Energy Planning News & Discussion Blog
Above Photo: Reading from her prepared notes at the Public Service Commission on July 1, Commissioner Ellen Nowak, encourages the Commission to, “move this along very quickly.” On the right is Bob Seitz, Nowak’ s Executive Assistant at the Commission since 2015. Seitz moved directly into this position from his work with Florida-based mining company, […]
We currently have a crisis happening in rural Wisconsin. Our beautiful countryside, our quaint villages, our recreational destinations and tourism economies, our vital farming communities who bring food to our table, are being devastated by industrial utility-scale energy expansion. There are a lot of slogans and PR about this development from investors and cleverly crafted […]
Above image: Open land surrounding a substation owned by Alliant in Dodgeville, Wisconsin where the company wants to build and own a ~15 acre solar plant and lease panels to customers with a solar credit of only 6.3 cents per kWh. Residents of Iowa County Wisconsin which are experiencing unprecedented pressure for solar and wind […]
SOUL is uncertain whether intervenors will be able to participate in Docket 1-AC-256 “Section 119 rule making,” but the new rules established by the Commission are likely to either propel or limit investment in distributed grid modernization in Wisconsin. On February 8, Wisconsin Public Service Commission staff posted a memo from Governor Ever’s office announcing it […]
Very few residents of Iowa and Lafayette Counties in Wisconsin are aware that a Canadian-owned, multinational corporation, Pattern LLC,1 has salespeople on the ground courting landowners to exchange a few hundred dollars for signed agreements so that Pattern can build about 86, ~650 foot high2 Wind Turbines. Unless landowners slow down and make an effort […]
Wind developers are making their way through large parts of Iowa and Lafayette counties persuading landowners to sign lease easements for large industrial wind turbines (WTs). What Pattern Energies is proposing is to site a 300 MW WT project of approximately 86 WTs. While Patterns’ sales associates have a talent for making land owners believe […]
State Efficiency Programs vs. Regional Transmission Expansion Planning Through Fall 2019 and early Winter 2020, a team of five, volunteer citizen public intervenors accomplished what no organizations, public utilities, government entities or law firms had previously achieved. They uncovered and exposed costs and benefits of region-wide utility expansion “planning” designed to study the […]
Section I: Have I Got a Deal for You! Question: What business would make a similar investment seven times and not stop to check its performance? Answer: One that is guaranteed 10.2% return no matter what the performance is. Collectively, the electric customers or ratepayers of Wisconsin utilities function as one, big investment business. We […]