Posted Apr 28, 2017 at 7:01 AM
By Ann Parson / Contributing writer
What quick beast runs through a 9,000-mile-long tunnel at nearly the speed of light, is fed by 350 big hands, and in turn feeds approximately 14 million dependents in six states?
Answer: the electricity that speeds through the high-voltage transmission lines of New England’s electric grid — a complicated yet all-too-real system operated by ISO New England, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Holyoke.
Day and night, ISO operators, acting like traffic cops, work at computers distributing electricity from multiple power plants to customers across the region.
Today, this beast, and the power plants that feed it, have already begun a dramatic shift in respect to fuel sources. It’s almost as if we as a society were gradually changing our diet from hamburger and fries to fish and legumes.
New England’s energy providers are backing away from burning coal and oil for electricity-making, and instead natural gas is the fuel of choice, followed by renewable energies: wind, hydroelectric, with solar energy and small rooftop systems coming on fast.
“We’re on the precipice of a pretty major energy transition,” said Andy Belden, a senior director at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. “That said, throughout the history of energy, there’s always been transition. Look back to when New Bedford used to light the world with whale oil.”
This crossover, which will take many years, is not yet fully understood. As older fuel paradigms retire, is there enough natural gas infrastructure in place for the delivery of gas into the region, notably natural gas from the Marcellus shale reserves, where the majority of that fuel originates?
Also, can nascent renewable energies be constructed and come online quickly enough to help bridge the energy gap, and to what extent does the grid need to be retooled to handle new energy sources?
By 2020, New England’s grid will have lost 4,200 megawatts of power generated by coal, oil and nuclear. Here in Massachusetts, that includes 1,535 megawatts when Brayton Point’s coal-fired generator closes in May and another 685 megawatts when Pilgrim Nuclear shuts down in 2019. (One megawatt can power more than 750 average-sized New England homes.)
According to ISO-NE, an additional 5,500 megawatts of oil and coal capacity is “at risk for retirement in coming years, and uncertainty surrounds the future of 3,300 megawatts from the region’s remaining nuclear plants,” Seabrook in New Hampshire and Millstone in Connecticut. (Because of the grid’s interconnectivity, when a power plant in Massachusetts closes, it affects the electric supply in all six states, not just the Commonwealth.)
NATURAL GAS REPLACES COAL, OIL
Between 2000 and 2016, of the total fuels used to produce New England’s electricity, oil fell from 22 percent to 1 percent and coal plummeted from 18 percent to 2 percent, ISO reports. Once Brayton Point, the region’s last coal-fired generator, goes off-line, coal for electricity will pretty much be a relic in the state.
During the same period, New England’s generation of electricity by natural gas soared, from 15 percent to 49 percent. In Massachusetts, 36 percent of natural gas imports are for electricity, 29 percent for home heating, and 35 percent for commercial/industrial use, according to the Northeast Gas Association.
“The reality is, these are very large power plants going offline, and that energy has to be made up for. We see natural gas continuing to play an increasing role. However, as a company, we’re interested in bringing hydro, wind, and solar into the mix,” said Michael Durand, Eversource spokesman.
Eversource is partnering several such ventures, including the Northern Pass project to transport hydroelectric from Canada, DONG Energy’s Bay State Wind project south of Martha’s Vineyard, and new solar facilities.
As much as 13,250 megawatts of proposed new energy is lined up in ISO-New England’s queue for the future: 6,400 megawatts is gas-fired, another 5,800 megawatts involves capturing the wind off our coast and in northern Maine, another 1,000 megawatts of solar and hydroelectric. These proposed megawatts should feed our habits for many years — as long as they materialize. In ISO-New England’s experience, as much as 70 percent of proposed megawatts don’t get built for one reason or another.
Be that as it may, “It’s an incredibly exciting time for renewable energy,” noted John Rogers, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
ENERGY LAW PROVIDES SPARK
Rogers, who has voiced concern over the region’s high reliance on natural gas, sees the law signed by Gov. Charlie Baker last August as “a really important step in turning that ship around and pointing us in the direction of truly clean energy sources that don’t have all those complications.”
The new law calls for 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind to be contracted by utilities by the year 2027, and another 1,200 to 3,000 megawatts of hydroelectric and other renewables by 2023.
What especially excites Rogers is the law’s allowance for energy diversity. “It’s got hydro in there, but not exclusively, which earlier versions of the law did.” Renewable sources “can be hydro, other renewables, or hydro paired with other renewables.”
