||| FROM BILL APPEL |||
Foster Hildreth, CEO of OPALCO, Vince Dauciunas, chair of its board, and Jay Kimball, consultant, appeared before our County Council in a work session on February 10, 2025, and alerted the Council of the need to act now to avert economic loss and injury to health.
Jay showed the council a series of slides indicating that the Northwest Grid is now at the crossover point where from now on, at times of maximum need, demand will exceed available power.
Vince reminded the council that in January 2024 (remember those temperatures?), the entire Western Grid was in immediate danger of collapse, proof the we have already reached the tipping point. There will be no new hydropower, and reduced snowpack has diminished our region’s summer hydro reserve. Think of grid failure as a very violent multi-car/bus/truck smashup, but silent as everything stops and goes dark. He pointed out that the county is now in imminent risk of sharing the fate of the mainland in a regional power shortfall.
Foster ended the presentation by saying that OPALCO has a duty imposed by the Legislature to provide power, but that is only possible if the county cooperates in this effort. OPALCO and the county will need to work together to provide resilience to our islands and because of changing funding circumstances, time is short.
I think it’s important to note that this is not solely a “climate” or ideological issue. The rapid adoption of electric power in transportation, industry, heating, consumer electronics (think Big Screen!) and information processing (a city-scale consumer) are together the major cause of increasing hazard, holding CPAP machines (with batteries, I hope), home hemodialysis machines and refrigerated insulin, internet, battery and phone chargers and much more as hostage.
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I hear you! For those of us who have made the investment in on grid solar panels, are not able to tap into that power when the power goes out. I never did understand why OPALCO doesn’t allow that. People can use generators when the power goes out. Maybe someone can explain that to me.
OPALCO isn’t holding you up. It’s that your electronics are not adequate. Grid-tied systems are keyed to the grid 60 Herz frequency on the grid. When the grid goes down, there’s no frequency to tie onto. There are systems that on power interruption, generate their own 60 Herz signal, which is how all off-grid systems operate. But a system such as you want must first disconnect from the grid or your system could electrocute a lineman working on the wire. Because of this danger, OPALCO may have concerns about your system. Talk to a competent solar installer. You would be even better off by installing a battery as part of your system.
As it is, you are contributing to the general welfare of the island grid, making some money, and I hope you took advantage of the federal tax credit.
Um… so why are we hurtling headlong into all-electric everything? And how is the County supposed to ‘cooperate’ – in what ways? By mandate? What and how?
Is anyone asking what these higher and higher electronic frequencies necessary to power all our devices and gadgets, and ‘store’ power off-grid and then plug in to use OPALCO’s power, are doing to all biological life? Shouldn’t we be finding that out?
Is our use of so many devices and powering up all our electronic stuff, and the insane idea to build all-electric places with no plans or structure in place for back-up heat for everyone, concerning to anyone else?
I can only shake my head in disbelief when OPALCO expects folks stuck living in Urban Growth Areas in all-electric iceboxes in Polar express in 60+mph winds, to ‘cooperate’ by being told to trudge through a foot of snow with a sick pet in a carrier in Arctic wind chills to the fire hall in a long outage, and put our pets through that kind of distress and risk? Either way, we lose – but it seems less risky to shelter in place and maybe freeze to death at home.
Mostly, this bears a lot of head scratching.
Perhaps it’s being collectively, and for some of us, unwillingly, forced into 5G, 6G, just to carry the ever-increasing population and usage load that we ourselves don’t want any part of, but must pay – for short-sighted collective addiction to technocracy, speed, and running toward AI without questioning the ramifications or the profiteering going on at all of our expense.
Just sayin’. It’s all inter-related.
To John: You will need a battery if you want to benefit alone from your solar system. When you’re connected to OPALCO, it’s like a huge battery. Most electric devices requiring AC cannot tolerate swinging voltages, and possibly frequencies, as the panel output varies with the sun. So a battery stores and stabilized the voltage to the inverter system.
To Sadie: Things are indeed moving faster. In the 1970s, the word “solastalgia” was invented to describe the sadness over what is lost as civilization “advances.” Well into my eighth decade, I share that feeling with you. What’s happening to us all is that we want it all, and OPALCO is under legislative mandate to feed our unending and growing appetite for convenience. OPALCO is exerting every effort, because it must, but in light of increasing (and I suggest unthinking) demand for new forms of comfort and convenience, OPALCO foresees that it, and so all of us, will lose unless immediate action is commenced promptly.
