8 ms·

Renewables supplied 65% of new US utility-scale generating capacity in Q1 2023

110 points by kieranmaine 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kieranmaine 3y ago
To provide some context on why this is important, the IEAs's report "Credible Pathways to 1.5 °C: Four pillars for action in the 2020s" (https://www.iea.org/reports/credible-pathways-to-150c https://www.iea.org/reports/credible-pathways-to-150c) states: "Capacity additions of renewables need to triple from 2022 levels by 2030, reaching around 1 200 GW annually, representing on average 90% of new generation capacity each year"
- melling 3y ago
  Can someone provide more context? The United States already produces a lot of electricity so the “new” electricity is likely a small fraction of the existing amount. That’s why it’s always the feel good headline of “new electricity” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... The real problem is that we’re still using an incredible amount of coal globally.
  - WastingMyTime89 3y ago
    Today new electricity is tomorrow old electricity. We are playing the long game here. A sub-1.5 degree scenario (I initially wrote credible but who am I kidding there is no credible sub-1.5 degree scenario) requires significant energy for both transportation and decarbonisation. This energy needs to be produced without emitting more carbon. That requires massive investment in non-carbon emitting energy production now.
  - philipkglass 3y ago
    In 2022 American production of coal generated electricity was down to 854 terawatt hours from its peak of 2,016 terawatt hours in 2007. It's declining even more this year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 In our March Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast the wind share of the U.S. generation mix will increase from 11% last year to 12% this year. We forecast that the solar share will grow to 5% in 2023, up from 4% last year. The natural gas share of generation is forecast to remain unchanged from last year (39%); the coal share of generation is forecast to decline from 20% last year to 17% in 2023. This is a dramatic decline in coal as a percentage of the electricity mix and in absolute consumption terms. There's a graph of historical American electrical sources here going back to 1950: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... You can see how the big brown wedge at the bottom (coal) peaked and then declined. Replacing coal was financially attractive in the US because the bulk of coal plants were already decades old by 2007 and starting to reach natural end-of-life. It will take longer for global coal consumption to decline because other parts of the world have built more coal plants in more recent years, and the purely financial breakeven point for plant replacement (neglecting pollution externalities) is further in the future.
    - melling 3y ago
      Yes, natural gas is pushing coal out in the United States. Of course, I said “globally “ where those market forces aren’t the same. https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-count...
      - kieranmaine 3y ago
        The role of gas in replacing coal in the US is now diminishing and could be over in the coming years. The FERC "Energy Infrastructure Update for December 2022" [1] reports that between 2021 Jan - 2022 Dec Wind and Solar additions exceeded those of Natural gas. FERC also predicts that between Jan 2023 and Dec 2025 Natural Gas will add a net amount of 511MW of generating capacity. This compares with 18211 MW of Wind and 74642 MW of Solar. These are listed as "High Probability" additions, which I've been unable to find a description for. Globally the situation is bad. China and India may decarbonise faster than they are. However, if the world continues increasing how much solar and wind can be installed, hopefully the situation improves. Whilst it's a drop in the bucket, the previously coal dominated Australia electricity sector is seeing a steep decline in coal generation [2], showing it is possible. 1. https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-december-2022 https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-dece... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Australi...
jeffbee 3y ago
Why isn't it 100%?
- reaperman 3y ago
  Because to eliminate non-sustainable baseload power the US electricity grid doesn't have enough cheap local energy storage, transmission losses are significant over inter-regional distances, and we don't have enough cross-continent transmission capacity. Right now there's no sustainable source for baseload power. Perhaps SPARC/ARC will change that in 20 years, or perhaps continuing advances in energy storage will let us store excess energy while the sun shines and the wind blows and use that stored energy as reliable baseload power. Wind power is really cheap. Electrical utilities are now comfortable with it and don't consider it an experimental technology. The profit margins are quite healthy. As soon as there's an economically profitable way to store 120 hours of regional electricity usage, most utilities will jump towards that over continuing to buy expensive fuel for their current baseload plants. Right now the marginal costs of natural gas and coal power are cheaper than energy storage, and the service / operational risks are well known and well-controlled vs. the scary operational unknowns of advanced energy storage solutions. Not talking about environmental risks; utility companies don't really give a damn about those, even if a lot of their employees personally do.
  - hackermatic 3y ago
