Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Solar Energy and the WECC: Beefing Up the Western US Grid (great graphic)
Solar Energy and the WECC: Beefing Up the Western US Grid
James Montgomery, Associate Editor, RenewableEnergyWorld.com
August 05, 2013
New Hampshire, USA -- If solar energy costs come down within goals set by the Department of Energy's (DOE) SunShot program, solar could contribute a large chunk of the power used by the western regions in North America, according to new research.
The DOE's SunShot program, based on models from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), targets 75 percent reduction in total installed costs for solar energy by 2020, to be at parity with conventional power sources. From this, under the SunShot plan, solar energy could meet 14 percent of the nation's electricity needs by 2030 and 27 percent by 2050.
Now, a team from the University of California/Berkeley has taken their own model for mapping and optimizing the power grid makeup across the U.S. — "SWITCH," a rough acronym for "Solar, Wind, Hydro and Conventional generators and Transmission" — and applied it to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which oversees 11 Western U.S. States, the western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and northern Baja Mexico. (Here's an overview of how their SWITCH model works, and here's a summary of their methodologies used in this study.)
Their findings, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, indicate that if the SunShot targets pan out, solar energy could provide more than a third of the WECC's energy needs by 2050, displacing natural gas in the medium-term and reducing the need for nuclear energy and carbon capture/sequestration (CCS) technologies. Moreover, emissions levels would be reduced to 80 percent below 1990 levels. Their calculations also assume that no nuclear plants are built, and that there is a coordinated investment across new power generation, transmission, storage, and demand response. Carbon caps or taxes will be needed from the start to incentivize utilities to action, they assert, but such caps would be mitigated by savings in electricity prices achieved through meeting those SunShot targets, which could tally more than $20 billion annually by 2050.
If all that comes to pass, here's what the WECC grid could look like by 2050, from energy generation to the flow between load areas:
James Montgomery, Associate Editor, RenewableEnergyWorld.com
August 05, 2013
New Hampshire, USA -- If solar energy costs come down within goals set by the Department of Energy's (DOE) SunShot program, solar could contribute a large chunk of the power used by the western regions in North America, according to new research.
The DOE's SunShot program, based on models from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), targets 75 percent reduction in total installed costs for solar energy by 2020, to be at parity with conventional power sources. From this, under the SunShot plan, solar energy could meet 14 percent of the nation's electricity needs by 2030 and 27 percent by 2050.
Now, a team from the University of California/Berkeley has taken their own model for mapping and optimizing the power grid makeup across the U.S. — "SWITCH," a rough acronym for "Solar, Wind, Hydro and Conventional generators and Transmission" — and applied it to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which oversees 11 Western U.S. States, the western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and northern Baja Mexico. (Here's an overview of how their SWITCH model works, and here's a summary of their methodologies used in this study.)
Their findings, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, indicate that if the SunShot targets pan out, solar energy could provide more than a third of the WECC's energy needs by 2050, displacing natural gas in the medium-term and reducing the need for nuclear energy and carbon capture/sequestration (CCS) technologies. Moreover, emissions levels would be reduced to 80 percent below 1990 levels. Their calculations also assume that no nuclear plants are built, and that there is a coordinated investment across new power generation, transmission, storage, and demand response. Carbon caps or taxes will be needed from the start to incentivize utilities to action, they assert, but such caps would be mitigated by savings in electricity prices achieved through meeting those SunShot targets, which could tally more than $20 billion annually by 2050.
If all that comes to pass, here's what the WECC grid could look like by 2050, from energy generation to the flow between load areas:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/08/solar-energy-and-the-wecc-beefing-up-the-western-grid?cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-August7-2013
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
thanks Kris