And then this happens . . .
(if the link doesn’t come through, just search for “Bonneville staff departure.”
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/02/13/bonneville-power-administration-workforce-donald-trump-resign-severance-hiring/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIcaJNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdujOrcl7IU4AIWlt6jlyfjCXsXFJC-dEc6PTKw7halLzljZj2C7msMTLw_aem_ebstxhTs33mueFHrxHTgrA
What’s really pushing the power demands, Bill, is the euphemistically worded “information processing” in your list, better known as “data-center” demands, which I wrote about in a October Seattle Times opinion article, preserved here in Orcas Currents:
https://orcascurrents.com/the-ai-power-struggle/
Estimates vary widely, but this demand is expected to DOUBLE approximately in the next five years. Electric vehicles and other electrification needs are secondary to the demands of the data centers, which will be trying to implement artificial intelligence — as needed to further line the pockets of such mega-billionaires as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.
We need to embrace L.E.S.S. – Less Energy, Stuff and Stimulation
Sadie’s point about OPALCO pushing the “electrify everything” agenda, only to turn around and panic that now there isn’t enough electrical capacity available from Bonneville, has yet to be addressed.
If the real goal is to empty out the island, making as many people as possible utterly reliant upon fragile, extended, electrical generation and distribution networks is a good way to go about it. The first extended power outage will send many of the recent urban refugees/retirees scurrying back to the illusory security of the mainland.
But maybe that’s a good thing?
We are pursuing several goals at once, and both must be reached for life as we know it to continue. Many dream of going back to simpler times but those times weren’t so simple when looked at close up.
What OPALCO made clear to the County Council this past Monday is that the problem was very likely to start on the mainland, blacking us out. People won’t leave here to be there as they’ll quickly discover that there’s no “there” there.
It’s not just the local demand (for which local sources are presently inadequate) it’s the regional demand for which, at very low temperatures becomes inadequate, that crashes the grid. When a large grid goes down, it has to be rebuilt very carefully to avoid damage. It takes at least days. Think of a heap of mating porcupines.
The alternative to electric power in a society that is steadily becoming less physically active and more dependent upon spectator participation has been coal, a worldwide scourge, and gas, “only” half as bad. The economy demands MORE, not LESS so that those in the lower ranks can move up in … yup … consumption.There is no going back. We have to make going forward work.
Questions:
“OPALCO and the county will need to work together to provide resilience to our islands and because of changing funding circumstances, time is short.” Well, what does that mean? What’s the purpose of OPALCO’s making this presentation to the County, and what is the County’s role?
Clearly, Land Use and zoning to expedite future solar projects like Bailer Hill. But how much of a solution will that provide? As the accompanying article https://theorcasonian.com/letter-to-editor-when-will-lights-go-out/ makes clear, solar isn’t going to provide much reliable help during the winter, even if there is reliable storage. Likewise, how many 2 Mw tidal projects will it take to fill the 88 or 100 Mw winter demand (even if the project could be approved and funded during the next four years)?
The questions being asked are all supply side questions–What do we need to do to increase electric supply to meet demand? What about reducing, or at least limiting demand?
Here the County does have a role. Like water, electric power is a vital resource, and a limited one–one that clearly delimits the county’s growth capacity. The County is in the midst of updating the Comprehensive Plan, and the Land Use Element goes to the heart of the question. Isn’t it time to start constraining future growth to the limits of our resources?
Of course, there’s also a bigger picture: our little archipelago is, as someone has pointed out, at the tail end of the power cable; and the real problem is the supply capacity of the entire BPA regional grid. That grid is now facing huge demand from power-hungry AI data centers and bitcoin mines, which are rushing to locate here because of Washington’s favorable tax structure. This is a policy question. If private company like Google can buy and operate a formerly devastated nuclear power plant at Three-mile Island, these companies must be made to pay their own way and not pilfer the domestic power supply on which we depend. But of course, the owners of those same companies are now flipping the switches of power in the federal government; and for some it is apparently more important to colonize Mars than to meet the basic needs of our own citizens.
So if you’re thinking of the prospect of sitting in the dark and freezing on a winter night because your heat pump and electric radiators have no power, be thankful you still have that old outlaw wood stove.