    Still, it's depressing and confusing that we know the stakes and are still putting money into the status quo (natural gas) instead of racing to solve these problems. I get that people need power now and not later, but power companies are also supposed to be thinking long-term, and their new natural gas plants may very well be stranded assets or simply banned in the next 10-20 years.
    - kieranmaine 3y ago
      I'll repost this from another comment reply as it indicates that, in the US, money is not going to natural gas for electricity generation: The FERC "Energy Infrastructure Update for December 2022" [1] reports that between 2021 Jan - 2022 Dec Wind and Solar additions exceeded those of Natural gas. FERC also predicts that between Jan 2023 and Dec 2025 Natural Gas will add a net amount of 511MW of generating capacity. This compares with 18211 MW of Wind and 74642 MW of Solar. These are listed as "High Probability" additions, which I've been unable to find a description for. 1. https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-december-2022 https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-dece...
m463 3y ago
Aside from solar and wind, I wondered about biomass renewables (after watching Michael Moore's planet of the humans) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE glad to see it's not the majority of "renewables" and that they are mostly solar, wind and hydro.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
To put in perspective: American generating capacity was 1.2 million MW. The additions amount to maybe 4000 MW. So an increase of 0.3% Gonna take a while to change over
- pflanze 3y ago
  (27.67% - 22.74%) / ~3 years = 1.6% per year, a little larger of a rate than 0.3%/quarter, though, also it appears to have accelerated.
  - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
    part of this is that since renewable is free to run while fossil fuel isn't, renewable mostly runs at 100% availability with fossil fuel making up the gaps.
    - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      100% availablility? Except for nighttime, or when the wind goes down?
      - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        possibly poorly phrased, but what I meant is that you pretty much never turn your solar panel off, but if it is a sunny or windy day you will stop pumping natural gas into a gas generator.
    - cinntaile 3y ago
      Pushing electricity onto the grid does come with a cost though and if the electricity is pushed onto the grid at a time when it is not needed, you need to deal with it somehow. In some jurisdictions (parts of Australia) they cut you off from the grid if there is an overproduction of solar.
- SomewhatLikely 3y ago
  How do you reconcile that with the article's statement that renewable generation went from 22.7% in 2020 to 27.7% today? Five percent in 3 years seems quite significant.
edouard-harris 3y ago
In practice, the real number is probably closer to 36% than to 65% (and likely even lower). Here's the problem: the article doesn't account for the capacity factors of the various new installed sources they mention [1]. A capacity factor is the actual electrical energy produced by a generating unit, divided by the maximum possible electrical energy that generating unit could have produced if it were operating continuously at full power. And under real-world conditions, most renewable energy sources produce at far below their theoretical capacity maximum. For example: wind turbines have a capacity factor around 36%, and solar installations are under 25% [2]. If we apply these factors to correct the numbers in the article, the picture becomes much bleaker: the headline 1475 MW of new wind capacity drops to just 531 MW, while the headline 2530 MW of installed solar drops to 632 MW. Now let's generously assume that the 100 MW of hydro and 29 MW of biomass from the article both operate at a 100% capacity factor. Under those assumptions, total new installed renewable capacity drops from 4134 MW to 1292 MW — more than threefold. [3] And of course, the real-world shortfall is even worse than this. Electricity markets need to clear continuously, and the capacity factor for solar when the sun isn't shining is not 25%, but 0%. That means if the hours of peak demand coincide with hours during which solar is offline (which they do during much of the year) there is no amount of solar you can install that will keep the grid online. To sum up: there is no way to escape the need for reliable baseload power. [4] [1] At least, the article doesn't mention correcting for capacity factors. And the FERC source document it cites gives me a blank page when I click on it in Firefox, meaning there is no way to be sure whether anyone applied this correction. I'm assuming they didn't, because citing high "headline" capacity numbers like this is unfortunately very common in discussions about renewable energy sources. [2] Capacity factor numbers are for installations in the United States during 2022, from the Energy Information Administration: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... [3] From the article: 2530 MW of solar, 1475 MW of wind, 100 MW of new hydro, 29 MW of new biomass, 2259 MW of natural gas. [4] Even battery installations don't get you there. Between 2022 and 2026, the US is expected to add only 24 minutes worth of battery storage to its grid. This includes residential, non-residential, and grid-scale installations. Sources: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/09/14/u-s-installed-a-record-2-6-gwh-of-grid-scale-energy-storage-in-q2 https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/09/14/u-s-installed-a-recor... https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

