Renewables Made Up 82% Of New U.S. Generating Capacity In First Quarter

[kristopher]

Renewables Made Up 82% Of New U.S. Generating Capacity In First Quarter
Tuesday 09 April 2013

Renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydro, accounted for 82% of all new domestic electrical generating capacity installed in the first quarter of this year for a total of 1,546 MW, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's latest Energy Infrastructure Update report.

The balance of new generating capacity, comprising 340 MW, came from natural gas. Coal, nuclear power and oil have provided no new generating capacity thus far this year.

Wind led the way for the first quarter, with six new "units" totaling 958 MW, followed by solar with 38 units totaling 537 MW. Biomass added 28 new units totaling 46 MW, while hydro had four new units with an installed capacity of 5.4 MW. No new capacity was reported for geothermal steam.

For the month of March alone, however, 100% of the new electrical generation in service came from solar (seven new units with a combined capacity of 44 MW). The installed capacity of new solar units during the first quarter (537 MW) is more than double that installed during the same period in 2012 (264 MW).

Renewable sources now account for nearly 16% of total installed U.S. operating generating capacity: hydro (8.53%), wind (5.18%), biomass (1.30%), solar (0.44%) and geothermal (0.32%). This is more than nuclear (9.15%) and oil (3.54%) combined.

“Month after month, renewable energy sources continue to dominate the new electrical generating capacity being brought online in the United States...

http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11348#.UWYsf3AyHdk

[kristopher]

1. See also: Can the Utility Industry Survive the Energy Transition?

Can the Utility Industry Survive the Energy Transition?

A new policy paper from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), an association of shareholder-owned U.S. electric companies, details the "disruptive challenges" the sector faces. These private, for-profit companies, also known as investor-owned utilities or IOUs, serve about 70 percent of the U.S. population. They are usually subject to different regulations than publicly owned utilities or co-ops, and must turn enough profit to retain their investors in a difficult, constrained, low-margin business.

...

The cost of power generation from solar PV, wind, geothermal, micro-hydro, and fuel cells running on natural gas has been dropping dramatically. Residential and commercial utility customers can now generate some or all of their own power economically instead of drawing it from the grid. The cost of such distributed generation is set to continue falling as more of it is deployed around the world, and "could directly threaten the centralized utility model," the report acknowledges.

Distributed generation costs are falling too rapidly for lumbering utilities to adapt to these new business realities. In Germany, which has deployed renewable power aggressively for the past decade, solar power has nearly reached grid parity and may now be "unstoppable" even without subsidies, according to Macquarie Group, a global investment bank. Germany's coal-fired and nuclear power generators are now struggling to remain profitable as their share of the market shrinks as higher-priced peak hours of the day are increasingly met by solar.

Worse, being able to generate your own power means that you might eventually decide you don't need the grid at all. The EEI raises concerns that "the longer-term threat of fully exiting from the grid (or customers solely using the electric grid for backup purposes) raises the potential for irreparable damages to revenues and growth prospects," observing that it may become difficult to recover investment costs over a 30-year period, as it has done in the past.

Increasing use of demand-side management...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/can-the-utility-industry-survive-the-energy-transition?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Headline&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112740747