I read an article (Feb 5, 2025) titled “Inside the Interconnection Queue” about projects waiting to come on to the grid. (Which you can check for yourself, by the way, at Interconnection.fyi). A quote:
“As of this writing, there are over 11,000 projects in the interconnection queue, with a combined generation and storage capacity of around 1,900 gigawatts. This is close to twice as much generation capacity as currently exists in the US (which was 1,189 gigawatts at the end of 2023).”
A big chunk of that is in Western States, including WA.
Apparently about 70% of projects added to the queue are withdrawn (based on 1999-2018 data) but 30% over current generation still a huge increase waiting or in progress to come online.
Headlong rush to electrify everything in the name of saving the world from global warming….I mean man made climate change….wait, now its just plain old climate change, and not a thought about “unintended consequences”.
Folks in all electric houses are realizing that, in reality, they are living in a modern version of a cave when the power goes out.
Now, was this really unintended or just not fully investigated in the rush to be green. Are we still putting in free charging stations? What about the dozens in place….actually, does anyone know how many there are?
Wife and I have seen this coming for years. Planned and built our house ten years ago with passive solar in mind. Same with our previous house we built in the late ‘80’s. Put in panels and backup when tax breaks were available. Invested in a PHEV which can work on gas or electricity whichever is available and/or cheapest…..not an EV that runs only on electricity. We are still looking at other sources of back up power or electricity saving installations.
We are doing what we can at our level to plan for the future.
We’ve seen the same thing happen with the ferries and now it is hitting home literally and figuratively.
React. React. React…didn’t see this coming!
Brian
By your own comment, Google is paying there own way, so is Microsoft. The question should be why isn’t our government reopening shuttered nuclear plants. There at least three in Washington. I’d also suggest propane heaters, wood is to polluting especially particulate. We have a stand alone, vented, cast iron propane heater that, while only mid size, heats our 2000 sq ft house as backup.
It’s not just a question of projects in the works. First, “in the works” can mean ten or more years to go from initial plans to operation. General Electric, which manufactures transformers, is back-ordered years. There are now or coming tariffs on much needed items … but from China. Copper is expensive and becoming more so. Judging future capacity from what today amounts to a shopping list is a chimera.
Next is the matter of interties. It’s one thing to generate utility scale power, but that’s only half of the problem. Many touted projects are abandoned because they cannot get their power on line. The interties are already loaded, or they have to be extended to where wind or sun are available. The intertie battle involves state and federal permits and legions of NIMBYs concerned not only about views and consequent real estate values, but also difficult and harrowing ecological issues. Since we need the power to power our increasingly power-hungry economy and home comforts, something has to give, and in the long term, comforts win with everyone pointing at each other.
Meanwhile, OPALCO is trying to fulfill its mission to furnish electric power to our county in the face of diminishing actual reserves on the mainland (with very large anticipated demand growth there) while we neither temper our demand nor hear their warnings because we’ve heard that something good might happen on the mainland to which we are connected by aging, expensive cables inevitably requiring supplement and replacement. This is no way for the members to expect OPALCO to run its business under the rubric, “Well, it’s a cooperative.”
P.S. My wife and I lived on Waldron for years. We lived like royalty, but eventually, splitting wood and 100 steps uphill to the outhouse got to be too much. As some of those who have commented above, it’s possible to live a little more simply with, I suggest, no reduction in happiness (and I suggest an increase) with less distraction from “things” whose benefits to each of us are worse than nonexistent to all of us.
There are a plethora of good reasons for not reinvigorating the nuclear power industry… with the ongoing tragedy of Hanford in our own backyard being one example to look at.
The carbon footprint and ecological footprint of the entire fuel cycle of the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, from the land clearing, to the construction, to the mining and transporting of uranium, to the fuel enrichment process, to the operation, maintenance, and eventual shutdown of the plant, to the transportation, disposal and guarding of the highly toxic waste for thousands of years… is huge. Not counting the risks to the environment and to people. Unlike what you hear from the proponents of nuclear power, it is often touted as the dirtiest and most expensive energy that there is.
Google and Microsoft are not paying their own way… it’s an industry built upon government subsidies (our tax dollars) at every level.
