greenberg is 100% correct in his assessment of the proposals by VY. The fact is that VY has never offered Vermont a good deal beyond 2012. That’s why the utilities successfully went elsewhere.
Add to this the fact that Entergy has proven beyond any doubt that they are an unreliable business partner there is no good reason to continue to allow them, or their leaking plant, to operate past the agreed upon closer date of March of 2012.
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Nevertheless calling nuke power cheap and reliable, whether from leaking, fire-prone VY or from (who knows what goes on at Seabrook, I don’t follow the Federal Register collection of exemptions and license amendments for that one), is almost as craven as calling it safe and clean. Nuke power is inherently dirty, expensive, and risky. it is time to face the music and replace all nuke power in New England with efficiency, conservation, and abundant wind, sun, tides, and appropriate hydro. Not to mention cow poo. Get over it, the future is in renewable, sustainable power, not these archaic cold war Dr. Strangelovian nightmarish, Cat in the Hat comes backian toxic mess leaving nukes. The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. I am very willing to pay a premium for CLEAN power. I can still save 40% or more of my electric bill by replacing old appliances with energy star models and shifting to more efficient lighting. Get an audit and stop whining. Write to your power company executive and say thanks but no thanks. We’d rather have expensive clean power. If paying $5.00 or $10.00 more a month would buy us a nuclear free future for our children, count me in.
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I shudder at the thought of more nuclear fuel being stored without intent to properly dispose of it. I seem to remember that Entergy has stated that they are not able nor willing to decommission VY adequately and actually pay for the cost of removing and rendering the spent fuel harmless. People are not thinking about the environmental bombs they create when they mindlessly consume.
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Vermont Yankee will soon be selling 620 MW x 8,760 x 0.90 capacity factor = 4,888 GWhs of output to other states at the current average grid price of about 5.5c/kWh. It will find many grateful takers.
As I noted above ,the more expensive solar and wind energy is produced, the more is rolled into Vermont household and business rate schedules.
It will increase the goods and services produced by Vermonters, reduce business profits, create a few jobs on the renewables sector, but will destroy 2-3 times the jobs in the other sectors, lower living standards, increase unemployment in a no-growth economy.
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“Low carbon” is a canard when applied to nuclear energy. When the entire fuel cycle is considered, and adjusted for the fact that future supply will come from low-grade yellow cake, carbon emissions associated with nuclear power will be approximately the same as from natural gas, 12 times higher than solar, and 49 times higher than wind.
http://www.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/final-mod-energy-review-2009-SF_revised2.pdf
Most advocates of nuclear power also ignore most of the actual costs of such power. Cost studies by the nuclear industry are rife with conflicts of interest and inappropriate trimming of costs. If the full costs are included, nuclear-generated electricity can be shown to be roughly six times more expensive than most studies claim.
http://www.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/ksf-2011-climate-change-econ-conflicts-interest-see.pdf