Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Resilience And Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Residents press utility on cable risks, storage and second-cable costs at Block Island energy forum
Summary
At a public session on Block Island—s energy future, residents and board members pressed Berkeley Lab and utility staff on cable failure risks, O&M charges, second-cable redundancy and the cost and role of batteries and community solar in resilience planning.
Community members used the Q&A portion of Berkeley Lab—s ETIP presentation to press for clarity about cable risk, costs and how local projects would be paid for.
Several attendees expressed concern that the undersea cable could be damaged by anchors or excavation and asked whether a second cable is a viable redundancy option. "The 1 solution to loss of the cable that doesn't seem to have been considered at all, [is] the second cable," one resident said, urging that the analysis compare the capital and O&M costs of a redundancy cable with other resilience options.
Jeff, a Block Island Utility District representative, reiterated operational concerns about accidental damage and said that during a cable outage the island relied on generators and that fuel use rises quickly: "the day that cable failed, we didn't know what the problem was. We started burning a hundred gallons out. Man, it adds up fast." He and other board members asked the lab team to include lifecycle O&M and replacement-cost assumptions for the cable in scenario comparisons.
Questions about batteries and community storage recurred. Residents and board members asked whether community-scale batteries or hybrid solar-plus-storage projects could reduce curtailment and allow more on-island generation without risking system instability. Kaspers noted the team—s scenarios can include batteries, but warned storage adds cost and that some scenarios deliberately omit storage to show financial trade-offs.
Participants also raised program design and equity issues: how to structure community solar so low-income households benefit; whether the utility should change rate design to encourage winter electrification (including time-of-use pricing and lower winter rates); and contractor availability that could limit rapid adoption of heat pumps and other measures.
Several residents recommended municipal or community ownership models, bonding costs across users and designing projects so that broad segments of the island benefit. The Berkeley Lab team said it will incorporate stakeholder feedback and return in the spring with revised scenarios and a model that allows planners to compare options including second-cable costs, storage and different program targets.
The town and utility did not take any formal votes at the meeting; the session closed with a commitment to refine the analysis and provide stakeholders with access to the presentation and model.
