Tune in, turn on, opt out

Jasmine Graham was quoted on Hudson Valley One regarding Mid-Hudson Energy Transition's pending community choice aggregation program and opt-out community solar advocacy. 

Mid Hudson Energy Transition (MHET), the Kingston-based non-profit which will act as the administrator for Kingston Community Energy (the City of Kingston’s Community Choice Aggregation program) has hired Jasmine Graham as its first full-time executive director.

Graham assumes the role just as a power struggle refereed by the Public Service Commission (PSC) between conventional gas and electric utility companies and a new breed of plucky power-brokering upstarts is taking place. At stake is how energy is produced and delivered across New York State.
To act as administrator for Kingston’s CCA, MHET currently awaits approval by the PSC.

“In order to be approved,” says Graham, “you need to submit a master implementation plan. Once you submit that, the Public Service Commission allows 60 days for public comment. At which point, the Public Service Commission looks at the public comments, and then drafts their response.”

MHET filed its petition with the PSC on February 27. The 60-day period has just wrapped up. What comes next is a waiting game.
“It could be weeks,” notes Graham, “Or months. We would expect and hope to see it within the month, but it’s not required on their part.”
A master implementation plan consists of a mission statement on a timeline, broken down into smaller steps. Municipal officials, Community Choice Aggregation teams and their partners, Nyserda and the PSC need to understand the goals, milestones, and deliverables being promised to the community.

The plan also defines the approach to public engagement, outreach, and education.

“Typically what a CCA does is, they go out for an electricity supply contract,” explains Graham. “They get all these bids from Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), and choose the lowest fixed price. And you get your bill, and you have a fixed rate. But what we’re really hoping to do is provide opt-out community solar.”
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Community solar, a.k.a. Community Distributed Generation (CDG), can be thought of as a project or a purchasing program in which energy generated by solar panels at an off-site array flows to multiple customers within a geographic area. This precludes individually owned and operated rooftop solar.

Read more here.