Tag: Solar energy
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Want more Solar and Wind Power? Then You Need More Gas Backup.
by James A. Bacon Elona Verdolini, Francesca Vona and David Popp are deeply concerned about climate change and the need to deploy more renewable energy sources. “Decoupling economic activities from fossil-fuel use (and hence, from anthropogenic carbon emissions) is the only way to avoid severe and pervasive impacts from climate change while sustaining economic growth,” they…
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DEQ Approves Utility-Scale Solar Permit in Buckingham
by James A. Bacon The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has issued a permit for construction of a 19.8-megawatt, utility-scale solar project in Buckingham County, Governor Terry McAuliffe announced yesterday. Construction of the 200-acre facility is expected to begin early in 2017 and be finished by the end of the year. The cost is estimated…
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More on the Oceana Solar Plant: Expensive but No Cost to Virginia Rate Payers
More details dribbling in about the Oceana Naval Station solar power plant… According to Dominion Virginia Power’s SCC filing, the project is expected to cost $39.6 million, excluding financing costs, or $2,252 per kW. That is roughly three times the up-front capital cost per kW of Dominion’s newest gas-fired power plant under construction in Greensville…
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More Information, Please, about Oceana’s New Solar Facility
by James A. Bacon The Department of the Navy is collaborating with Dominion Virginia Power and the Commonwealth of Virginia to build a 21-megawatt solar energy facility at the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. The 100-acre facility, housing 179,0000 solar panels and scheduled for completion in late 2017, will supply enough electricity at peak…
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Guarding the Grid
by James A. Bacon It’s easy to spin nightmare scenarios leading to the collapse of the electric grid. North Korea detonates a nuclear weapon a mile overhead, sending out a super-charged electro-magnetic pulse that melts down transmission lines and blows out substations. The electricity overload races ahead of anyone’s ability to control it in a…
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Solar Technology Advances, Solar Policy Backtracks
by James A. Bacon Joshua Choi, a University of Virginia chemical engineer, is part of a research team that has discovered a new class of materials, metal halide perovskites, that can be sprayed onto a substrate where they crystallize into a thin film that captures energy in a solar cell. There are many hurdles to come before the…
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Solar Co-Ops: Competing through Innovation
by James A. Bacon Solar co-ops are popping up all around Virginia, as they are around the country. The concept is simple: Individuals who want to install solar power on their houses band together to select a single contractor to install their solar systems, saving up to 20% to 30%. The Virginia Solar United Neighborhoods…
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Why Dominion Is Cautious about Solar
James A. Bacon Solar energy may account for a barely perceptible sliver of Dominion Virginia Power’s electric generating portfolio today, but the power company sees an increasing role for it in the future. Even under its “low cost” scenario, Dominion foresees installing 1,000 megawatts of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy by 2041. Under a variety of other…
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Why Is Virginia a “Dark State” for Solar Power?
by Erik Curren Around America, there’s a boom in solar energy. More solar power generation was installed in 2015 than ever before and 2016 could be even better, doubling in U.S. solar capacity. Although solar still provides less than one percent of America’s total electricity, it’s the fastest growing source of new energy since shale…
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Clean Power Plan Stalled, Green Energy Still Viable
by James A. Bacon The U.S. Supreme Court has halted implementation of the Clean Power Plan until challenges to its constitutionality can be resolved, creating uncertainty at the state level, including here in Virginia, on how to proceed. The high court gave no explanation for its stay, but foes of the plan, which would compel electric power…
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The Electric Grid Just Got Smarter
Interesting development… Dominion Voltage, Inc., a subsidiary of Dominion Resources and sister company of Dominion Virginia Power, has announced the launch of a new product, EDGE Stabilizer, to help electric utilities manage the reliability impact of solar, wind and other distributed energy resources (DER) on the electric grid. “Market forces are significantly increasing the amount…
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Gas Worse Carbon Polluter than Coal, Says Sierra Club
by James A. Bacon The Sierra Club has attacked the idea of natural gas as a “clean fuel” in a new broadside against the proposed construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) through Virginia. When viewed over the “natural gas fuel cycle” — including production, transportation and combustion — natural…
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Speaking of Land-Intensive Solar Plants…
In remarks made at a business conference Friday, CEO Thomas F. Farrell II noted how much land solar panels consume. As paraphrased by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he said: A solar project that Dominion hopes to build near Culpeper would occupy 125 acres of land and power about 5,000 houses — about 30 percent of the time. By contrast, a…
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Speaking of Storing Electricity…
In the previous post, I quoted Dominion Resources CEO Thomas F. Farrell II as alluding to the impracticality of storing electricity on a large scale. He is indubitably right about the high cost of storage today, but scientists and entrepreneurs are looking for ways to drive the costs down. Battery storage of electricity is no…
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The Throne behind the Power
Who runs Virginia’s electric power industry — the SCC? the General Assembly? or an obscure Pennsylvania company that doesn’t own a single megawatt of generating capacity or mile of transmission line?