When One ‘Renewable Energy’ Type Eats Another
All around America there is an avalanche of proposed wind and solar projects.
The idea is to replace fossil fueled electric power which is the dominant source in most places. Some States even have laws to this effect.
Setting aside that this is an impossible goal it is interesting, even amusing, to see how this avalanche might play out in Washington State. The majority of their power comes from hydro but wind and solar are poised to wipe that out as well. This is an objective losing its way!
I became aware of the avalanche a few years ago when PJM, the nation’s biggest power system operator, announced that it was swamped by wind and solar connection requests. The combined MW of the application queue actually exceeded PJM’s peak demand.
This seemed unbelievable at the time but it is now clear that this fiasco is nationwide. People are applying to build more generating capacity than can possibly be used. That is certainly enough to knock off most of the existing generation.
The knock off happens because wind and solar typically come with what are called “take or pay contracts.” If the utility does not take the power they have to pay the generator anyway, so there is tremendous incentive to use this power instead of any other source.
Which brings us to Washington State where almost 70% of the power comes from hydro. Much of this is thanks to the Federal damming of the mighty Columbia River and its tributaries.
The big gun here is the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which operates 31 hydro dams ranging up to the huge 6,800 MW Grand Coulee. But a number of state and local agencies run sizable hydro as well.
I do not have data specific to Washington as a whole but there is no doubt the wind and solar avalanche is underway there. For example BPA talks about “skyrocketing requests” in their 2023 Annual Report, saying this:
“Under the umbrella of Evolving Grid, we are reforming our process for managing skyrocketing requests for generation interconnections.
Our intent is to shift from a first-come/first served process that studies requests individually in the order received, to a first-ready/first-served cluster study approach for large generator interconnection requests.”
This is in fact the same change as PJM made to handle their incredible queue of requests.
Then too there is the regional planning group called NorthernGrid whose region includes a good bit of Washington. They report this in their latest study:
“– The total NorthernGrid footprint, non-coincident peak load is 61,867 MW in July
— There are 2,611 MW of planned retirements
— There are 72,099 MW of planned generation additions”
The planned new generation, almost all wind and solar, exceeds peak demand by a wide margin. Pretty clearly this is true for Washington State as a whole.
What is really funny is that BPA makes no mention of what is surely a supreme threat to their power supply business. But they are a Biden-Harris federal agency so maybe mum’s the word for now.
Of course the Washington State electricity users are in the complete dark about the oncoming avalanche of what is bound to be expensive power. I can find no mention of this obvious threat.
There are lots of reasons to constrain the galloping growth of wind and solar. Issues like unreliability, excessive cost and environmental destruction. None of them is funny. But the idea that one form of renewables (wind and solar) might knock off another (hydro) is laughably stupid.
See more here Cfact.org
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