Carl Zichella over at NRDC provides a compelling and thorough examination of what’s really needed to address reliability challenges ahead for California’s grid. Here’s an excerpt and link:

At an extremely rare joint meeting this week, the entire membership of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Independent System Operator (CAISO) explored ways to make the state’s electricity grid operate more smoothly as new resources come into the system and displace older, dirtier and less-efficient types of fuel.

Complete article here…

The Wall Street Journal published an alarmist piece yesterday  depicting California’s electrical grid as the victim of a ‘looming crisis’ brought on by the state’s ‘growing reliance’ on wind and solar. While the success of wind and solar certainly raises new issues in terms of how to plan and operate the future electrical grid, the article overstated the severity of the problem California currently faces. Worse it sensationalized an issue in a way that offers little real insight into the challenges or potential solutions.

Before we get into that, let’s first just look at the facts in California. What better resource to turn to than the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) website. Here we find a snapshot of the state’s electrical load and resources for yesterday (27 Feb 2013): 

What does this tell us? California’s daytime load today peaked at just over 27 gigawatts, followed by the evening load peak of around 29.5 gigawatts. Minimum load never went lower than 20 gigawatts. Meanwhile CAISO had between 32-38 gigawatts of generating resources available during that period to meet that demand.  

Now let’s look at what role renewables played in the state during the same period:

Solar was the highest contributor from the renewables camp today, contributing just over 1.5 gigawatts of peak output. Altogether if you add up the other renewable resources, they maxed out at just under 3.5 gigawatts. But that includes 920 MW of geothermal which you can see is almost rock steady—plus 300 MW of hydro which is 100% dispatchable.

 So the real ‘intermittent’ supply today maxed out at about 2.3 gigawatts. That’s less than 10% of peak daytime load and less than 8% of the maximum load. Note that the intermittent supply barely crosses over 10% of minimum demand of 20 gigawatts and CAISO had way more resources available than it needed to meet the peak.  

Clearly California is not ‘overly reliant’ on wind and solar and this is clearly not a situation ‘out of control.’ In fact it looks very much in control—and it looks very much like there’s more capacity to absorb intermittent resources. 

Just for perspective, let’s compare California to Germany where they really do have high penetration of solar and wind relative to load. Below are graphs showing various power sources contribution to meet load for two different weeks in 2012. The upper graph shows a period in January when wind supplied over 40% of Germany’s power needs. The lower graph shows a period in May when solar provided about 40% of Germany’s power needs. Guess what. Germany didn’t fall of the map and didn’t experience major blackouts.

How does Germany make it work? By combining intermittent and dispatchable resources in a way
that reflects their features and strengths.  

They use baseload resources like nuclear and large gas- or coal-fired turbines to meet the predictable and consistent load at the bottom of the chart. Next they let wind and solar generate whatever they can as the wind blows and the sun shines—both of which are lot more reliable than they sound and can be accurately forecasted a day or two in advance. They then fill the remaining ups and downs with highly
dispatchable load-following resources like hydro and gas-fired peakers. And they maintain a prudent amount of dispatchable capacity in reserve in case load rises or intermittent resources fall off.

It’s not magic –  it’s actually pretty logical and straightforward. And the benefit Germany gets is tremendous: a high proportion of 100% clean electricity with solid reliability.

To be fair, California’s grid and operating topology are a lot different than Germany’s. A more complete analysis has to look at operating issues year round. And the issues can get highly complex when you look at isolated segments of the grid. Currently there are big issues in the western Los Angeles basin as a result of the loss of the San Onofrio Nuclear Generating Station and legal issues related to contracting existing gas resources to fill the gap.

However, what is clear both from the California and Germany examples above is that there’s strong evidence the technical capabilities exist to enable California can absorb a lot more renewables without threateaning overall reliability.

The Conversation About Reliability We Should Be Having

The last thing we need is an alarmist, sensationalized ‘chicken little’ conversation about the reliability issue. What we do need to have is a pragmatic, constructive conversation about grid reliability in California and the implications for the rest of the nation.

An increasing number of experts believe that the state is actually overbuilding the amount of gas-fired resources it needs in an attempt to ‘over-insure’ against the issue of intermittency as it approaches its 33% RPS goals. The risk of over-insurance of course is that state ratepayers will end up footing the bill for an overbuilt system—and ratepayers will blame rising rates on renewables rather than bad grid
architecture or poor integration planning.  

The problem lies in the way California regulates its power industry. As a recent report from the Hoover Institution points out, “No single state entity is in charge of integrating initiatives and addressing gaps, decision making is slow and siloed, and—most importantly—there is no consolidated roadmap and decision-making schedule.” In California, the CPUC oversees procurement and the CAISO oversees reliability. And while they are increasingly trying to coordinate, there is no systematic technical or economic optimization in place to balance cost, reliability, and growth.  

