Western States Could Reach 35% Renewable Power by 2017

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) says the western US electric grid could harness up to 35 percent of its energy from wind and solar power within seven years — and without any major upgrades to the existing electric network. All it would take, says NREL’s Western Wind and Solar Integration Study, is a change in standard operating procedures from the region’s utilities.

Up to 30 percent wind and five percent solar power could be realized through better coordination of energy distribution over a wider geographic area. The study also suggests that utilities move to a pricing scheme more frequent than the hourly system in place now. Electricity prices are currently differentiated by hour, with more expensive prices lumped into peak hourly periods, say between 1 and 6 p.m. during the summer. The NREL study is advocating a more real-time scenario, one that could differentiate between electricity produced by conventional means and those from wind or solar energy, allowing the system to react accordingly.

If these change are made, research shows that large quantities of wind and solar power can be incorporated into the grid without as much need for new transmission infrastructure.

“When you coordinate the operations between utilities across a large geographic area,” notes Dr. Debra Lew, Project Manager for the NREL study, “you decrease the effect of the variability of wind and solar energy sources, mitigating the unpredictability of Mother Nature.”

The study examines the collective operations of WestConnect utilities in the mountain and southwest states. Included are Arizona Public Service, El Paso Electric Co., NV Energy, Public Service of New Mexico, Salt River Project, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Cooperative, Tucson Electric Power, Western Area Power Administration, and Xcel Energy.

Should these utilities succeed in coordinating their efforts and realize even 27 percent wind and solar power, they would cut carbon emissions by 25 to 45 percent. It would also lessen fuel and emissions costs by 40 percent, depending on the future prices of natural gas.

Story & Photo Source: BrighterEnergy.org

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