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Sam Phillips
I develop software

Hello Randolph

The following is a letter-to-the-editor I wrote to The Herald of Randolph encouraging the favorable consideration of a large new solar project near town. Next year will be the split point where I’ve lived more of my life outside Randolph than in it, but it’s still home and a remarkable community. To meet clean state, national and global energy goals, almost every community needs to find ways to accelerate clean power.

Hello Randolph,

I’m writing to encourage Randolph to consider the proposed 20MW Ranger Solar project with a eye toward approving it. I was born and raised in Randolph, attended Randolph Elementary and RUHS before moving “down south” to Boston, and the longer I’ve been away, the more I’ve come to appreciate what a special community it is. A community which rightfully is suspicious of big new developments, but I think this is a hugely important issue and it could be both an seminal project for Vermont and one where Randolph can lead the way.

Projects like this are needed achieve the big goals Vermont (and, well, everyone) already have. Vermont has committed to procuring 59% of its energy from clean sources in the next 4 years. In order to meet those goals, it must rapidly expand its clean energy production. The Ranger project represents less than 1% of Vermont energy usage, but also a much larger chunk than personal and community solar can hope to achieve.

When Vermont Yankee shutdown, Vermont lost around 4,700,000 MWh of locally generated carbon-free energy annually. Nuclear, of course, has many risks and downsides, but it also generates a staggering amount of power. The proposed Ranger solar installation has a 20 MW maximum capacity, and assuming a generous 20% “capacity factor” (due to night, clouds, etc), it might be expected to generate 35,000 MWh of energy annually. That means that to replace Vermont Yankee’s output, Vermont would need over 130 Ranger — sized projects, roughly one per State House representative. Personal arrays on the scale of ~10KW might generate 17 MWh of energy in a year, which is awesome and should be encouraged, but it would take 260,000 such installations to replace Vermont Yankee (actually, a fair amount more, since siting and maintenance won’t be as favorable for rooftop systems).

The issue of Renewable Energy Credits is confusing and a bit too complex to discuss here, but two quick points:

  1. There is no way for Vermont to generate its own RECs without projects that generate at least 3,000,000 MWh of clean energy locally. This requires not small, timid steps, but big, bold ones.
  2. The worst-case scenario is that you live down the road from a non-polluting, low maintenance power generation plant, and flatlanders like me pay for it.

It would be great if there were a local developer who was willing to put up the 10’s of millions of capital it takes to build an installation with this impact, but in their absence, Ranger seems like a good start. I encourage the community to work to make the Ranger project the best it can be for Randolph. This might include integration with VTC or a share of revenue from REC sales. It should include strong community involvement in the detailed site design and plans for site maintenance. The Randolph community should work to encourage Ranger Solar as a model for how Vermont can realistically achieve its energy goals.