Generation
The data shows continuing decrease in the amount of electricity generated by coal and an increase in the amount generated by gas, wind, and solar. This is encouraging but also frustratingly slow to me — I had really hoped for faster progress by now. Predictably the fossil fuel industries are likely funding a massive FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) campaign on all social platforms which has had some success. My very conservative neighbors (I live in a bright red part of Wisconsin) tell me that solar panels only last 8 years and wind turbines kill birds and whales. It’s funny that they make fun of environmentalist concerns except when it comes to renewable energy, then they become “Instant Environmentalists”. I’m tempted to ask them about Sierra Club membership and such but I don’t need the aggravation.
The information for 2024 is for the first four months and, since the winter and spring are really good for wind generation, are a bit optimistic for renewables percentage for the rest of the year. By the end of the year I think the wind + solar percentage will be in the upper 15% area.
Capacity
Next are the upcoming changes in generating capacity. The first is the additions and shows a lot of solar but very little wind being added. I expect this to continue unless solar panel prices rise too much. Solar has several advantages over wind such as:
- Close to the ground for easy service.
- Few or no moving parts.
- No huge, heavy parts involved in installation.
- Lower visual impact.
- A predictable, variable output.
The last point can be important. Renewables are often called variable sources of energy and they are so, but there are different shades of variability. Ocean tides are a variable local sea level but those tidal levels are predictable for hundreds of years into the future. Wind speeds are highly variable but only predictable a few days into the future. Solar is a bit less predictable than tides only because of cloud cover. In areas like the Sahara desert solar is almost 100% predictable. Also as the geographical area and time span increases solar becomes more predictable in all the inhabited areas. The practical result is that less storage or backup is needed as predictability increases — which gives solar an important advantage over wind.
For retirements the map is almost blank. I don’t really know what is going on here but I think that producers are holding the existing units but keeping them idle for more hours. The former main generating units are shifting to supplementary and backup roles.
To back this explanation up below is a chart of “Capacity Factors” for fossil fueled generators since 2014. If we look at the coal column the is a sub column called capacity factor which shows a decrease since 2014. Capacity factor is the amount of electricity generated (over a year for this chart) divided by the amount of electricity that could have been generated. So if coal fired generators created 50 units of electricity but could have created 100 units then the capacity factor is 50%.
The decrease in coal generation capacity factor from 60.5% in 2014 to 42.1% in 2023 shows that the coal units are spending more time sitting cold and likely designated as seasonal/backup units. These are only run during high demand times of the year such as August, or when other units are down for engineering work. There is more interesting information here about which generating fuels and prime movers are used as peaking units (run as little as possible due to high cost) or changing in usage. Petroleum generators (mostly diesel units) are used in the 1% to 3% range for local peaking or firming work.
So the changes continue but I would really like to see it going faster to combat climate change. Please comment because I always learn things from the readers and I enjoy that. Thank you and have a nice day.
This post was originally published on 3rd party site mentioned in the title of this site
