Change... in which I can (finally) believe

Hello Readers,

As you have likely heard already, White House officials recently announced plans to install solar PV and solar hot water systems on the roof of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This will replace the system that was removed in 1986 during the Reagan administration. You will note that the 24-year gap roughly equals the 20-25 year warranty offered on solar panels, which means that the entire lifetime of a system could have been generating power if they had not been removed.

Although, a new solar energy system on the White House seemed like a bit of greenwashing, which would not have been surprising given the relative inaction (or at least lack of concrete action) on climate change and energy independence since Obama was elected nearly 2 years ago. However, an announcement today by Ken Salazar showed some substantial change (believe it or not).

It turns out that the White House has cleared the way for a 709 MW and a 45 MW system to be built on federal lands in California (with a few thousand more MW of capacity in the pipeline for approval by the end of the year). Granted, some may consider this a stunt for the midterm election. Even so, any election year stunt that allows for over half a million homes (and possibly closer to 2 million homes) to be powered by solar power is okay by me!

The New York Times article relating to the announcement mentioned a need for additional transmission capacity to be built. However, it did not mention any plans for energy storage! After doing all of the research for my dissertation, I cannot help but wonder if anyone in the political realm has considered that option as a way to alleviate the grid congestion that will occur when these mammoth solar generators come online.

Hopefully, the utility regulators in California, which are well aware of their options based on what I saw during the PJM-EPRI conference on Energy Storage, have the sway to make a suggestion about incorporating energy storage into these plans (and/or the budget to do it themselves!).

anti-schadenfreudlich,
Sean Diamond

P.S. Later this month I should be receiving the results of my dissertation, so I will be dispersing the final version of it accordingly. Thanks for waiting so long!