Email Action
To: cityleaders@fcgov.com
Subject: Solar Farmers Market
Say whatever you like in the body of your email. Our main request is that Fort Collins Utilities allow customers to trade electricity in a Solar Farmers’ Market.
Fort Collins Solar Farmers’ Market
A Solar Farmers’ Market (SFM) can help lower energy bills, reduce pollution, and keep money circulating in the local economy. A SFM is made up of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) located within the local community, for example: solar on schools, brewery biogas, electric vehicles, and smart water heaters. The DERs are networked together and managed through internet connections known as a virtual power plant (VPP). A SFM enables customers to choose to buy, sell and trade electricity with other DER owners in your community.
In 2023, Google hired Brattle Group to study VPPs. Brattle found that VPPs are 40-60% more cost effective than alternatives (Real Reliability: The Value of Virtual Power. Brattle 2023). Utilities, investment firms, and companies including Tesla are developing VPPs to harvest that value as profit. A SFM, on the other hand, retains that value as savings to the customers; bills go down instead of up! The more you bring to the SFM, the more you save, but some savings is realized community wide. This is important because, under the current system, electric rates are rising at twice the rate of inflation in Fort Collins. The City and Platte River Power Authority (PRPA, our electric provider) are projecting that, with their plan, electric bills will go up more than 75% from 2020 to 2030.
In addition, the money we send to PRPA to buy electricity largely leaves the community right away. This is called economic leakage. As much as 80% of the $250 million that Fort Collins residents send to PRPA every year is lost to leakage. With a SFM, the money we spend on electricity goes to the owners of DER: local schools, businesses, residents, churches and non-profits, City departments. The money circulates in the local economy two to three times. This is known as the local economic multiplier effect. In a SFM our electric dollars support the local economy.
Solar Farmers’ Markets pay for solar panels and electric vehicles (EVs). Batteries, including those in EVs, can charge when it is sunny or windy and electricity is cheap. They provide electricity back to the SFM when there is little or no solar or wind available. This value is so great that EVs can pay for themselves in a few years, if they are a part of a SFM. This is an awesome opportunity to cut pollution from cars, fleet truck, and school busses!
We won’t be able to provide all of our electric needs through a SFM. An attainable goal is 12% by 2030, growing to 50% by 2040. That’s enough to replace the methane power from PRPA, lower energy bills, and keep somewhere around $200-300 million dollars every year circulating in the Fort Collins economy! Unfortunately, our city “leaders” believe and support everything that PRPA says, and PRPA says we should buy 95% of our electricity from them. PRPA refuses to get an outside audit or adopt Public Utility Commission procedures to substantiate their claims, but city council has limited the local solar and VPP goal to 5%, to “align” with PRPA priorities.
The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union is developing a SFM for Excel customers (rmfu.org/cooperation/prosumer-co-op/). We want to bring that model to Fort Collins! That’s where you come in! The City election is this autumn. Councilpersons Canonico and Francis are running for Mayor.
Please write them an email and remember their response come election time!
Fred @ city council Oct 17, 2023
The Global Rise of the Prosumer
Written by Bill Althouse. Bill has been working in the renewable energy industry since 1980 and is a consummate activist for energy policy that promotes the greatest benefit to the ratepayers, community, and Earth.
Prosumers are value driven global revolutionaries in 3D-
· Decentralize-Prosumer owned Distributed Energy Resources, DERs, provide more value to the electric system than the same capacity at utility scale.
· Democratize- The Local Community economic development value of DER revenues going into the pockets of local Prosumers where it circulates through local economies with a multiplier effect.
· Decarbonize- The environmental value of transitioning from fossil fuel to renewables.
Whether to be a consumer or a Prosumer is a simple choice- consumers pay bills, Prosumers cash checks. $100s of Billions are also available in tax credits and subsidies to help consumers become Prosumers.
In the past, Regulators had only two classes, Utilities and ratepayers. The ratepayer paid for everything, but the Utility owned everything. The Prosumer is a new value driving class in the community that pays for, and owns, DERs on their private property at no cost to the ratepayer. Prosumer DERs reduce the need for utility investments, the only way to reduce rates to everyone.
