For green energy experts, there seems to be too much good going on right now. While it would be nice to have enough wind, solar, and battery storage projects planned to meet U.S. climate goals, the growing congestion in the U.S. electricity grid countries are keeping most of these projects inactive. The problem stems from a combination of factors: aging infrastructure, discrete grid that makes it difficult to get renewable energy from where it is produced to where it is needed, and overburdened regulatory agencies responsible for approving projects.
A new report by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory outlines the dilemma. The authors surveyed seven national grid operators and 35 major utility companies, which together cover 85% of the US electricity load. They found that 1,300 gigawatts of proposed wind, solar and energy storage projects by the end of 2021, enough to meet 80% of White House goals “There is an energy revolution happening in the types of power plants and independent power producers want to build, and the types of power plants that we as a power plant,” said senior Joe Rand. as consumers are demanding scientific engineering associates at LBL and lead author of the report “Queue“Release in April.
But less than a quarter of projects will be implemented, Rand said, even those with the necessary financing, allowing approvals from local jurisdictions and contracts with utility companies. to sell electricity. “Our transmission system simply lacked the resources to manage this new capacity,” said Rand.
Perhaps the biggest problem right now, Rand says, is that there’s no easy way to figure it out move renewable energy from point A to point B. Part of the problem is figuring out how to connect new projects to the existing grid. It’s as if there are too many renewable planes compared to the number of doors at the energy airport terminal. “Let’s say you want to build a 200-megawatt solar farm and have a substation on the side of the road,” says Rand, describing a typical situation faced by a renewable energy developer. . “It’s okay, I’m just going to plug in that substation. But it’s not quite that simple, because when you put 200 megawatts or any significant electrical capacity into the grid, it has an impact. You may need to upgrade the network, you may need to upgrade the line, you may need to upgrade the substation to provide that capacity there.”
Those upgrades could include new transmissions that can handle the power surge not so hot, can damage the line itself and cause no power loss over the line length. Of course, someone has to pay for these upgrades, and many state utility regulators are reluctant to pass the cost on to those paying the price. At the same time, many renewable energy developers are reluctant to pay for upgrades that could benefit existing fossil fuel producers.
Another part of the backup comes from the assessments needed to study this maze of electrical connections. Each national system operator (with one operator for California and Texas, and multi-state operators for the rest of the United States) must approve any new energy project, whether whether it’s a wind farm or a coal-fired power plant. This includes looking at studies that assess the environmental and economic impact of the project, as well as how secondary energy might affect the grid, its reliability during peak times, and How will the new power source respond to power outages or bad weather?