That’s a problem worth fixing. The state’s 33% goal is just the beginning. Complying with California’s landmark carbon regulation (AB32) will require the state to reach 80% renewables by 2050.

No one’s saying it will be easy, but it is important enough that we shouldn’t just throw up our hands. The technical and regulatory issues that have to be resolved are complex and entangled in energy politics. We should not allow the alarmists to tell us that something that is hard is not worth doing. California is a state that has solved big problems before and the U.S. is a place where we pride ourselves on our exceptional place. Surely a matter this important can be solved with a little ingenuity, grit, and determination.

KCET’s REWIRE blog records yet another record utility-scale solar day in California. Utility solar generation peaked at 1.45 gigawatts, exceeding wind and all other renewables for the day. What’s more the blog notes that with sunnier days ahead and tons more utility solar coming online, those numbers have only one way to go from here–up!

Couldn’t resist posting this amazing aerial shot (click on the picture to see it full size) of our McKenzie solar farm which was completed late 2012. Located just south of Sacramento, McKenzie is one of 88MW of now-operating solar power projects Recurrent Energy developed for SMUD.

I love how beautiful the project looks against the green fields of California’s central valley in spring. It visually conveys how compatible medium-scale utility solar can be with the environment and farming communities.

With 109MW currently in construction and 315MW planned for the year ahead, we’re going to have a lot more projects like McKenzie to look at in the near future!

“We are finally in a position to control our own energy future” – strong words from the president during his State of the Union address. His remarks reflect how deep changes in our nation’s energy picture have profoundly changed our expectations for the future. These changes have brought us much closer to a secure, clean, and affordable energy future than most people realize. 

We have heard the astounding story of  how newly abundant natural gas has driven down cost in a remarkably short period, creating thousands of jobs and knocking coal plants offline. But we also heard how economies of scale and maturing industries are also pushing down cost and driving renewable energy forward in much the same way. Indeed, despite gridlock in Washington, we’re witnessing the dawn of a new era of mainstream clean energy.

You don’t have to look far to find the evidence of this transformation. A report recently published by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) highlights that renewable energy, including wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower represented the largest single source of new energy capacity in 2012, with more than 17 gigawatts added.

President Obama noted the incredible progress the solar industry has made in recent years bringing down cost. The same BCSE report mentioned above reveals that the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of solar has fallen 55 percent since 2009, even while excluding tax credits and incentives, and is well within the range of traditional energy. The impact of this price drop can be seen already, as El
Paso Electric Co. signed a twenty year agreement at the end of January to purchase solar power at half the average rate of new coal.  

The president called attention to the remarkable fact that wind made up 45% of all new generation brought online last year, exceeding additions from all other fuel sources, including natural gas. Not to be outdone, the solar industry was on pace to install more than 3,200MW of new generation at the end of 2012. Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest utilities, is projecting that continued explosive growth will
move solar into second place behind natural gas for new capacity in 2013—exceeding new generation additions of both wind and coal this year.

Looking ahead, the rise of mainstream renewables is driving such a significant transformation that the EIA is projecting renewable energy to make up a majority of all new capacity additions through 2015.

Let’s be clear about what a continued and successful energy transformation will look like. Our country is preparing to replace an aging fleet of dirty coal plants in a world where solar, wind and natural gas are all at historically low prices. And as the president rightly pointed out, these now abundant and affordable resources give us new chioces and a new level of control over our energy future.

Clearly natural gas is a critical part of the picture. In fact natural gas enables more renewable generation to be brought onto the grid, because of the reality of renewables and how the power grid works. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that simply replacing coal with natural gas is enough.

We need as much cost-competitive renewables as we can get if we’re going to make the most of our resources and take on climate change. If we get the formula right, we’ll end up with an optimal combination of solar, wind and gas that can deliver the trifecta of low emissions, reliability, and affordability.

There is still much work to be done, as wind and solar, even though rising fast, still only add up to less than 6 percent of all electric power capacity in the U.S. Meanwhile, the glut of cheap natural gas may tempt regulators and utilities to overbuild gas-fired power plants in the short term. It’s imperative we plot a thoughtful course now towards an energy future in which this ideal energy trifecta is a reality. 

We are just beginning the mainstream clean energy era, but the facts show the transformation of our energy economy is already underway. To ensure we make the right use of the resources available to us, we need predictable and market-based policies that increasingly put a price on carbon – whether through legislation or emissions regulation.

I urge the president to  deliver on the promise he made last night to take bold action on climate change – specifically to exert his executive authority to guide our nation’s energy choices – and seize the opportunity of our newfound control of our energy future.