“Get ready, blackouts and brownouts are coming,” [Glenn] Youngkin said in a recent debate, criticizing the speed of the energy transition away from traditional fuels like natural gas to wind and solar.
A wind Energy Capacity Credit of 5% of nameplate (conservative) would mean 5,200 MW nameplate yields 260 MW of system adequacy at a cost of $142 Million per MW of System Adequacy Contribution
‘Bloody expensive.’ Major U.S. offshore wind plan hits obstacles,” read the E&E News’ EnergyWire story of October 20, 2021. “Nearly 30 miles from shore, the two turbines spin deceptively slowly, alien steel giants fixed to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But the lonely pair are just a hint of what Dominion Energy plans here: an offshore wind farm covering an area the size of 85,000 football fields,” the article began.…
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (2005) is amending its interconnection regulations to require public utilities to follow special rules to interconnect wind energy facilities. Wind energy is allowed to behave differently, while other kinds of electricity generation continue to act according to the old rules designed to protect the reliability of the electrical grid.
– Tom Tanton, Distorting the Wealth of Nature, PERC, September 1, 2005.
Having only entered the fray over electricity system regulation and markets in 2007, I have little context or detail for the above quotation, which appears at the end of the first section of the referenced article.
But I know enough about regulation to know that “special rules” means propping up the wind energy relative to its more concentrated, dispatchable competitors on the electricity grid.…
“Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the impetus for the modern environmental movement dating back to the early 1960s…. It is beyond ironic that some 50 years later, the environmental movement has come full circle in its zeal to support wind energy whose 500 foot tall towers support (occasionally) whirring blades that have done untold harm to avian populations throughout rural America.”
– Sen. Bill Seitz (letter below)
Ohio Senator Bill Seitz defends fairness over favors. More like him are needed at all levels of government. May Ohio Governor John Kasich et al. reconsider energy policy with pointers from the likes of Senator Seitz.
Of sharp mind and with tell-it-like-it-is prose, Sen. Seitz recently weighed in on the offshore wind proposal for Lake Erie, the subject of two recent posts (here and here at MasterResource).…