If you have been following Exergy’s posts you know that our biggest concern is the lack of a definitive plan on how to decarbonize the grid. Throwing money at it with tax incentives is not a plan.
The New England grid survived the Feb. 3-4 cold blast. But it did so by bringing on a coal plant and using oil fired generators. This certainly isn’t green. Natural gas generation is cleaner but New England has voted down natural gas pipeline expansion; so when the going gets tough, we go to coal and oil.
To make matters worse, many of the plants that saved the day are scheduled to be retired in the next few years. This is likely to happen long before renewables and batteries will be installed to take over the burden, given supply chain, technical and interconnection issues. An important thing to remember is that solar generation in New England is about 60% lower during December and January than in summer. Batteries aren’t available to store summer electricity for winter demand.
What does this mean? Well, extreme weather is going to continue and the grid is going to continue to become less reliable. You really need to protect your operations with backup power. Exergy provides it as a service with no upfront cost.