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Not only have many governors and mayors across the US stepped up to fill in the gap in the Paris Climate Agreement, many have also committed to powering their entire communities with renewable energy.
Interestingly enough, not all of these people are making this decision for climate reasons. Many are doing this purely for economic reasons, as their communities are currently subjected to high energy prices.
If an individual puts in an alternative energy system at his home or small business, he can store the energy in batteries for use when the sun don't shine or the wind don't blow...his increased costs may be worth the effort in his case and he does reduce his use of fossil fuel.
But for the industrial production of energy to be dumped into a grid, there is no storage so there must be a grid capacity down line to soak up, so to speak, like a flood plain, excess production, and for energy security, a stand-by system to keep on producing when demand is on-going but production isn't. To do that, coal & gas fired plants must be kept idling, burning virtually as much fossil fuel as if they were producing in order to come on line quickly when needed.
Of course we already have all that standby capacity because nuke plants, coal plants, even gas plants have outages. We have more than enough reserve capacity to meet any credible outage. On the issue of pollution, of course we reduce pollution when we replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy. A grade school child can understand this. It's like turning out the light when you leave a room.
That Paris Climate Agreement is like a sheep in wolves clothes in my opinion. If the world was truly concerned about climate change, pollution, etc. they would use the renewable technology we have in place to make all others obsolete. These agreements that are set forth make it appear the government is doing all they can to help the environment and that all they do. Its all or nothing. The problem is too many big oil companies have there hand in the fossil fuel game and these same people are running our country. No more fossil fuel industry and they lose out big time and that all it is to them. They want to make money yet appear they are truly concerned. It doesn't go both ways.
I think its great that there are communities invested in 100% renewable energy as those are the communities that truly want to make a difference. As stated some are doing it for the economic aspect but they will prosper by doing the right thing for the environment; the other companies should take note.
I am all about the renewable energy, especially solar power for my house, unfortunately, until I can store all of this energy I find that it is a waste to send it right back out of my house. In the future each house should be able to sustain itself without the need for any sort of power grid.
That Paris Climate Agreement is like a sheep in wolves clothes in my opinion. If the world was truly concerned about climate change, pollution, etc. they would use the renewable technology we have in place to make all others obsolete. These agreements that are set forth make it appear the government is doing all they can to help the environment and that all they do. Its all or nothing. The problem is too many big oil companies have there hand in the fossil fuel game and these same people are running our country. No more fossil fuel industry and they lose out big time and that all it is to them. They want to make money yet appear they are truly concerned. It doesn't go both ways.
I think its great that there are communities invested in 100% renewable energy as those are the communities that truly want to make a difference. As stated some are doing it for the economic aspect but they will prosper by doing the right thing for the environment; the other companies should take note.
I am all about the renewable energy, especially solar power for my house, unfortunately, until I can store all of this energy I find that it is a waste to send it right back out of my house. In the future each house should be able to sustain itself without the need for any sort of power grid.
You had me right up to the last paragraph. Why do you think renewable resources have to be located at your house to be useful? As an engineer I can look and see that the most economical size for a wind machine is in in the multi megawatt range. That's way more than your home needs. A biomass boiler in your hack yard doesn't seem to make a lot of sense and few of us have much hydroelectric potential out back.
This is a little like thinking that all information storage should be in your own library. You would forgo a lot stored elsewhere.
I attended a Solar Open House yesterday in a nearby city. The city has a program where they are trying to get a large group of home-owners to sign-up to go into this program. Instead of signing a 20-year contract as an individual home-owner, they can sign into a slightly better contract as a group.
These are Solar Powered homes [with net-metering] using heat-pumps for heating and cooling, heat-pump domestic hot-water and clothes dryers.
I was surprised that as I parked in front of the Open House, my car was the only plug-in vehicle present. I would have assumed that everyone on Solar Power would be shifting to plug-in vehicles.
As more home-owners decide to shift to net-metering it puts an odd strain on the Public Utilities Commission. Because peak production does not match peak demand.
... I am all about the renewable energy, especially solar power for my house, unfortunately, until I can store all of this energy I find that it is a waste to send it right back out of my house. In the future each house should be able to sustain itself without the need for any sort of power grid.
My house is on Solar Power, we are basically off-grid. Off-grid is far more popular in my town than the more expensive net-metering Solar. I have no problem storing power in my home. Battery technology is an old technology, it needs some improvement. The general consensus among my off-grid neighbors is that your first battery bank will die after around 10-years of use. Regardless of whether you go all out and buy the most expensive batteries, or if you buy cheap. They seem to have the same lifespan.
So install a less expensive off-grid solar system and go with the most popular deep-cycle marine batteries.
I like the move toward 'net-zero' homes. Here in Maine, they are becoming a trend. There is no 'need' for consuming heating fuel from off-site if your home design sustains itself on-site.
I attended a Solar Open House yesterday in a nearby city. The city has a program where they are trying to get a large group of home-owners to sign-up to go into this program. Instead of signing a 20-year contract as an individual home-owner, they can sign into a slightly better contract as a group.
These are Solar Powered homes [with net-metering] using heat-pumps for heating and cooling, heat-pump domestic hot-water and clothes dryers.
I was surprised that as I parked in front of the Open House, my car was the only plug-in vehicle present. I would have assumed that everyone on Solar Power would be shifting to plug-in vehicles.
As more home-owners decide to shift to net-metering it puts an odd strain on the Public Utilities Commission. Because peak production does not match peak demand.
The strain is not on the resources, but on the rate system. Traditional rates recover a lot of distribution fixed costs (typically $30-35/month) in variable rates. This causes net metering to under recover distribution system costs. If commissions would just fix their rate making, there would be no need to worry about net metering.
You had me right up to the last paragraph. Why do you think renewable resources have to be located at your house to be useful? As an engineer I can look and see that the most economical size for a wind machine is in in the multi megawatt range. That's way more than your home needs. A biomass boiler in your hack yard doesn't seem to make a lot of sense and few of us have much hydroelectric potential out back.
This is a little like thinking that all information storage should be in your own library. You would forgo a lot stored elsewhere.
I agree with your scenario for more populated areas but in a rural town like the one I live in it would be nice to be independent, however, I do agree with you. To make it as efficient as possible, once your batteries are at full capacity and you are still able to generate power it would be nice to send it elsewhere to where it was needed instead of having it go to waste. Would be especially beneficial if your system was down for maintenance for a length of time and you needed power. This way you could receive others excess.
Of course we already have all that standby capacity because nuke plants, coal plants, even gas plants have outages. We have more than enough reserve capacity to meet any credible outage. On the issue of pollution, of course we reduce pollution when we replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy. A grade school child can understand this. It's like turning out the light when you leave a room.
Absolutely true.
But such a system is obviously not 100% wind and solar.
Until we have an economical way to store colossal amounts of electricity, a 100% wind and solar electricity system is not feasible. Those mayors are just trying to score political points.
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