I’m not advocating for more data centers and for AI — which I think is a HUGE mistake — but…. interesting report:
“The report finds that the country’s regional grids have substantial headroom in generating capacity available to serve large new users. The key is for grid operators and large customers to work together to make short-term reductions in demand at times when the electricity supply is tightest.
The potential benefits are huge. The report finds that the country could add 76 gigawatts of new electricity demand—the equivalent of about 10 percent of the country’s peak demand—with existing grid resources if these new users were able to ramp down for 0.25 percent of time that they’re ordinarily active.”
Report: https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/publications/rethinking-load-growth
In the meantime, like Bob, I’m working hard to reduce my electricity use and learn how to live without it, or with a lot less of it. As the cost of electricity goes up and up and up, the incentive to use less gets higher!
The incentive to plan for outages, and learn how to live with far less and off grid, got higher with yesterday’s news about the BPA layoffs.
From an article https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/trump-and-musk-are-playing-russian-roulette-with-the-northwest-power-grid/
“Power dispatchers, transmission schedulers and planners, field workers, and realtime traders have been laid off from the nation’s power marketing administrations — federal agencies that market and transmit wholesale electricity.
The layoffs included hundreds of workers at the Bonneville Power Administration, a self-funded entity in the Pacific Northwest that controls more than 75% of the region’s high-voltage transmission lines, as well as the flow of electricity from 31 federal dams and one nuclear power plant.”
…
“BPA typically operates a system where your unplanned outage rate is well under 1%,” Hardy said. “That percentage is now going to go up dramatically. I’d say it’s probably in the 10 to 20% range, right? Those are Russian Roulette odds.”
…
“The irony of the Bonneville layoffs in particular, he added, is that they won’t result in any savings, because unlike other PMAs, Bonneville is set up with a “revolving fund,” meaning ratepayer money flows directly to BPA, rather than through Treasury.”
Living small on low/no electricity
1. small house, the smaller the better.
2. propane or wood stove.
2b. heat the space you’re using most; let the rest get cold(er).
2c. cook on the stove you heat the room with, or outdoors (rocket stoves work well).
3. walk and/or cycle whenever possible, no EVs.
3b. plan ahead to reduce trips.
4. local food sources.
5. water catchment.
6. gravity septic or outdoor wash facilities.
7. buy only what is absolutely necessary.
I recommend the book Building a Better World in Your Backyard; lots of great info for living small with less energy.
At a policy level why does Washington State incentivize data centers with favorable tax rates and low cost power therefore
creating higher power costs for residents and a coming crisis in electrical capacity? It’s always strange when discussing energy
that there is very little discussion of conservation: increasing energy efficiency of buildings, passive solar strategies, and more efficient
development patterns. We are also constantly bombarded with the need for MORE and buying the easy magic solution.
I agree with many of Elisabeth’s lifestyle recommendations but don’t implement them all (we have an EV). Traveling as we all are between Scylla and Charybdis, between reducing our energy footprint on the one hand and needing the energy we use to be clean on the other, all of us fail. Amory Lovins once calculated that the power consumed by phone and computer chargers left plugged in in this country equals one nuke. Modems increase the demand.
The former WPPSS (now “Energy Northwest”) nukes will not likely be revived. Their sites are being restored. The first of the five ill-fates nukes that was closed down about 20 years ago. The new and unused equipment bought for the other four was sold off 40 years ago. For all practical purposes, they no longer exist. There remains the Columbia Generating Station, likely the state’s last nuke in our lifetimes.
Economics, not nature, rules our lives. Energy efficient architecture and consideration of solar exposure don’t sell at large because, well, “A house doesn’t look like that!” Building regulations are understandably unpopular, also involving expense. Regulations are met with, “Well, nothing’s gone wrong yet, so why should I?” A perfect example are earthquake regulations.
An interesting and timely discussion. Nature always rules as economics is but one more social construct that most often seeks to understand the cost of everything knowing the value of nothing. I am with Greg in wondering why we allow business growth and wild consumption of a renewable but limited resource like electrical generation to drive residential cost of living sky high. As the tip of the tail of the dog out here we have so few choices. The most obvious is conservation. Why in the world with a small local cooperative would there not be tiered rate paying? An article in this outlet explored the numbers of mega-homes out here that consume vast numbers of electrons and are often empty most of the year. A standard ceiling of reasonable consumption should be set for both residential and business that above that level has Kw rates rise dramatically. Such a scale is also an incentive for conservation and living more simply. I realize that I have momentarily lost my mind in forgetting the delusional worship of laissez faire capitalism regardless of real consequences and unaddressed socio-economic outfall. Fire away!
