Physical Delivery of
Introduction
Sustainable Westchester is actively working to advance New York State’s Climate Leadership & Community Protection Action (CLCPA) goals of achieving 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% carbon free electricity by facilitating the supply of renewable energy resources to the county’s residents. Due to multiple constraints, this goal cannot be achieved with local generation alone.
Renewable electricity may be generated in Upstate New York and brought to the county by new dedicated transmission lines. Westchester Power, Sustainable Westchester ‘s community energy program, is the largest Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in New York State.
It is projected to cover more than 160,000 estimated households and small commercial accounts for an estimate power demand of 500 MW by the end of 2019. This gives Westchester Power a substantial clout and sets it as a major off taker of renewable electricity. It thus can engage the member municipalities in direct supply contracts with upstate generators in what we call a direct supply.
SUSTAINABLE WESTCHESTER
PARTNERS WITH NYSERDA
FOR CCA 2.0
Sustainable Westchester’s
Proposal
Sustainable Westchester will promote Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) contracts between its member municipalities and Energy Service Companies (ESCO) that offer direct supply from New York State generation. Sustainable Westchester engaged its current ESCO in the design of a “sleeving” contract where new generation and associated transmission project developers can offer purchase agreements of renewable electricity. As Sustainable Westchester’s CCA, Westchester Power is growing and reaching a substantial off take size that allows it to negotiate better prices for its members.
Sustainable Westchester is part of an area of high demand and far from the part of New York State where renewable electricity can be generated at large scale. The resulting high losses and congestion charges reach more than 36% of the costs of energy auctioned in upstate New York. While the simple answer could be adding more transmission, there is a concern for additional costs, thus potential increases to the ratepayer’s electricity bills.
Sustainable Westchester is proposing a mechanism that would show a path to increase the development of new renewable energy generation while maintaining a competitive environment. The mechanism would involve creating a congestion charge to the ratepayers transferred to each unit of energy delivered in the same ratepayer zones by the new transmission system, provided the energy is created in New York State. That charge would be calculated on a yearly basis by an agency (e.g. NYSEDA) based on historical and projected losses and congestion costs for the target zones. This would encourage the building of new transmission by shifting some of all of the transmission costs from the direct off takers to the whole community, which will then benefit from the reduction of congestion and loss costs.
The Benefits
The benefits of a physical delivery of renewable energy to Westchester County are compared to those of the Renewable Energy Credits as laid out in the attached white paper.
- Direct Supply maximizes the use of renewable energy generated in New York State.
- It contributes to reducing the need for “peakers”, standby generators that supply the local grid with energy when the load exceeds the capacity of the regular load suppliers. Those “peakers” use fossil fuels and are high polluters. Thus direct supply reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
- The above peakers are located in mostly low income communities, thus create an environmental justice issue.
- Creating a large scale renewable energy generation in upstate New York.
- Increase the reliability of the electricity supply considering the planned shutdown of IPEC.