The Challenges of Renewable Energy

A couple of article in the Chesapeake Bay Newsfeed today that highlight the promises and pitfalls of renewable energy. First, Pennsylvania is planning for storage of electrical energy from non-reliable renewable sources: Storage Capacity, Recommends Solar-Plus-Storage For A Cleaner, More Resilient Electric Grid

“Pennsylvania’s climate continues to get warmer, and we’ve already started seeing the impacts, with increasing swings in temperature and extreme weather,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell. “Solar-plus-storage can help in two ways: It can help slow down climate change by incorporating more clean renewable energy into Pennsylvanians’ daily electricity use, and it can also make the grid more reliable during extreme weather events, better protecting Pennsylvanians’ health and safety as well as critical facilities.”

The electric grid uses energy instantly as it’s generated, with little capacity to store. At times of high demand, such as late afternoon, peaker power plants are often used to provide extra electricity. These plants often have very high carbon emissions rates, and many are located in or near Environmental Justice areas.

The DEP Energy Programs Office commissioned Pennsylvania Energy Storage Assessment: Status, Barriers, and Opportunities from Strategen Consulting to determine the best path forward to increasing energy storage statewide.

There are currently about 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of energy storage capacity in the state. This represents 22 operational or announced energy storage projects, including traditional pumped hydro storage facilities (1.07 GW), lithium-ion batteries (18 megawatts; MW), lead carbon batteries (12.5 MW), ice and chilled water thermal storage (6 MW), and other technologies providing smaller amounts.

You can see pumped hydro storage is far and away the majority of their current energy storage capacity. For those unfamiliar, to store energy using pumped hydro, temporarily excess electricity is used to pump water to a reservoir at a higher level, to extract the energy, the water is run downhill through a set of turbines, with friction, and the second law of thermodynamics each taking their share of the energy. As you might imagine, such operations are large, and require geography that enables two large reservoirs at different elevations fairly close by.

The report recommends pairing grid-scale solar arrays with battery storage to help reduce carbon emissions and increase grid resilience. One way to catalyze this would be to set a state energy storage capacity target, as seven other states have done.

For example, to get 10 percent of electricity from solar energy, the DEP Pennsylvania’s Solar Future plan recommends increasing in-state solar energy from about 700 MW today to 11 GW by 2030. If 25 percent of this solar target were paired with a target of 1.5 GW of battery storage, Pennsylvania energy customers could save $273 million annually in wholesale energy costs and avoided public health and environmental impacts from a reduction of 2.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions a year.

At this point, batteries aren't very good option, because they are expensive in the amount required, and require substantial inputs of rare, and environmentally unfriendly to mine metal.

The other article is for nearby St. Mary's County Report: St. Mary’s County Can Meet Renewable Solar Energy Goals with Smart Siting & Wise Land Use

Today, at a meeting of the St. Mary’s County Solar Task Force, Chesapeake Conservancy’s Conservation Innovation Center (CIC) presented a new report: Optimal Solar Siting for St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Using geospatial analysis, the report identifies optimal solar sites and answers the key question: Are enough optimal sites available to meet St. Mary’s County’s renewable energy goals for solar energy while avoiding impacts to agriculture and the environment?

The analysis results showed St. Mary’s County offers significant optimal opportunities for solar placement in the existing built environment that would minimally impact the natural landscape or prime agricultural land; including on rooftops of commercial and residential buildings, above parking lots as solar canopies, on capped landfills, around the Marlay-Taylor Wastewater Reclamation Facility and on county-owned properties. Other additional preferred solar opportunities were also identified.

Maryland is one of 30 states in the United States with a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), a mandate to increase electricity production from renewable energy sources. Maryland’s mandate requires 50% of electricity sold by utilities to come from renewable sources, with 14.5% from solar. While the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) that serves St. Mary’s County is excluded from the 14.5% carve-out and is instead required to reach a solar carve-out of 2.5% of retail sales, land in St. Mary’s County could still be used for solar energy installations to meet statewide goals outside SMECO’s service area.

