True value of solar

Distributed generation is needed to mitigate the climate breakdown

Entergy Arkansas (EA), the utility with the largest number of customers in the state, claims electric rates will go up for everyone unless an insignificant minority of Arkansans investing in distributed solar energy (DS) are stopped cold. DS is installed in response to the climate emergency. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was not a freak event. Blackouts for days or weeks will happen again, along with deadly heatwaves without power for air-conditioning.

DS in Arkansas can provide one-third of the electricity needed in Arkansas without carbon emissions or pollution. Best practices recommend no limits to net metering, individual or aggregate, and perpetual roll over of kilowatt-hour (kWh) credits.

If you want to stop rate increases, outages, power spikes, loss of private property rights to build transmission lines, and massive pollution from fossil fuels used to sell utility power, join the solar revolution.

EA has been doing all they can to destroy a simple energy sharing agreement known as grid-tied solar that provides the grid with small amounts of high-quality homemade kWhs at peak hours of the day, spread over large areas, in exchange for low-quality utility kWhs during the night.

Distributed generation is the opposite of bulk power transmission and distribution. If we could bring back Thomas Edison, he could run the EA White Bluff coal-fired power plant unassisted and wonder what is on home rooftops.

The 1800s technology and the monopoly business model used by public utilities is different from the 21^st century distributed solar energy. When the weather is good and demand variability is low, most of your appliances will function with utility or distributed power.

Like making compost or sausage, the methods of energy generation are totally different. The EA White Bluff power starts at the Wyoming Powder River Basin. Giant machines are used for strip mining to remove the “overburden” and extract coal. Coal was formed 58 million years ago from woody peat that collected in swamps for thousands of years.

From the point of extraction, energy is lost every step of the way. Two-thirds of the heat energy in fossil fuels is lost in the transformation to electricity but 100 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions end up in the atmosphere.

Energy powered by the Sun is not magic, but it is close!

Why focus on Entergy?

EA has chosen profits over people and wants to stop Distributed Solar Energy. Instead of a simple accounting at the end of the month, sending a bill for the net kWh consumed at 10 cents per kWh, EA wants to charge DS owners 7 cents per kWh sent back from the grid. This seems like peanuts, but if you look at say 1,000,000 kWh for one year, EA’s net profit would be $70,000. Not bad for doing nothing!

Case in point: In 2017 the EA White Bluff plant emitted 46.2 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, 22.8 million pounds of nitrogen oxide, and 18.3 billion pounds of carbon dioxide. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide contribute to haze, ground-level ozone, and respiratory problems among sensitive people and can even lead to death. To avoid the cost of scrubbers EA “promised” to shut down the plant after 13 more years of pollution.

EA wants to increase Arkansas customer rates to recover $135 million that was reimbursed to EA’s customers in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Why would Arkansans pay for Entergy’s mess?

EA joined MISO, an “independent system operator,” with a large footprint. When building transmission lines, MISO spreads the cost over all customers in the MISO region. This way, the cost of the project seems low.

Rise with the Sun

Any attempt to discourage people from investing in the latest technology, free of carbon emissions, just to keep a 100-year old centralized business model and keep their shareholders polluting the environment is unacceptable.

No one has the right to ignore the climate emergency. There are only two choices, destroy our life-support systems for profit, or fight for the future of life on Earth. Please visit, www.SolarUnitedNeighbors.org, to take action now!

Dr. Luis Contreras