110 points by kieranmaine 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

To provide some context on why this is important, the IEAs's report "Credible Pathways to 1.5 °C: Four pillars for action in the 2020s" (https://www.iea.org/reports/credible-pathways-to-150c https://www.iea.org/reports/credible-pathways-to-150c) states: "Capacity additions of renewables need to triple from 2022 levels by 2030, reaching around 1 200 GW annually, representing on average 90% of new generation capacity each year"

melling 3y ago
Can someone provide more context? The United States already produces a lot of electricity so the “new” electricity is likely a small fraction of the existing amount. That’s why it’s always the feel good headline of “new electricity” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... The real problem is that we’re still using an incredible amount of coal globally.
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  Today new electricity is tomorrow old electricity. We are playing the long game here. A sub-1.5 degree scenario (I initially wrote credible but who am I kidding there is no credible sub-1.5 degree scenario) requires significant energy for both transportation and decarbonisation. This energy needs to be produced without emitting more carbon. That requires massive investment in non-carbon emitting energy production now.
- philipkglass 3y ago
  In 2022 American production of coal generated electricity was down to 854 terawatt hours from its peak of 2,016 terawatt hours in 2007. It's declining even more this year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55960 In our March Short-Term Energy Outlook, we forecast the wind share of the U.S. generation mix will increase from 11% last year to 12% this year. We forecast that the solar share will grow to 5% in 2023, up from 4% last year. The natural gas share of generation is forecast to remain unchanged from last year (39%); the coal share of generation is forecast to decline from 20% last year to 17% in 2023. This is a dramatic decline in coal as a percentage of the electricity mix and in absolute consumption terms. There's a graph of historical American electrical sources here going back to 1950: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... You can see how the big brown wedge at the bottom (coal) peaked and then declined. Replacing coal was financially attractive in the US because the bulk of coal plants were already decades old by 2007 and starting to reach natural end-of-life. It will take longer for global coal consumption to decline because other parts of the world have built more coal plants in more recent years, and the purely financial breakeven point for plant replacement (neglecting pollution externalities) is further in the future.
  - melling 3y ago
    Yes, natural gas is pushing coal out in the United States. Of course, I said “globally “ where those market forces aren’t the same. https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by-count...
    - kieranmaine 3y ago
      The role of gas in replacing coal in the US is now diminishing and could be over in the coming years. The FERC "Energy Infrastructure Update for December 2022" [1] reports that between 2021 Jan - 2022 Dec Wind and Solar additions exceeded those of Natural gas. FERC also predicts that between Jan 2023 and Dec 2025 Natural Gas will add a net amount of 511MW of generating capacity. This compares with 18211 MW of Wind and 74642 MW of Solar. These are listed as "High Probability" additions, which I've been unable to find a description for. Globally the situation is bad. China and India may decarbonise faster than they are. However, if the world continues increasing how much solar and wind can be installed, hopefully the situation improves. Whilst it's a drop in the bucket, the previously coal dominated Australia electricity sector is seeing a steep decline in coal generation [2], showing it is possible. 1. https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-december-2022 https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-dece... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Australi...

jeffbee 3y ago

Why isn't it 100%?

reaperman 3y ago
Because to eliminate non-sustainable baseload power the US electricity grid doesn't have enough cheap local energy storage, transmission losses are significant over inter-regional distances, and we don't have enough cross-continent transmission capacity. Right now there's no sustainable source for baseload power. Perhaps SPARC/ARC will change that in 20 years, or perhaps continuing advances in energy storage will let us store excess energy while the sun shines and the wind blows and use that stored energy as reliable baseload power. Wind power is really cheap. Electrical utilities are now comfortable with it and don't consider it an experimental technology. The profit margins are quite healthy. As soon as there's an economically profitable way to store 120 hours of regional electricity usage, most utilities will jump towards that over continuing to buy expensive fuel for their current baseload plants. Right now the marginal costs of natural gas and coal power are cheaper than energy storage, and the service / operational risks are well known and well-controlled vs. the scary operational unknowns of advanced energy storage solutions. Not talking about environmental risks; utility companies don't really give a damn about those, even if a lot of their employees personally do.
- hackermatic 3y ago
  Still, it's depressing and confusing that we know the stakes and are still putting money into the status quo (natural gas) instead of racing to solve these problems. I get that people need power now and not later, but power companies are also supposed to be thinking long-term, and their new natural gas plants may very well be stranded assets or simply banned in the next 10-20 years.
  - kieranmaine 3y ago
    I'll repost this from another comment reply as it indicates that, in the US, money is not going to natural gas for electricity generation: The FERC "Energy Infrastructure Update for December 2022" [1] reports that between 2021 Jan - 2022 Dec Wind and Solar additions exceeded those of Natural gas. FERC also predicts that between Jan 2023 and Dec 2025 Natural Gas will add a net amount of 511MW of generating capacity. This compares with 18211 MW of Wind and 74642 MW of Solar. These are listed as "High Probability" additions, which I've been unable to find a description for. 1. https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-december-2022 https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-dece...

