By Charles Bayless
With renewable generation, the output current and hence VAR requirement and voltage change require almost continuous changes in compensation. This is a huge cost to the utility. And it is necessary to keep voltage within prescribed limits. Failure to compensate the line properly leads to serious technical problems for customers suffering from high or low voltage.
Space limitations prevent the discussion of other externalities such as ACE, frequency bias requirements, lack of headroom in renewables, the decline of generator inertia, backflow through transformers from distributed generation, ramp rate considerations and others. For instance, Ontario has imposed a less than forty percent renewable backflow requirement on transformers, as transformers were catching on fire. But these other externalities are there. They are real. Their fix is costly.
We are at the beginning of our absolutely necessary transition to a world of renewables. This will be a world where over eighty percent of our generation will be from renewables. Where even natural gas is phased out. A world where millions of distributed generators, fast-acting demand side management (down to the home level), car batteries, and millions of other devices work together to create a carbon free world.
When all of the costs I have mentioned are included, and even doubled, the total societal costs of renewables are far less than the costs of fossil fuels. Environmental externalities are included. I don’t know what the optimum configuration will be. But I do know that unless we take all costs into consideration, and charge the entity incurring the costs, we will never discover the optimum solution.
If we neglect all externalities, the market will pick fossil fuels. If we neglect renewable externalities, the market will pick the wrong renewable configuration. The renewable community, utilities and regulators must recognize the absolute time-critical necessity of moving to renewables. They must reach out to each other, to work together, and understand each other’s problems.
Utilities must follow the “lead, follow, or get out of the way” principle. Renewable advocates must realize that they are imposing costs. And must realize that the quickest way to renewables is by minimizing these costs, not maximizing any one company’s profit. To get to high levels of renewables, it will take coordination and planning.
It is highly unlikely that the world’s most complex machine can be optimized by the random addition of energy sources that do not take into account all of the costs. We must use FERC and NERC to develop these plans. Or we will use them to sort out load-shedding schemes and new black-start plans. We must transition to renewables. But let’s make sure we transition to the package that minimizes total societal cost. The grid will enable the usage of large-scale renewables at the cheapest cost.
Let’s put a concentrated effort on designing the grid as the support system to allow renewables to flourish in the overall lowest cost manner. Let’s not continue the piecemeal modification of the greatest engineering achievement of the twentieth century. But most of all, let’s get the costs right and work together.
Charles Bayless is a retired utility executive having served as chief executive officer of Illinois Power and of Tucson Electric. He was also President of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology, and is a board member of several organizations including the Climate Institute.
Reprinted with permission from Public Utilities Fortnightly, September 2016. For the full text see www.fortnightly.com