The solar expansion on New England's rooftops will keep the lights on all winter long, surprising grid operators in the region and challenging long-standing assumptions that adding renewable energy could disrupt the power grid.
Officials at ISO New England, which oversees the six states' electricity market, said after months of investigations that the region's electricity grid is powered by sunlight in cold weather, a surprising finding that has added fuel to the surge. It has renewable power plants and national electricity grids.
The findings are changing the way many view regulators as a small and unpredictable source of energy.
“I think solar innovation is huge because no one I know has seen it or made it part of the solution,” Philip Bartlett, chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission, said in an interview. It has already been used. It was considered that it did not provide enough added value.
A surge in solar power paved the way for the release of one of New England's dirtiest power plants. Mystic Generating, the third largest power plant in the region, will shut down next summer. In recent years, New England Electric customers have paid subsidies to avoid shutting down 1,413 megawatts of gas-fired power plants.
The grant was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2018 at the request of ISO New England, which at the time said the plant was needed to strengthen the region's electricity grid. But as network operators testified at last week's FERC meeting in Maine, Mystic wasn't needed to prevent a countywide outage.
The solar panel on the roof is one reason.
New England uses natural gas for about half of its electricity generation. This can be a problem in the winter, when much of the region's limited pipeline capacity is used to heat natural gas homes and other structures. This led New England to turn to oil as a backup source of electricity. Many gas plants in the region have installed large oil storage tanks for use when gas prices rise sharply, but high-carbon oil contributes to climate change.
The sunroof saves fuel in the range. ISO New England estimates that for every 700 megawatts of solar energy, it reduces fuel consumption by 7 to 10 million gallons or gas demand by 1 to 1.5 billion cubic feet. The grid operator said it had around 5,400 MW of solar capacity at the end of last year. Most of it is on the roof.
The combination of new solar power with continued growth in energy demand and the promise of new offshore wind puts New England in a better position to see through the next four winters, FERC network operators said in testimony. This is in stark contrast to previous years when the ISO declared their ability to beat New England Winters.
“What really surprised us was the impact PV installations had on reducing energy use in New England over a period of time,” said Vamsi Chadhavada, executive vice president and chief operating officer, ISO New England. In 21 days or 90 days there is a reduction in the amount of energy required for the service.
The solar roof is a bright spot in New England's efforts to prevent planetary pollution from power plants. The region's high level of renewable energy development has lagged behind the rest of the country, despite the state government's ambitious climate goals. Two nuclear power plants in the area have also been closed in recent years. Oil and gas have largely filled that gap, boosting emissions from power plants over the past three years, according to the EPA.
But changes are afoot. Mystic is one of the largest contributors to air emissions in the region. In the year It reported a total carbon footprint of 17 million tons between 2013 and 2022, the second highest of any power plant in New England. Emissions from factories have decreased in recent years.
Mystique will be removed from the system as the nation's first large offshore wind farm is expected to be operational. A wind farm with 62 turbines is under construction off the coast of Massachusetts and is expected to generate 800 megawatts of power. A long-delayed transmission line that would carry hydroelectric power from Canada to Maine is about to go live after years of delays.
In its research, the New England grid operator simulates thousands of scenarios that affect everything from weather conditions to oil and gas supplies. It has been found that when solar and wind plants are operating at their minimum maximum capacity, the contribution of renewable energy can be significant.
Under extreme conditions compared to the harsh winter of 1961, the study found that renewable energy would generate 2,200 megawatts, or about 10 percent of peak demand, despite lower wind speeds and less solar power. . The study, in collaboration with the Electric Research Institute, incorporated climate models to predict what the region could experience with global warming over the next few years.
"This highlights how important it is for ISO to improve its ability to predict the resources behind these meters," said Kathy Dykes, Connecticut's energy and environmental protection commissioner, referring to rooftop solar in a interview. "This will provide the state with very useful information, because now some of the benefits, the winter reliability benefits, when we calculate their cost-benefit, are related to meter resources."
The New England findings come amid a growing national debate about the increased use of renewable energy and its impact on the reliability of the national electric grid. The North American Electric Reliability Company recently warned that two-thirds of the country is at high risk of power outages this summer. As more and more coal- and gas-fired power plants retire by 2028, the entire country faces a significant risk of power outages, NERC Executive Director Jim Robb told the Senate Committee on Energy and Energy. natural resources.
Regulators and energy managers in New England have stressed that turning on solar power does not mean grid reliability is fixed. Electricity demand is expected to increase in the second half of the decade as more people buy electric vehicles and install heat pumps in their homes. An acceleration of the phasing out of fossil fuel power plants is also expected.
Robb told FERC that he continues to be concerned about New England's energy supply. “I think this region is on the brink. I think it will stay on the sidelines,” he told the committee last week.
Others are more optimistic. ISO New England and the Independent System Operator of New York are the only two regional grid operators in the country that have not experienced power outages or been forced to seek energy savings due to generator shortages in recent years, said Dan Dolan, head of New York. . Power Generation Association Trade Group, England.
The region has worked to promote winter reliability through the program to protect the electric grid. These initiatives will play out over the next few years and will prompt the region to rethink its plans to keep existing power plants running as they convert to clean energy sources.
According to Dolan, the New England ISO study adds a new dimension to this discussion.
"I was surprised to see solar energy in the winter months and the associated ISO and EPRI values," he said, referring to the Electric Power Research Institute, which participated in the study. "To me, this was not a known outcome. As the resource structure evolves, we must constantly test our conventional wisdom about how all resources are involved in the marketplace."
