Fossil fuel, not nuclear, is the real enemy among energy sources

Mr. Mellor’s recent opinion piece suggested we are well on our way to meeting state energy goals with wind and solar. Mellor looks at cost and feasibility, but the issues are more complex than he suggests. When solar panels are in full sun — and if the electricity they produce is consumed during that time — the cost of solar is relatively cheap. That’s true. However, solar power is intermittent. Over the course of a year, a solar farm in the northeast generates just 14% of the energy that it could if the sun shone 24X7X365. That means we must build six or seven times more solar capacity to produce the same amount of energy as a baseload gas or nuclear power plant. But that’s not all. The intermittency of solar generation challenges the health of our electric grid. Getting useful energy when it’s needed with solar requires battery storage—lots of it. Wind has a somewhat better capacity factor (29% onshore), but it requires storage, too. Furthermore, the relatively random nature of intermittent generation means that anything less than an infinite-sized battery — big enough to carry months of summer sunshine through a New York winter — may not be enough. Consequently, even with storage in the mix, intermittent renewables require ‘firm’ generators of electricity as back-up to ensure reliability. To move electricity around from wind and solar installations distributed across the state will require lots more transmission infrastructure, too.