Solar and wind power are welcome options for those who want to see the region stitch together, piece by piece, a sustainable future using local resources. Renewable energies currently account for roughly 10 percent of the New England’s electricity. Solar’s contribution of 2,000 megawatts is predicted to increase to more than 3,200 megawatts by 2023.
SOLAR INSTALLATIONS SPROUT
New England so far has few large solar arrays, although Dartmouth, Freetown and New Bedford are leaders in harnessing energy from the sun.
Individual rooftop and ground-mounted systems “have taken off,” said MassCEC’s Belden. According to MassCEC, as of March 1, there were 68,163 solar projects in Massachusetts, delivering 1,488 megawatts. Most of the electricity is being collected by small photovoltaic systems.
The amount of solar installations popping up on SouthCoast rooftops has local utilities scrambling.
While the non-profit ISO-NE operates the grid, local utilities like Eversource and National Grid, which own most of the state’s transmission lines, maintain the power’s delivery over street wires and poles.
“Our challenge as a local utility is to interconnect all these various solar projects into the existing grid. Remember, the electric grid was originally designed to deliver power, not to accept it,” said Durand at Eversource.
Thanks to brand-new state regulations, local utilities themselves are permitted to generate more solar power than they once did. Eversource, which already has three solar systems in Western Mass totaling 8 megawatts, will be adding another 62 megawatts of solar generation statewide. The company is considering a solar canopy over the carport of its New Bedford Business Park location, for instance, and similar canopies at its Plymouth and Yarmouth sites.
There’s a hidden behind-the-meter component to small-scale solar units mounted on roofs, carports and on the ground. Because they aren’t tied directly into the electric grid’s high-voltage network, but into smaller street wires owned by the local utilities, their output cannot be counted.
Their collective energy nevertheless is having a great benefit. When the sun is shining, less electricity is being withdrawn from the grid.
“We don’t know how much each small system is generating,” said Marcia Blomberg, ISO-NE spokeswoman. “But, because New England has so many of them, we do see their impact on the daily demand curve. On a sunny day, you can see the demand dip when the sun is strongest and then rise back up in the afternoon when the sun goes back down.”
Various groups are attempting to develop precise solar-output and hourly wind forecasts, one of many challenges of incorporating renewables into the grid.
“The traditional power grid has been comprised mostly of large coal, oil, nuclear and natural-gas generators located close to population centers, at least in New England,” said Blomberg. But now we have a rapid expansion of these distributed resources,” i.e. rooftop photovoltaics in both urban and remote areas.
Massachusetts ranks No. 4 in the nation in total installed solar capacity. Dartmouth, with 36,587 kilowatts installed solar capacity, leads the state, while New Bedford, Freetown, and Fall River are also among the state’s top solar towns, according to the Department of Energy Resources.
FUTURE ENERGY IN THE WIND
As for New England’s current wind picture, offshore and land-based turbines currently crank out more than 1,000 megawatts, but a proposed increase to 5,800 megawatts of wind-generated electricity gives a sense of what lies ahead.
Five turbines spinning off Block Island — the country’s first offshore wind farm — are considered a symbolic first step. The developer, Deepwater Wind, is looking to build 15 more turbines off Rhode Island’s coast, with a larger installation ahead in the waters south of Martha’s Vineyard Island.
“Rhode Island has taken the lead by actually getting steel in the water,” noted John Rogers. “This makes wind power real, for the public and for decision-makers. You don’t have to go to Denmark or the U.K. anymore to see offshore wind in action.”
Three suppliers have already won lease auctions for offshore wind farms in designated offshore sites located south of Martha’s Vineyard. In addition to Deepwater Wind of Rhode Island, the developers are DONG Energy of Denmark, and Vineyard Wind, which has been acquired by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, also of Denmark.
In the meantime, infrastructure continues to be scrutinized. For instance, because of natural gas’s increasing role in the region, are new natural gas pipelines necessary? Some cry, Yes! Others, No!
“The question is, do you want to invest all that money for two days in a bad winter, or do you want to look for other ways that are going to be less risky, less capital intensive, better for consumers?” said Rogers.
Infrastructure problems stand to delay or hamper the smooth incorporation of renewables like wind and solar. “Throughout southern Massachusetts there are substations that require significant capital upgrades to add additional solar generation.” said Scott Durkee, director of New Bedford’s Energy Office.
By and large, electricity cannot be adequately stored in large quantities. However, the state is encouraging local utilities to develop storage strategies that would go far in making the grid more flexible. In the case of renewable energy, because the sun and the wind are not constant, the ability to store their energy and use it as needed would be a boon to system.
“Storage — it’s the holy grail of the future!” exclaimed Durkee.
Ann Parson is a freelance science writer.
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