ISO-New England, the folks who run the power grid for the six-state region, issued a report yesterday about the state of the system. It emphasized the growing importance of natural gas, and noted that in winter, coal and oil are making something of a rebound as power-generating fuels because lots of natural gas is used for heating.
But the above chart really got my attention: Solar power is no longer an ignore-able fringe of electricity production. In summer, it can be a major source of our power. (There is something called the duck curve, which depicts the effect of solar on power production – this one looks to me more like the Glorious Flatworm curve.)
This is good and bad. Good for fighting pollution and for the hopes of a distributed grid, bad because it imposes costs on a system that wasn’t built to cope with power generation fluctuating so much during the day.
Here’s the whole presentation: http://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2016/01/20160126_presentation_2016stateofthegrid.pdf
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Hello David,
My name is Peter and I am very happily employed by Granite State Solar in Boscawen. Renewable Energy isn’t just a joyful employment for me, it is also a bit of a passion.
The answer to the duck curve as I see it is two fold…
First, there must be load shifting storage incorporated, both on an individual and grid capacity levels. These technologies are still being perfected but are nearly here! In a progressive world the solar incentives were are now capitalizing on would soon be shifted toward promoting storage as well. Lithium Ion is immediately attractive but proving to be problematic, witness the frequent news stories of spontaneous combustions in cellphone, hover board, smokeless cigarette, and the other LI batteries. The future may possibly lie with either sodium ion (the “salt water” batteries) or sulphur ion storage batteries. These technologies are now being perfected, but a key advantage is that neither will ignite spontaneously and they both are environmentally more inert.
The second answer may be found in smart controllers that incorporate grid, renewable, stored power, and the load. For a vision of the promise this may hold I suggest visiting this site; http://www.transverter.com The video is long, but truly fascinating. I believe that Heart Akerson has brilliantly outlined our near future when it comes to managing energy.
Exciting times!