The best news of this year has hardly been news. It is rarely discussed on TV or radio and many conservative pundits talk only about its downsides, most of which are illusory or non-existent.
Having grown up in Southern California, I watched with interest as energy was harnessed from wind and solar. The Mojave Desert became ground zero for these technologies, both of which are still thriving today. Wind farms cling to the western slopes of the Tehachapi Mountains and have proliferated over the years. Huge solar panel installations on the desert floor provide electricity where conventional power plants were not useful.
What we rarely hear about these days is that the price of photovoltaic panels has dropped significantly even as efficiency has more than doubled. Photovoltaic (PV) systems proliferate outside the Sun belt region in northern states, where once they were thought to be inefficient, even impossible.
First, some numbers courtesy of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) documented in its new report “Solar Power on the Rise”: The northern state of Massachusetts ranks sixth in the nation in total installed solar capacity; In 2014, a PV system is projected to be installed in this country every 2.4 minutes; Last year, solar energy accounted for almost 30 percent of newly installed electricity capacity in the nation.
Also, prices have plummeted. From 2010 to 2013, a typical household system dropped by almost 30 percent, according to the UCS report. Tax credits and incentives, some of which vary by state, have brought the final cost of some PV systems to an all time low of $10,000.
Rooftop solar systems use a relatively simple technology: photons of light striking the panels cause electrons to be released. When panels are connected to a circuit, the electrons provide electricity.
Because the panels have no moving parts, they’re unlikely to suffer failure or malfunctions that require servicing, and they use no fuel (other than the sun). They also generate electricity without affecting air quality, producing global warming pollution or solid waste.
In addition to photovoltaic systems, large-scale installations may use concentrating solar power (CSP), which uses the sun’s heat to make steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. The university near where I live uses such a system. The cost of electricity from large-scale PV projects also dropped by 50 percent from 2010 to 2013 and installed costs were 60 percent lower for large-scale systems than for rooftop solar.
So what’s not to like?
Well, alternative energy is disliked by politicians with close ties to old fossil-fuel energy companies. They seem to be trying to protect profits from coal mining and hydraulic-fracturing (fracking) operations, both of which have huge environmental consequences that future generations will have to deal with. Such politicians tend to believe that eventual calamities will not happen on their watch, so they’re reluctant to stick out their necks and make themselves unpopular with those who would finance their campaigns.
Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced restrictions on coal-fired power plants followed by conservative columnists decrying the new guidelines as job killers.
The most common argument against wind and solar is that they are intermittent sources. But technology is catching up to demand with new storage batteries and agreements to spread resources across state lines and utility boundaries. For instance, wind energy peaks during summer in Oregon and Washington while Montana winds blow most consistently in winter when sunlight is weak and energy is needed for heating.
Subsequent opinions from the likes of Massachusetts-based Synapse Energy Economics calculated the renewable energy sector could create as many as 4,000 new jobs in Montana alone, a state with enormous wind energy resources. Wind turbines, unlike solar systems, require ongoing maintenance, hence long-term job security, according to Laura Lundquist’s June article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Renewable energy, whether from wind or solar, is less expensive for ratepayers averaging about $34 per megawatt hour compared to $64 for coal (from Colstrip Unit 4). About half of Colstrip energy is sent to other Western states but shipping of wind energy is limited by lack of transmission lines. Sharing resources across state lines may be the answer to this difficulty, making storage batteries unnecessary.
The utility companies will change because they’ll be forced to by companies that increasingly are generating their own electricity. Now we need to influence CNN and other cable networks to report on these positive steps toward renewable energy sources and energy efficiency in general. Instead of fighting change, we need to embrace it.