Western Grid Can Handle More Energy Than Estimated
A new study conducted by the Colorado National Renewable Energy Laboratory has concluded that the Western section of the United States power grid may be able to handle as much as 35 percent of renewables if it is properly integrated. However, that discovery doesn’t mean that it would be simple to do.
The NREL considered a scenario that 30 percent of the total amount of electricity produced in a year in the western part of the nation comes from wind turbines and 5 percent from solar power. The solar power would come mainly from thermal plants that generate electricity by concentrating sunlight.
The study found that one of the ways to keep the number of new backup power plants to a bare minimum is to expand the area that renewable energy is collected from. It estimated that drawing from local resources would prove to increase the variability on the grid. That would result in local utilities being unable to balance using the backup power and other resources.
This can also be improved even further by implementing more demand response. That would mean that utilities would have to contact some of their largest customers and ask them to reduce their energy consumption a few hours each year when they could’t match the demand.