Q&A with OPALCO Board of Directors candidate Jessa Madosky

Jes­sa Madosky is one of three can­di­dates run­ning for the open seat on the OPALCO Board of Direc­tors that rep­re­sents Dis­trict 1, which includes San Juan Island. Vot­ing opened on March 11 and runs through April 27. OPALCO asked each can­di­date more than a dozen ques­tions relat­ed to key issues fac­ing OPALCO and Rock Island Com­mu­ni­ca­tions now and in the years ahead. The San Juan Update shares their answers here.

OPALCO’s mis­sion is to pro­vide safe, reli­able, sus­tain­able and cost-effec­tive essen­tial util­i­ty ser­vices with a com­mit­ment to the uti­liza­tion of renew­able resources and car­bon reduc­tion. Which of these is most impor­tant to you and why?

The most impor­tant part of the OPALCO mis­sion needs to be to pro­vide sus­tain­able essen­tial util­i­ty ser­vices or ulti­mate­ly the entire mis­sion will be unsuc­cess­ful. With­out pro­vid­ing essen­tial ser­vices that are sus­tain­able (both in terms of the envi­ron­ment and in terms of the com­mu­ni­ty) we may be able to pro­vide ser­vices for a short time, or pro­vide ser­vices to only parts of the com­mu­ni­ty that are well off, but with­out pro­vid­ing ser­vices that are both envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able and sus­tain­able for all of our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers we can­not ensure that every­one has access to essen­tial services.

OPALCO load dou­bles in win­ter, but solar pro­duc­tion out­put drops to 1/16 (of sum­mer pro­duc­tion) in win­ter. What new ener­gy resources would you like OPALCO to con­sid­er for meet­ing win­ter load?

I would be inter­est­ed in explor­ing wind ener­gy, espe­cial­ly through low pro­file wind tur­bine sys­tems and explor­ing tidal or wave ener­gy. Obvi­ous­ly a full envi­ron­men­tal analy­sis would be need­ed to avoid unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, but there have been huge advances in sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies and the islands have an abun­dance of both wind and water ener­gy that can be uti­lized dur­ing the win­ter months.

Solar pow­er requires a lot of sun­ny land for solar arrays. Coun­ty land use codes favor pre­serv­ing local rur­al char­ac­ter over solar on open land. How do you think about these poten­tial­ly con­flict­ing approach­es to land use?

Solar pow­er and local rur­al char­ac­ter are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. Our barn for our three hors­es is lit by solar pow­ered lights from a small solar pan­el on the barn roof that is bare­ly notice­able. There are ample roofs that could house solar pan­els with prop­er sup­port for installing solar pan­els on pri­vate prop­er­ty and solar pan­el instal­la­tions can also be used in con­junc­tion with graz­ing when prop­er­ly designed. We can design sys­tems that don’t con­flict and can pro­vide both envi­ron­men­tal friend­ly pow­er and help local farms with an addi­tion­al source of income to ensure that our farm­land is not lost forever.

OPALCO depends on hydropow­er from the main­land for more than 84% of its total pow­er sup­ply. How impor­tant is hydropow­er in your vision for a future ener­gy sup­ply in the islands?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is not sus­tain­able to con­tin­ue to depend on hydropow­er from the main­land for most of the pow­er on the islands for a wide vari­ety of rea­sons. First off, with the impacts of cli­mate change on snow­pack and tem­per­a­ture extremes, hydropow­er may become less reli­able in the region just as pow­er demands increase rapid­ly. Main­land sup­pli­ers may be forced to reduce pow­er out­put or dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase prices as we saw this win­ter. We also know that many of the dams used for pow­er pro­duc­tion need to be removed in order to ensure the sur­vival of salmon and our beloved South­ern Res­i­dent Killer Whales. Final­ly, rely­ing on pow­er from the main­land leaves us reliant on run­ning very expen­sive cable through the ocean to the islands and leave us with­out pow­er if that cable is ever dam­aged. We need to cre­ate resilient and redun­dant sources of renew­able ener­gy here on the islands to ensure that we are not depen­dent on, and at the mer­cy of, pow­er com­pa­nies that pri­or­i­tize sup­ply­ing pow­er for their com­mu­ni­ties first.

It’s esti­mat­ed that OPALCO’s load growth will dou­ble between now and 2050 due to the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of heat­ing and trans­porta­tion. Where should this new ener­gy come from?

This new ener­gy should be sup­plied by local renew­able ener­gy projects and investment.

Where should new renew­able projects be located?

New renew­able projects should be locat­ed on all the fer­ry served islands and should be dis­persed with an upgrad­ed smart grid sys­tem to ensure true local resilience. The lat­est research indi­cates that hav­ing a smart grid that can respond to local pow­er needs and redun­dant renew­able sources dis­trib­uted across the land­scape is the best way to pro­vide resilient pow­er to communities.

Will local resis­tance lim­it sit­ing and permitting?

Poten­tial­ly, but with increased trans­paren­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion I think the com­mu­ni­ty is ready to embrace resilient island-pro­duced energy.

Who pays for it?

We need to be proac­tive in work­ing with local non-prof­its, city, coun­ty and state gov­ern­ments, and local busi­ness and landown­ers to seek diverse fund­ing sup­port for resilient renew­able ener­gy. There is a grow­ing recog­ni­tion of the impor­tance of these sys­tems, espe­cial­ly in rur­al areas and we need to be very proac­tive in seek­ing out gov­ern­ment fund­ing, grants, and col­lab­o­ra­tions to become a leader in resilient, com­mu­ni­ty-focused ener­gy programs.

