OPALCO Open House: Community Solar, Communications, Long-Term Planning

— by Susan McBain —

OPALCO held its annual Open House for members at the Orcas Senior Center on September 28. General Manager Foster Hildreth, Manager of Operations and Engineering Russell Guerry, and Rock Island Executive VP Gerry Lawlor were accompanied by OPALCO board members Winnie Adams and Mark Madsen for the presentation. The discussion covered OPALCO’s plans for the future of island power, and the communications plans of its subsidiary Rock Island Communications.

Hildreth began with a few dazzling slides showing the laying of the submarine cable between Lopez and San Juan, the culmination of a project that started in 2011. Then he outlined OPALCO’s overall strategy for the Co-op’s future: first, reduce members’ total energy bills; second, increase local power generation for essential services; and third, increase members’ control of their options and costs. Underlying this strategy will be OPALCO’s ongoing commitment to keep costs low, reliability high, carbon footprint small, and sources as local as possible.

Member questions turned first to the Community Solar project. Hildreth outlined its benefits to members:

• It’s simple: OPALCO maintains and operates it; there are no maintenance, cleaning, permitting or rooftop issues; and no modifications are needed to your home, roof, or shade trees.
• It’s easy: you can start small, purchasing as little as one unit of a single panel; it works for homes, businesses, and renters; and it’s easily transferred if you sell your home or move.
• It’s affordable: economies of scale are 40 times greater than for a typical rooftop array, it produces 10–15 percent more power than typical rooftop systems, and on-bill financing is available at low interest.

Current estimates are that a purchase of 100W would cost about $200 and would generate 120kWh of electricity, giving an annual credit of about $12 at current rates. Over the 25 years of the array, a member would receive about $450–$750 of credit, depending on rate inflation and including a Washington state production incentive. The 25-year net value of community solar is estimated at $4,086, while that for rooftop solar would be a loss of $1,240 because of its high costs of installation and maintenance.

The first installation will be on Decatur Island, where OPALCO’s main power feed from Anacortes comes in. The installation will also include a pilot battery project, funded by a $1 million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, to store excess power and make it available when needed—for example, in peak cold periods or during emergencies. Lessons learned from this first micro-grid project may be used to develop similar projects in populated areas of the County. Hildreth stressed that the County’s Comprehensive Plan needs to take into account the need for sites that can accommodate micro-grids and their infrastructure.

Hildreth pointed out that the cost of power from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and other conventional sources is steadily increasing, while costs for solar and other renewables continue to decrease. OPALCO is slightly ahead of the curve in its investments, and these projects will prepare us for increasing rates, mainland emergencies, and future management of the “smart grid,” including buybacks of member-generated power. Hildreth is also enthusiastic about the future of tidal power, which he predicts will be “our version of California and Arizona sunshine.”

On the topic of rate structure, Hildreth recapped the two board work sessions on rates held in June and September to prepare for a Cost of Service study that will take place in 2018. The Board explored a number of potential residential rate scenarios and budgetary issues in an effort to address the affordability gap in San Juan County and to meet the needs of a diverse membership. The rate scenarios compared benefits and trade-offs for balancing fixed (facility) charges and energy (kilowatt hour) charges on member bills. Some issues discussed were collecting the true cost of service from part-time system users and those who use the grid to interconnect local renewables, reducing costly winter peaks, and managing the demand charges OPALCO receives from BPA.

The discussion then turned to communications and Rock Island’s rapidly growing business. Gerry Lawlor noted that Rock Island passed its 2017 goal of 1,005 new LTE wireless subscribers in August, reaching 1,217 so far this year. Its Internet service enables access to far more options for phone and entertainment at a cost 18–25 percent lower than current providers. “Rock Island has a similar focus on your monthly communication and entertainment costs as OPALCO has on your total energy costs,” said Lawlor.

For cell phone service, Rock Island partners with T-Mobile, which supplies communication equipment to complement Rock Island’s network infrastructure on the islands. Rock Island has the most widespread coverage in San Juan County and expects to cover almost everywhere in the islands when all poles are online by the end of this year.

Once installation finishes on the new submarine cable between Lopez and San Juan (see Orcas Issues recent article), Rock Island will have complete control of the network within the County. Network redundancy, both in the islands and to the mainland, is constantly increasing; Rock Island is connected to mainland upstream providers in Seattle and is also building capability in Bellingham. For network backup, batteries are installed in all of OPALCO’s network operating centers and active sites, and propane generators will be installed over the coming months.