Sanders connects with Vermont's future

[Donkees]

[font color="gray"font size="3"]Sen. Bernie Sanders views a demonstration by Matt Ethier during Friday’s visit to Green Mountain Power in Rutland. ROBERT LAYMAN / STAFF PHOTO[/font]


Rutland Herald | March 18, 2017

Excerpt:

Spending the day in southern Vermont on Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., spoke to teenagers in Rutland and Bennington and toured the Green Mountain Power solar facility and headquarters.

Sanders moved quickly though a Bennington high school and the Stafford Hill Solar Farm near Rutland High School. While national media stories have indicated some members of Congress have been facing hostile crowds, the people stopping Sanders on Friday were those asking him to pose with family for pictures or sign autographs.

At the solar farm, Gracie Stannard, a 9-year-old who was there with her father, Rutland High School science teacher Mike Stannard, beamed over a piece of paper on which Sanders had written his name.

“It was amazing,” she said about meeting the senator.

Also observing Sanders’ tour of the solar facility and its power storage units were freshmen high school students Trevor MacKay, of Castleton, and Julia Greenfield, of Rutland.

MacKay said it was a “really cool” experience because he is interested in energy issues and is a Sanders fan.

Stannard said he had brought his students because they were interested in the “political side” of energy issues. Greenfield expressed appreciation for seeing Sanders walking across a muddy, snowy field to see a solar installation.

“ I think ( renewable energy) should really be supported and how it’s changing our community and how it’s making it a better place and a greener place,” Greenfield said.

While Sanders mostly discussed national issues like health care and the proposed national budget, he addressed some local issues, including the outcome of the recent Rutland mayoral race.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/articles/sanders-connects-with-vt-s-future/

[Donkees]

1. SANDERS SEES REVOLUTION IN ENERGY

[font color="gray"]U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, visits the Stafford Hill solar farm in Rutland on Friday and checked out a battery storage facility with Josh Castonguay, Green Mountain Power’s chief innovative executive. Photo by Alan Keays/VTDigger[/font]

Excerpts:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders stood outside a field filled with solar panels in Rutland and told 17-year-old Cameron Wilk that he was looking out at a revolution.

“When you’re my age, this is going to look obsolete, old-fashioned,” Sanders said Friday afternoon to Wilk at the site of Green Mountain Power’s Stafford Hill solar farm.

“This is the future,” the independent senator from Vermont said just a few feet away from 7,700 solar panels. “It’s going to become more efficient, the country is going to move to sustainable energy.”




Workers showed him the latest technology inside GMP’s command center before the senator donned his winter coat and headed out to visit the solar farm a couple miles away.

“This is just a real-time representation of the transmission system in the state of Vermont,” Matthew Ethier of Green Mountain Power told Sanders as they looked at displays depicting the utility’s power system.

Should a thunderstorm roll through and knock out electric service to customers, Ethier said he would watch it all play out right in front of him.



The senator walked around the solar site with GMP’s Mary Powell, the utility’s CEO. They were joined by about three dozen people, including a retinue of reporters, a few high school students, and GMP employees.

The Stafford Hill solar farm has the ability to produce 2.5 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power 2,000 homes, according to utility officials. The project also provides for 4 megawatts of battery storage.

The solar panels and battery storage system is set up as a “microgrid.” That, utility officials said, allows it to serve as a backup power source for an emergency shelter at nearby Rutland High School.

The microgrid is able to disconnect from the larger electricity grid during outages, allowing electricity from the solar panels and batteries to power the shelter.

And, as GMP stores more and more solar energy, through the state-of-the-art control systems the utility is able to tap into that storage at times of high demand and avoid having to pay the expensive cost of electricity during peak period.



Sanders said he has seen GMP come a long way since he started following the utility.

“I can remember way back when, when Green Mountain Power was a very, very conservative corporation, much more concerned about their profits than the needs of their customers or the environment,” Sanders said. “That has changed.”

He talked of Vermont leading the way in New England with solar production and the capacity to store the power that it creates.

“So, the day is going to come when solar is going to be able to provide electricity for us 24 hours a day,” Sanders said. “That is revolutionary and that is extraordinary.”


https://vtdigger.org/2017/03/18/sanders-sees-revolution-energy/