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Hoping to raise enough money to cover the costs of participating in the hearings to build large wind turbines near Block Island, the Block Island Power Company has asked the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission to add a penny to its summer rates.
The request, if granted, would produce about $50,000 to cover research and lawyers' fees as the Deepwater Wind proposal moves through the regulatory process.
Part of the plan involves laying an underwater cable from the island to feed wind-produced electricity to the Rhode Island mainland when the turbines are working, and to provide power to islanders when it is not.
Residents currently get their electricity from five generators that burn ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel.
During the winter, residents pay 9.1 cents per kilowatt hour, plus the cost of buying. From June 1 to Sept. 30, the rate is more than two and a half times higher -- 23.99 cents -- because the influx of summertime residents requires more generating capacity, said power company President Albert Casazza.
The proposed increase would round that summertime rate up to 24.99 cents.
In contrast, customers of National Grid in Rhode Island pay about 5.5 cents, plus the cost of purchasing electricity from generators.
"We need [the $50,000] for our legal and accounting people. There are so many different interveners and viewpoints it's hard to predict with absolute certainty that we won't have issues" with the project, said Casazza.
There are already questions over how much Block Islanders would have to pay for the energy produced by wind turbines off their coast.
"It's sort of convoluted how the price would get arrived at. What's got Block Islanders concerned is that people on the island would have to pay more than the mainlanders" for electricity generated in their waters, the power company president said. "We would need our legal and accounting people to keep a close eye on it so rate our payers are being protected."
"Right now, we don't have any extra funds to cover new legal costs," Casazza said.
The big benefit to the island would be the power cable. It would "reduce the amount of fuel we have to bring back and forth to run our generators and store in the ground" at a time when environmental controls are getting stricter, he said.
In addition, "if we have a mainland source of power, the quality of our electricity would be better."
Currently, said Casazza, "We have surges that threaten all the microelectronics. That's a difficult thing to cope with. The cable would help that a lot."
