On Monday, Gov. Donald Carieri signed legislation sponsored by Rep. David Segal which enables renewable energy producers to get more credit for the electricity they put back on the grid. The bill overrides rulings by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) which meant municipalities like Portsmouth, with their own turbine, could only offset their top 5 electric meters. According to information made available by the Governor's office, the new law allows utilities to write a check directly to the project owner or municipalities can now opt to offset their top 10 meters.

Rich Talipsky, chair of the Portsmouth Economic Development Committee (PEDC), expressed satisfaction with the legislation.

"It is amazing how complicated something gets when a simple bill gets in the hands of the PUC, as we saw with their interpretation of last year's bill that limited our credits to only that used on five Town electric meters," said Talipsky. "I hope that the bill just signed by the Governor leaves no question in the eyes of the PUC that Portsmouth will receive full credit for all the energy the wind turbine produces rather than being limited to credit on some arbitrary number of electric meters."

According to figures published on the PEDC Web site, Portsmouth's wind turbine, in the first four months of its operation, has produced over 1,000 megawatts of electricity, which translates to $150K in revenue to the town.

"Portsmouth went to a lot of trouble in establishing a Wind Turbine Enterprise Fund to make sure the turbine's costs and revenues were properly and equitably managed," said Talipsky. "The new legislation option for the power company to 'write a check' to the Town for all credits and let the Town manage the credits is exactly what we had planned on all along."

Resources:
See the original press release on RI.gov
PEDC Sustainable energy site