FERC Commissioner John Norris stressed, on March 14, increased security measures and the modernization of the grid network with advanced technologies capable of feeding back local information from microgrids. “Our future is in a much smarter and more nimble grid,” Norris declared at a FERC meeting in February.
Rozzelle credited research by town board member Jim Sofranko, who operates an electrical contracting company in West Shokan, and positions taken in the county resolution as benefiting the board’s decision. The county legislature noted that the projected price increases unfairly burden rate-payers in upstate counties and will “hurt small to medium industries” as well as cause disproportionate harm to low-and fixed income rate-payers. The PSC reported “customers in the Central Hudson service area whose electricity has been shut off for not paying their bills has risen from 1.89 percent to 5.99 percent.”
Buried lines?
Another reason Rozzelle gave for NCZ opposition was that it ignores the proposed upgrades to existing transmission lines being advanced by the PSC as described in the Governor’s “New York State Energy Highway Blueprint,” which aims to boost the load capacity high enough to meet projected needs upstate and down.
The transmission lines upgrade was a related topic, voted on as Olive Resolution #2 of 2014 with unanimous board support, though with some provisional stipulations. Echoing the concerns of environmental groups that the upgrading project will result in new, larger and taller towers, acquisition of miles of land for wider rights-of-way purchases through Eminent Domain and scenic landscape damage (which are side effects to be specifically avoided in the Cuomo plan), the Olive board spelled out its views on the four developers’ proposals now under review by the PSC. Three of them call for the kind of landscape disfigurement dodged in the Energy Highway Blueprint while a fourth, proposed by the Boundless Energy NE LLC, plans to bury the lines underground on the eastern edge of Ulster County and under the Hudson River to join the Dutchess County transmission system in Roseton near Pleasant Valley (which has also resolved to oppose the NCZ). According to a Chris Rowley report in the Shawangunk Journal, the company would install lines composed of a “ceramic fiber-reinforced aluminum core wrapped in aluminum/zirconium wires” which “can carry as much as three times the electric load carried by conventional cables.”
The Olive resolution observes that “none of the four proposals addresses the question of how the proposed projects would enable improved and lower-cost access to transmission and distribution networks for projects involving local renewable generation.”
The resolution calls for “PSC to incorporate in its proceedings firm requirements that 1) proposed transmission upgrades shall not include construction of additional, taller towers or widen the right of way, 2) preference shall be given to lower-cost proposals, 3) upgrades shall include a plan for supporting affordable local distributed renewable generation that takes into account both transmission and distribution; 4) that proposals demonstrate how they will advance the New York State Renewable Portfolio Standard and Federal, State, and Regional plans to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy generation…”
“Let’s hope,” said Rozelle, “that they listen to what the people of Olive and other municipalities are saying for a change.”
