DOE Study Got Wrong – The Grid Is Ready For New Energy

The Energy Secretary Is Wrong: The Grid is Ready for Renewables; U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to issue a report saying renewables pose a threat to the electricity grid. But the truth is that advances in technology and battery storage are making the grid ever-more capable of accommodating wind and solar power.

Jacques Leslie, July 5, 2017 (Yale Environment 360)

“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will soon release a study asserting that wind and solar energy are undermining the electricity grid and that only fossil fuel and nuclear plants can assure the grid’s reliability…[Energy Secretary Rick Perry recently] wrote that pro-renewables regulations issued by past U.S. administrations ‘threaten to undercut the performance of the grid’ and have caused ‘the erosion of critical baseload resources’ derived from coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. In stating these controversial views, Perry seemed to dictate the study’s findings…[It is being led by Travis Fisher, who previously] worked for the fossil fuel-funded Institute for Energy Research…[and wrote that clean energy policies are] ‘the single greatest emerging threat’ to the nation’s grid. Given the potential risks to the grid from cyberwarfare, terrorism, and extreme weather, that’s a highly dubious allegation…[A succession of rigorous studies — including a widely cited two-year study conducted by the DOE itself in 2012 — has found that renewables can provide as much as 80 percent of the nation’s energy supply without disrupting a properly managed grid. And that doesn’t mean that 80 percent is the upper limit of renewables…” click here for more

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