The new Google funded study by Brattle shows that Virtual Power Plant aggregations, VPPs, of DERs, not in rates, can provide value far beyond the KWhrs, like “free” capacity to other ratepayers. This says that utility owned and ratepayer funded assets, compared to Prosumer funded and owned decentralized assets, are economically obsolete. The cost comparison conclusion in the Doc- “The VPP is the only resource with the potential to provide resource adequacy at a negative net cost to society.” This means cheaper than ”free” to other ratepayers. https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Real-Reliability-The-Value-of-Virtual-Power_5.3.2023.pdf
The Energy Policy of the United States is to transition from centralized fossil fueled generation to virtual powerplants, VPPs, of localized renewable distributed energy resources. The plan is called “Pathway to commercial liftoff- Virtual Power Plants”- https://liftoff.energy.gov/vpp/
The main arguments for VPPs in the Liftoff plan are economic- “With electricity demand growing for the first time in a decade and fossil assets retiring, deploying 80-160 GW of virtual power plants (VPPs)—tripling current scale—by 2030 could support rapid electrification while redirecting grid spending from peaker plants to participants and reducing overall grid costs.” “Rather than using natural gas peaker plants to burn fuel and transport electricity over transmission and distribution (T&D) lines, utilities can use VPPs to pay participating end-users (Prosumers) for balancing demand on the grid locally with DERs and supporting systems.”
Rocky Mountain Institute says that this is a value driven technological revolution- https://rmi.org/the-energy-transition-is-a-technological-revolution-with-a-deadline/ RMI has a VPP overview- https://rmi.org/clean-energy-101-virtual-power-plants/
This Prosumer value revolution is also the policy of Colorado. The Colorado Commission agreed that the Prosumer is an entirely new participant class, who makes investments that reduces utility investments, the only way to lower rates to everyone. CPUC case#23M-0466EG says that competition can be by Prosumers at the retail level on the distribution system, a radical departure from the legacy Regulatory compact . The Commission Ruled that the Prosumer is a new class that provides power, capacity, and services without ratepayer investment that can lower rates to all. Giving Prosumers retail market access for all DER values on the distribution system may be the lowest cost path to consumer and environmental protections. Colorado is the first State to define “Prosumer” in a regulatory proceeding and mandates a rate of return for Prosumer investments. From the decision-
“26. Prosumer – Prosumer is a concept raised during the workshops in contrast to the term “consumer”. A Prosumer is a consumer that also provides resources to the grid. While this Decision does not use the term “prosumer” to refer to all participants in a VPP, is useful to distinguish a traditional customer from someone participating in a VPP. This differentiation may be beneficial when designing specific tariffs and programs for those who can reliably provide a certain capacity level upon utility dispatch. That threshold of capacity and control may be used to distinguish a prosumer from a consumer in future programs.”
“48. The VPP pilot program will test a tariff concept that would establish a “Prosumer” as a utility customer that met a certain capacity level of available dispatch. These would be residential, commercial, and industrial customers with relative capacity levels that they can deliver to the grid”
“A.) Prosumer levels should be identified by the Company to maximize the most beneficial combined DERs that could deliver capacity services to the grid.
B.) Prosumer tariffs should be designed to be attractive financially to the participant such that the option to qualify for the tariff would be an incentive for the participant to invest in more DERs”
Rural electric Coops in Colorado are adopting Prosumer policies like United Power’s “hyper localization” plan to replace their wholesale power supplier, Tristate, with locally owned DERs that capture the economic multiplier. https://bigpivots.com/at-united-power-talk-of-hyper-localization/
The Four Cities of Fort Collins, Longmont, Loveland and Estes park are blocked from moving to the cheaper cleaner Prosumer model. Platte River Power is controlling their future and has an obsolete view of the electric system. They are going against the energy policy of the US and the desires of the local community by making us pay for an obsolete Natural gas peaking plant that will become a “stranded cost” barrier to Prosumer compensation.
The world’s largest power plant (of any kind) is already a 13GW VPP aggregating over 25,000 Prosumer’s behind the meter assets. They have 1500 Prosumer biogas plants storing fuel to come on line for “dark calm”, periods of no wind and no sun. German engineers refer to this as Dunkelflaute, fear of the dark. - https://www.next-kraftwerke.com/
More than 2,000 community owned renewable energy cooperatives have formed in the EU- https://www.rescoop.eu/
Bill McKibben says VPPs are the fastest and cheapest way to attack climate change- https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-next-power-plant-is-on-the-roof-and-in-the-basement
Great article about Prosuming as a home based business - https://www.businessinsider.com/new-passive-income-side-hustle-selling-electricity-neighbors-solar-panels-2023-12
Energy Justice of Colorado’s energy transition should ensure that Prosumer investments are fairly compensated for the value they deliver, and that those values are captured to lower rates to all.