Solar installations range from small rooftop photovoltaic systems and medium-sized distributed generation installations that use energy locally and feed excess energy back to the grid, to large ground-mounted installations that sell energy directly to utilities. The Governor’s Task Force on Renewable Energy & Siting estimates that the land needed to meet the state’s RPS goal will require between 7,750 and 33,000 acres of land across the state. The task force report determined that may impact between 0.4 and 1.7% of available farmland, and between 0.7 and 2.9% of available prime farmland, in Maryland, and wrote, “While small in aggregate, the encroachment of utility solar on prime agricultural and farmland remains a serious concern to rural communities, policymakers and stakeholders.”

Just for reference, 33,000 acres is equal to 55 square miles. That's a lot of land to take out of agricultural production, or the just cover up with masses of solar cells (which, much like the rechargeable batteries called for in Pennsylvania, are relatively expensive, have a fairly short life span, and are made from exotic, toxic and expensive materials, mostly in China. 

Making nuclear power look better and better.

Exelon to Pay a Fifth of a Billion in Blackmail For Conowingo Dam

Conowingo Dam

The Big News in the Chesapeake Bay newsfeed today, WaPoo, Exelon to pay $200 million for Chesapeake Bay cleanup

Energy giant Exelon Generation has agreed to pay $200 million to help restore the Chesapeake Bay and protect parts of it from the impacts of climate change.

The deal ends a months-long lawsuit over the company’s operation of Conowingo Dam, the nearly century-old hydroelectric facility that is Maryland’s largest source of renewable energy.

Exelon and Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration had been fighting over how much the company should contribute to reversing the region’s declining water quality and mitigating pollution from upstream sources.

The deal, announced Tuesday by Hogan (R), would pour tens of millions apiece into an array of environmental and ecosystem projects, including a pilot program to dredge some sediment built up behind the dam, funding research, creating a mussel hatchery and making it easier for eels to swim through the dam, which sits on the Susquehanna River not far from the Maryland-Pennsylvania border.

The reservoir behind the dam filled with sediment years faster than scientists had predicted, making it an ineffective barrier for stopping pollutants from streaming into the Chesapeake, where they can smother underwater grasses and deprive fish and other wildlife of necessary oxygen.

Now, I agree that something needs to be done with the sediment behind Conowingo Dam; I just don't see why it should be Exelon's (or whoever owns the dam at a particular time) responsibility to do more than is required for the safe and efficient operation of the dam in its designated function, producing electricity for the people of the region. The dam has protected the bay for almost 100 years from excessive sediment running down the Susquehanna, primarily from Pennsylvania, and to a lesser extent, New York and Maryland, an unintended, and ultimately undesirable outcome of the dam. Shouldn't the jurisdictions that allowed the lousy land use practices be required to pony up for their short sighted negligence?

Exelon isn't going to really pay the fifth of a billion. It's going to raise its rates accordingly, and charge bill to the consumer. I think the dredged spoils should be used to accelerate the reclamation of Bay islands which are slowly succumbing to erosion.

Other versions of the story:

In settlement with Maryland, Conowingo Dam owner Exelon to invest $200 million to clean up Susquehanna River - The Baltimore (Md.) Sun

Exelon commits $200 million to clean up Chesapeake Bay; critics say it’s a drop in the bucket - Penn Live

Hogan Announces $200M Agreement With Exelon For Environmental Projects - CBS (Washington, D.C.) WJZ-TV

Governor Hogan Announces Landmark Agreement with Exelon on Conowingo Dam - Office of Governor Larry Hogan

Here Come The Judge

Judge to hear arguments over fish passage at Conowingo Dam

Exelon Corp. has taken the unusual step of requesting a “trial-type hearing” to challenge recommendations made by federal biologists who are calling for a massive upgrade to fish passage operations at its Conowingo Dam.

The request is in response to a “preliminary prescription” from the U.S. Department of Interior in August. The prescription, developed by state and federal agency biologists, spells out steps needed to get 5 million shad and 12 million river herring upstream of the 94-foot-high dam each year.

Among other changes, the steps call for the construction of a state-of-the art elevator capable of moving four times as many fish as the current 25-year-old fish lift.

Exelon contends the upgrades would cost $56 million and are unlikely to achieve the fish passage goals. It wants to instead upgrade and improve its existing lift, and revive a program to trap shad and truck them around Conowingo and the three dams upstream of it.

You should be able to move a lot of fish for $56 million. But that's OK, Baltimore doesn't deserve cheap electricity. . .