Recently, as Californians endured a heat wave that sent temperatures well above 100 degrees, hundreds of thousands of families and businesses suddenly found themselves without power.
No lights. No air conditioning. No internet.
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Recently, as Californians endured a heat wave that sent temperatures well above 100 degrees, hundreds of thousands of families and businesses suddenly found themselves without power.
No lights. No air conditioning. No internet.
The reason behind the rolling blackouts called for by the state’s grid operator, most experts agree, can be traced to California’s ambitious goal of relying only on renewable sources of power, such as wind and solar, to meet the state’s energy demand.
In Sept. 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that established a state goal of relying entirely on zero-emission energy sources by 2045.
Currently, approximately one-third of California’s power comes from renewable energy sources. But as the ongoing blackouts demonstrate, current wind and solar power technologies are not capable of reliably meeting 100% of the power needs of a 21st-century world.
The intermittent, unreliable nature of wind and solar simply doesn’t align with the way Americans consume electricity. Solar power typically peaks midday when the sun is shining — if it is shining.
But most families ramp up their power use in the evenings — when they turn on the lights, cook dinner and watch TV — right about the time the sun is going down. Wind power is even more unreliable.
When the demand for power exceeds the grid’s available capacity, you get blackouts and urgent requests for citizens to curtail dramatically their use of electricity — impacting their comfort, work productivity and even their health.
Losing power in the middle of a sweltering heat wave is bad enough. But imagine the risks to public health and safety if the blackouts currently plaguing California happened in New England in the middle of winter.
Making the transition to zero-emissions power is a worthy goal that will benefit all of us. But as the California blackouts demonstrate, that transition needs to be made carefully and strategically.
As more renewable power sources are added to the electric grid, there needs to be a sufficient source of instantaneously available, reliable power to back them up when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
Natural gas-fired electric facilities provide that 24/7 reliable power while producing dramatically lower emissions than the coal- and oil-fired power plants of the past.
As New England states work to achieve their own ambitious clean energy/climate goals, it’s imperative that they recognize both the benefits and limitations of current renewable energy technologies.
With cleaner, efficient natural gas-fired generation in the energy mix, states can power the transition to a clean energy future, without leaving their residents in the dark.
Tim Eves is managing partner of NTE Energy, the developer of the proposed natural gas-fired Killingly Energy Center in Killingly.
