Warren County Report

September 20, 2009

EPA seeks to facilitate movement toward Avtex solar

By Roger Bianchini

In a very entertaining Front Royal Town Council meeting –  if  I’d known there were going to be two power points with national, international and local graphics I’d have brought a box of popcorn– town official heard updates on development of the solar energy industry nationwide and the potential role of a planned 100-megawatt solar power field here, as well as progress on cleanup at the Avtex/Royal Phoenix Superfund site.

The two presentations at the Sept. 14 meeting’s outset were intertwined by more than just timing. Julia Hamm, executive director of the Solar Energy Power Association, explained that if the proposed solar power project here proceeds, the 100 megawatts of electrical power forecast to be produced would theoretically catapult Virginia up the ladder of  U.S. states making significant moves in the solar power field. To facilitate the proposed uses of 150 acres of the planned 160-acre Royal Phoenix Business Parkas a solar energy field, Environmental Protection Agency Remedial Project Manager for the site Katherine Lose told Front Royal officials her agency was working closely with FMC Corporation to facilitate the release of another 40 acres of land in 2010, and the balance of the business park land the following year.

Also addressing council during the Sept. 14 meeting, SolAVerde principal Willi (it’s the German spelling)Lauterbach said he still hopes to break ground at the royual Phoenix site by January 2010. Literacy said he still hopes to break ground at the Royal Phoenix site by January 2010. SolA- Verde’s business plan calls for initial development of a 23-acre solar field on just under 27 acres of now available land at Royal Phoenix by next summer. That phase of the project would dump about  4 megawatts of solar Power into the regional grid, according to the SolAVerde business plan.

Following an August meeting with SolAVerde and town officials it was announced that regional power grid conglomerate PJM will allow the town electric utility, as the single wholesale purchaser of power from SolAVerde to dump up to 99 megawatts of power into the regional power grid in incremental doses before requiring permit approval at the100 megawatt level.

The SolAVerde plans forecasts about 40 megawatts of power eventually being generated at the Royal Phoenix site. SolAVerde is eyeballing land in the EDA’sHappy Creek Tech Business Park, as well as other privately owned land in the area, to accommodate the rest of its solar field space needs.

 Solar trends

In her presentation, SEPA’s Hamm called her organization a non-biased, non-profit source of information on solar trends, not a paid lobby group promoting the industry. That said, she presented graphics and numbers belying the notion Virginia and Front Royal are not adequate sites for the development of solar energy fields. Germany, one of the world leaders in solar power development with 31 percent of the existing world market, lies at significantly more northern latitudes than Front Royal. The bulk of Spain, another European and world leader in the development of solar power (41 percent of the world market), also lies north of Front Royal’s latitudinal position on the earth.

Hamm noted that Spain’s leap into solar power came as the result of one piece of national legislation that made the move toward solar power more affordable and financially attractive to industry. Similar U.S. moves at the federal level offering tradable solar energy credits and significant return on developmental investments, as much as 85 cents on the dollar, have been forecast to stimulate similar move in the U.S. in coming years.

As for existing U.S. figures, Hamm illustrated California as the U.S.’s top solar energy producing state with 528 megawatts of production capacity. Were the proposed private-public partnership between a SolAVerdeInc.-led conglomerate and the Town of Front Royal to suddenly dump its proposed 100 megawatts of energy into the national grid, Virginia would leapfrog from nowhere to be seen on solar charts, into second place behind California. New Jersey, currently number two in U.S. solar power production (also north of Front Royal for the geographically impaired), currently only produces70 megawatts of solar power. Of course the reality is that SolAVerde plans to drop incremental doses of solar power into the grid at monthly increments of perhaps 2 megawatts a month after construction begins. And as the Front Royal solar project proceeds, if it does, other planned solar fields of 50 to 550 megawatts will also see development across the nation. Of those developments, four fields producing 550,300 and two of 250 megawatts are proposed for California – doesn’t look like we’ll ever catch them; one of 100 megawatts is slated for Texas; one of 75 megawatts for Florida, along with several others of 50 megawatts to less elsewhere are also on the national drawing board.

 Avtex cleanup

On the job for a year after replacing the also Philadelphia based Bonnie Gross, who seemed to have a devoted a good deal of her EPA career to the site, Lose said she had initially forecast a 5-year-plan for total EPA withdrawal and release of the 467-acre “Superfund” site. However with the solar development option coming to the forefront for nearly the entire 160-acre business park area, Lose said the EPA would cooperate with mandated cleanup partner FMC Inc. to see that the business park site cleanup, featuring five pockets of small subterranean basements or storage areas, was put on a fast track– of course on the federal clock anybody’s guess as to what that means is probably a good one. Of course as stated above, Lose forecast a total release of the business park site by the end of 2011.

Lose noted that there is currently underway a public comment period for the next phase of the site cleanup of ground and surface water and viscose basins 9, 10 and 11. The basins all lie west of the railroad tracks in the conservancy park area of the cleanup site. A Public Meeting on that phase of the cleanup is scheduled for Randolph-Macon Academy, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 22.