I appreciate the many suggestions this discussion thread has brought up because it helps me to see, more clearly, the issues before us as islanders. I read recently that when Leo Tolstoy was asked about how do you respond as a rational person to irrational behavior by others he answered that by looking closely at the irrational behavior we come to see and delineate the values we cherish and carry forward. I think we live at a time now where we have to shake off the complacency of living in a consumerist society and begin our recovery to a more meaningful and honest relationship to the beautiful world around us.
Brian Wiese: “The questions being asked are all supply side questions–What do we need to do to increase electric supply to meet demand?”
Bob Thomas: “Headlong rush to electrify everything in the name of saving the world from global warming….” “Are we still putting in free charging stations? What about the dozens in place….actually, does anyone know how many there are?”
B. Sadie Bailey: “Um… so why are we hurtling headlong into all-electric everything?”
Greg Oaksen: “At a policy level why does Washington State incentivize data centers with favorable tax rates and low cost power therefore creating higher power costs for residents and a coming crisis in electrical capacity?”
Steve Ulvi: “Why in the world with a small local cooperative would there not be tiered rate paying? An article in this outlet explored the numbers of mega-homes out here that consume vast numbers of electrons and are often empty most of the year. A standard ceiling of reasonable consumption should be set for both residential and business that above that level has Kw rates rise dramatically. Such a scale is also an incentive for conservation and living more simply.”
It’s a fact that one of the oldest known ways to increase product sales (of any tangible item) is to offer quantity discounts.
In spite of all the hype, isn’t it possible, even likely, that all of our utility companies, whether it be water, electricity, gasoline, propane, sewage, garbage, (even visitation, etc.), are operating not on a basis of conserving their product, but by adhering to business policies that are geared towards promoting (selling) more of it?
After all, in a capitalistic economy, how else would an energy dependent businesses survive?
I must admit that I don’t have the answer to this. And though restructuring a utility rate program towards charging people for the more energy that they use sounds logical, it sounds good in principle, I feel that it’s more complicated than it might seem. For example, can farmers, or the Market afford to pay more for the amount of water or electricity that they use… and wouldn’t they simply pass this on by increasing the cost of their product to their consumers in order to cover the resultant increase in their operating costs?
Michael “MJ” Johnson. “I must admit that I don’t have the answer to this.”
I agree, I don’t either so:
Bob Thomas: “We are doing what we can at our level to plan for the future.”
OPALCO has tiered pricing, based on usage, for both residential and commercial customers. It’s not complicated.
a few keystrokes on Google would have revealed this to you.
I am encouraged by the lively discussion here.
A wood stove can be used as a primary heat source or as back-up during power outages.
About wood stove pollution:
The EPA has a website that shows wood stove emissions, efficiency, etc.
Always best to use seasoned (dry) wood to reduce air pollution.
Here is the EPA link to the wood stoves that burn cord wood:
https://cfpub.epa.gov/oarweb/woodstove/index.cfm?fuseaction=app.searchresults&manufacturersid=0&bturange=0%20BTUs%20%2D%20100000%20BTUs&efficiencytested=0%20%2D%20100&emissionrate=0%20grams%2Fhr%20%20%20%20%20%2D%2010%20grams%2Fhr%20%20%20%20&fireboxvolume=0%20Cubic%20Feet%20%2D%2010%20Cubic%20Feet&fireboxVolumeLower=0&fireboxVolumeUpper=10&heatoutputlower=0&heatoutputupper=100000&lu_appliancetypesid=0&lu_appliancesubtypesid=0&lu_fueltypesid=0&lu_testmethodsid=0&nspscompliance2020Only=off&recs2display=10&searchterms=&searchtype=advanced&z_outofproduction=0&sortby=FuelSort
If only everybody could be more like you Scott.
Yes, a quick look online at the current tiered rate structure offered by OPALCO confirms that both small commercial businesses and large commercial businesses (larger consumers) pay, on average, less than do residential customers, with small commercial users paying a flat rate of $7.97 for the first 20kW of electricity used, (apprx. 4 times less than what a residential customer is charged).
Do large vacation rentals qualify as residential uses, or as small commercial uses?