m463 3y ago

Aside from solar and wind, I wondered about biomass renewables (after watching Michael Moore's planet of the humans) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_of_the_Humans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE glad to see it's not the majority of "renewables" and that they are mostly solar, wind and hydro.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

To put in perspective: American generating capacity was 1.2 million MW. The additions amount to maybe 4000 MW. So an increase of 0.3% Gonna take a while to change over

pflanze 3y ago
(27.67% - 22.74%) / ~3 years = 1.6% per year, a little larger of a rate than 0.3%/quarter, though, also it appears to have accelerated.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
  part of this is that since renewable is free to run while fossil fuel isn't, renewable mostly runs at 100% availability with fossil fuel making up the gaps.
  - JoeAltmaier 3y ago
    100% availablility? Except for nighttime, or when the wind goes down?
    - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
      possibly poorly phrased, but what I meant is that you pretty much never turn your solar panel off, but if it is a sunny or windy day you will stop pumping natural gas into a gas generator.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    Pushing electricity onto the grid does come with a cost though and if the electricity is pushed onto the grid at a time when it is not needed, you need to deal with it somehow. In some jurisdictions (parts of Australia) they cut you off from the grid if there is an overproduction of solar.
SomewhatLikely 3y ago
How do you reconcile that with the article's statement that renewable generation went from 22.7% in 2020 to 27.7% today? Five percent in 3 years seems quite significant.

edouard-harris 3y ago

In practice, the real number is probably closer to 36% than to 65% (and likely even lower). Here's the problem: the article doesn't account for the capacity factors of the various new installed sources they mention [1]. A capacity factor is the actual electrical energy produced by a generating unit, divided by the maximum possible electrical energy that generating unit could have produced if it were operating continuously at full power. And under real-world conditions, most renewable energy sources produce at far below their theoretical capacity maximum. For example: wind turbines have a capacity factor around 36%, and solar installations are under 25% [2]. If we apply these factors to correct the numbers in the article, the picture becomes much bleaker: the headline 1475 MW of new wind capacity drops to just 531 MW, while the headline 2530 MW of installed solar drops to 632 MW. Now let's generously assume that the 100 MW of hydro and 29 MW of biomass from the article both operate at a 100% capacity factor. Under those assumptions, total new installed renewable capacity drops from 4134 MW to 1292 MW — more than threefold. [3] And of course, the real-world shortfall is even worse than this. Electricity markets need to clear continuously, and the capacity factor for solar when the sun isn't shining is not 25%, but 0%. That means if the hours of peak demand coincide with hours during which solar is offline (which they do during much of the year) there is no amount of solar you can install that will keep the grid online. To sum up: there is no way to escape the need for reliable baseload power. [4] [1] At least, the article doesn't mention correcting for capacity factors. And the FERC source document it cites gives me a blank page when I click on it in Firefox, meaning there is no way to be sure whether anyone applied this correction. I'm assuming they didn't, because citing high "headline" capacity numbers like this is unfortunately very common in discussions about renewable energy sources. [2] Capacity factor numbers are for installations in the United States during 2022, from the Energy Information Administration: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... [3] From the article: 2530 MW of solar, 1475 MW of wind, 100 MW of new hydro, 29 MW of new biomass, 2259 MW of natural gas. [4] Even battery installations don't get you there. Between 2022 and 2026, the US is expected to add only 24 minutes worth of battery storage to its grid. This includes residential, non-residential, and grid-scale installations. Sources: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/09/14/u-s-installed-a-record-2-6-gwh-of-grid-scale-energy-storage-in-q2 https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/09/14/u-s-installed-a-recor... https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...