OPALCO’s cur­rent rate struc­ture col­lects rev­enue to cov­er fixed costs through the kWh (ener­gy use) charge. As we become more ener­gy effi­cient and embrace more renew­able ener­gy, OPALCO won’t col­lect enough kWh rev­enue to cov­er fixed costs. How would you address this rate struc­ture dilemma?

Some of these fixed costs may actu­al­ly be reduced by using grants and gov­ern­ment fund­ing to upgrade our sys­tems to sys­tems that are more effi­cient and more resilient. This will reduce the over­all costs that need to be cov­ered by kWh charges. In addi­tion, funds that are cur­rent­ly set aside to repair or replace cables from the main­land could also be repur­posed towards fixed costs if these become unnec­es­sary due to cre­at­ing a resilient sys­tem. Ide­al­ly, pro­duc­ing our own renew­able ener­gy will be low­er cost that pur­chas­ing ener­gy from the main­land and will have few­er spikes in pric­ing, but the upfront cost may require cap­i­tal invest­ment that should be sup­port­ed by proac­tive grant writ­ing, access­ing state and fed­er­al funds for mod­ern­iz­ing rur­al ener­gy grids, and through fundrais­ing. One option may also be an increase on prop­er­ty tax­es for sec­ond homes – many loca­tions have tax codes that allow for low­er tax­es for year-round res­i­dents but high­er tax­es for vaca­tion homes.

The Coun­ty Com­pre­hen­sive Plan cites “ener­gy inde­pen­dence” as a goal. What is your under­stand­ing of this goal? How would you achieve it?

Ener­gy inde­pen­dence should mean sourc­ing our ener­gy from renew­able sources with­in the islands – inde­pen­dence from both unsus­tain­able fos­sil fuel use and from buy­ing our ener­gy from the main­land. I would achieve this through a mix of redun­dant, dis­trib­uted, renew­able ener­gy sources across the main fer­ry served islands and an upgrad­ed grid sys­tem with bet­ter efficiency.

OPALCO is a non-prof­it coop­er­a­tive. How would you pro­pose to keep member’s pow­er bills affordable?

I would pro­pose to keep member’s pow­er bills afford­able by aggres­sive­ly going after grants and gov­ern­ment fund­ing to upgrade our pow­er grid and cre­ate local renew­able ener­gy sources. This would also allow the islands to become inde­pen­dent from main­land pow­er sources that can increase costs dur­ing high demand and allow OPALCO to invest in renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion on island instead of expen­sive cables to the mainland.

What is your vision for pro­vid­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy through­out SJ County?

We need to ensure that every house­hold can afford­ably access both phone and high­speed inter­net. Like pow­er, we should aggres­sive­ly pur­sue grants and fed­er­al fund­ing for rur­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. We are cur­rent­ly in a time peri­od where there is a lot of sup­port for rur­al access to high-speed inter­net due to changes in edu­ca­tion and work from the COVID cri­sis and we need to make sure as a com­mu­ni­ty that we are able to access fund­ing while it is available.

Rock Island pro­vides inter­net con­nec­tions to near­ly 50% of the OPALCO mem­ber­ship. How impor­tant is it to pro­vide inter­net to the bal­ance of our membership?

It is incred­i­bly impor­tant for the com­mu­ni­ty for there to be an equi­table and inclu­sive dis­tri­b­u­tion of high-speed inter­net and unfor­tu­nate­ly we are not there yet. As we have all seen dur­ing the COVID cri­sis, we are increas­ing­ly depen­dent on being able to access high speed inter­net for edu­ca­tion and cer­tain high­er pay­ing jobs. If many of our res­i­dents are unable to access high speed inter­net it reduces both edu­ca­tion­al and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, which makes it even hard­er for peo­ple to afford to live here year-round. There is grow­ing recog­ni­tion around the world that access to high speed inter­net has become an equi­ty issue and this recog­ni­tion also comes with fund­ing if we are able to act quick­ly to ensure that our com­mu­ni­ty is able to ben­e­fit from this cur­rent dri­ve to ensure rur­al areas have access to high speed internet.

Who should pay for the cost of inter­net connections?

Ide­al­ly, we should be seek­ing out grant and gov­ern­ment sup­port for ensur­ing that all com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers have equi­table access to inter­net con­nec­tions. Cur­rent­ly the “last mile” costs are far too expen­sive for many coun­ty res­i­dents. OPALCO should part­ner with the coun­ty and local non-prof­its to access grants and gov­ern­ment pro­grams designed to increase rur­al access to high-speed inter­net and use these fund­ing sources to help reduce con­sumer costs, espe­cial­ly for low­er income and year-round residents.

How would you assist Rock Island in real­iz­ing that vision?

I have exten­sive expe­ri­ence writ­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing on grants and would be excit­ed to help lead the charge in secur­ing grant and gov­ern­ment fund­ing to ensure equi­table access to high-speed inter­net for coun­ty res­i­dents. As a sci­en­tist, I’m expe­ri­enced in find­ing fund­ing sources, find­ing fund­ing part­ners, and work­ing togeth­er to secure grants to make projects happen.

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