[D]raft rules being unveiled Monday aim to improve the siting of solar projects by helping communities and residents give input and by creating financial incentives, according to a member of the Public Service Board.
Margaret Cheney, one of the quasi-judicial board’s three members, testified Friday for about 45 minutes to the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee in a packed room.
The rules give “significant attention” to siting through a number of means, Cheney said. She said the draft would be released Monday.
The new rules should improve municipalities’ and citizens’ opportunities to participate in the siting process, she said.
They would accomplish this in part by providing templates to people who wish to intervene in a case. The templates would come with step-by-step explanations of what’s known as the Quechee test, with examples to illustrate its particulars.
That test was the key factor recently when the board issued its only denial in recent history of an application for a solar project.
This test requires that, if a “clear, written community standard intended to preserve the aesthetics or scenic beauty of the area” exists, a project must conform to it.
In the recent denial involving an application for a project near Bennington, the Public Service Board wrote that town plans constitute the primary document where such standards are to be found.
The board said last week that it withheld the permit because the project would have violated several provisions of the Bennington town plan. That plan was quite well-written, said Karen Horn, public policy and advocacy director for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, in a recent interview.
Most of them aren’t, Cheney told legislators. “Right now we see a lot of generalized language we can’t use,” she said.
Cheney said the board is pleased to see that some towns are developing plans usable for the board’s purposes. Such plans speak to specific locations and precise conditions and don’t depend on language like “scenic beauty shall be preserved,” she said.
“We need to, and we want to, and we do pay attention to that kind of specific language,” Cheney said. “Many town plans are nonexistent, or too general for us to use in a (certificate of public good) procedure.”
The new rules being developed also address the net metering of electricity and build in financial incentives and disincentives to encourage appropriate siting of the projects, Cheney said.
Well-placed solar arrays would earn the developer a higher rate from utilities for the electricity, known as a solar adder, Cheney said. Poorly located arrays would get what Cheney called a subtractor.
Well-sited arrays, Cheney said, would be those on rooftops, atop previously developed sites, in gravel pits and quarries, on the site occupied by the electricity’s primary user, and on sites municipalities designate as preferred.
The public review process will also encourage developers to place solar projects where communities want them, Cheney said.
Large, poorly located projects will undergo a more thorough review than the one in place today, with more opportunities for communities and their residents to comment, Cheney said.
Roof-mounted and other well-sited projects will undergo a more simplified review than would apply today, she said.
Developers hoping to build solar arrays of more than 15 kilowatts in nonpreferred sites would need to schedule meetings in affected towns before they submit an application, Cheney said. These would need to take place at least 15 days before an application is submitted, she said.
All applicants would need to file a notice at least 45 days before submitting an application, she said.
Solar developers would need to file with the board a summary of comments received, resulting from both the notice and any meetings, and applicants must respond to the comments and explain why concerns they raise aren’t addressed, Cheney said.
Also, developers who sell their renewable energy credits out of state would be punished with a “significant subtractor,” Cheney said.
Renewable energy credits let utilities essentially claim the benefits of renewable energy produced elsewhere, most often to satisfy regulatory standards. Buying the credits is typically cheaper for utilities than building their own renewable energy facilities.
When in-state solar providers build solar arrays whose renewable energy credits are sold out of the state, Vermonters are subsidizing another state’s renewable energy costs, critics say.
The chair of the Natural Resources and Energy Committee, Chris Bray, said lawmakers are also crafting legislation that would address several of the concerns Cheney raised, and would do it through similar means. Those bills are S.230 and S.123.