According to the rate chart the one exception to this is that large commercial users using more than 150kWH actually pay $.0025 per kWH more than what residential users pay. Whether that is $.0025 more for the entire 150kWH used, or for just that which is above 150kWH that is being used is unclear… my guess would be the latter.
It goes w/o saying that providing electricity to an island is an expensive operation, one that is ran, operated, and maintained by skilled professionals. And, like all of us, I do not forget, and I am extremely appreciative for what OPALCO does for us. It appears to be a two-edged sword– that is, when the cost of electricity goes up there are many residential consumers (like myself) that find ourselves using less… which means less income (and less operating funds) for OPALCO. Likewise, as Bob Thomas infers, while finding ways to conserve energy, the more people that invest in their own solar / battery systems in an effort to avoid future blackouts and to offset the high cost of electricity, the fewer customers that OPALCO has, (and, consequently, less revenue from which to pay their operating costs). At some point in time it seems likely that they will either be forced to increase their fees, or enact salary reductions, or start laying off members of their skilled work force… or a combination of all of the above.
That would be a sad day… I like these people, many of them are my friends.
https://www.opalco.com/opalco-rates/
I think a better solution than charging more for higher use of electricity (no barrier for people with plenty of money) would be to cap per-customer-per month use, so there’s enough to go around. No extra for big houses or multiple buildings per customer. It’s completely illogical to keep increasing the number of businesses and people and buildings and vehicles demanding electricity when we’ve already hit the peak. Future development needs to be restricted to what available water, power, sewage and waste infrastructure and resources are currently available at the time of issuing permits. If the total electricity “demanded” is not available at any price, it would no longer be practical to build more than could be powered–or those who could would have to create their own power. Those on the grid would have to curb use so there’s enough to go around. It wouldn’t be fair for wealthy people to use massive amounts from the grid, at the expense of everyone facing blackouts, and for all of us, as we do now, to shoulder the cost for the infrastructure to deliver more power to the biggest users.
What is the metric? A retired couple in a small house, a family of six in a larger house? How is that to be monitored?
The problem is a bit more complex and requires an equitable approach. During the Great Depression FDR realized that our collective future required ample cheap power, therefore the Tennessee Valley Authority, Bonneville, Boulder Dam, etc; massive projects to meet demand with supply, not cower in the corner in the cold. Much more can be achieved if there is a will, clear direction, sound management and political consensus all of which are in short supply. Maybe we need a rocket scientist, but he’s busy parallel parking rockets.
“We” put “ourselves” in this position, no one to blame but the person in the mirror.
This is a wicked problem that can only be ameliorated by caps and serious conservation as Alexandra and Michael suggest. This morning the fact that the electric grid upon which we wholly rely is itself inefficient and susceptible to interruption by political chaos in a rapidly growing region is disheartening.
Yes, we have a tiered system we have is not nearly strict enough to lead to meaningful conservation on islands at the far end of a unstable grid based upon dams in an era of decreasing snowpack.
In this era of post modern challenges there are many problems that cannot be effectively “fixed” but require constant efforts to maintain a status quo or a sense of normalcy in life styles that are unsustainable. More complexity is not usually a good outcome in my mind.
“More complexity is not usually a good outcome in my mind”
Indeed.
Joseph Tainter, in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” argues that societies often collapse when their investments in social complexity reach a point of diminishing marginal returns, meaning the benefits of increased complexity no longer outweigh the costs.
We are living in the most complex society ever known, and adding to that complexity every day, requiring more energy and more materials to both maintain that complexity, and build on it to sustain economic growth.
The costs to the natural world of all this complexity are immeasurable, as exemplified by the many species we are sending into extinction, many before we even know they exist.
But hey, if more complexity means I can buy more bobbleheads and generate fun images with AI, then let’s go, right?!
Great thread on the use and abuse of electric power and pricing everyone. But the whole point of this discussion is that Bonneville, is asking the local power providers like OPALCO to step up and help with generating power to meet local demands. Now that this issue has finally been brought forward, let us see if we can move the county toward utilizing the solar projects that are in front of us. Solar isn’t going to be the end all, fix all, but it’s one tool in the tool box that we can reach for right now. OPALCO’s Bailer Hill project is an agriculturally viable solution to power generation. We’re all in this together, we’re pulling for ya. ( quoting Red Green )