Moving it across long distances requires heavy-duty power lines and navigating the bureaucracies of various agencies that operate them. ![]() Excess solar can be moved to less sun-soaked places to help them burn fewer fossil fuels, but electricity doesn’t just teleport from sunny Palm Springs to drizzly Portland. Ideally, we could stash away sun power and use it to light up the skyline at night, but that would require a build-out of big batteries that is still in early stages. Compared with an inflexible coal or gas plant, solar panels are easier to turn off and on, so they are first to be cut during times of energy surplus. Such is the very imperfect nature of integrating unpredictable renewables onto a power grid built for the predictability of fossil fuels. Far more of America’s sunny potential is about to go to waste.Ī little clean-energy wastage is inevitable, Carey King, the assistant director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute, told me. But without better ways to transport that solar power or store it for later, California and several other states are already turning off perfectly good solar panels and clawing back incentives that entice Americans to install their own. One government report estimated that meeting Joe Biden’s goal of supplying half of the country’s energy with solar would mean doubling America’s capacity annually until 2025-and then quadrupling it annually through 2030. Moving away from fossil fuels requires a huge expansion of renewable energy in America. Many sunny rooftops that could generate clean energy simply won’t.Ĭalifornia is outpacing the rest of the country in the energy transition, but its misadventures in solar are going national. Because the math for buying new panels is less favorable, fewer Californians are installing them, according to the Los Angeles Times. In December, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to slash the amount of money homeowners with new solar panels can make from “net metering,” the practice of selling your own extra solar back to the power company. Now the state has punted this dilemma to its residents. Wind power also can be wasted if the weather is especially breezy, and California’s combined curtailment of wind and solar set a new record this April. The total reached 6 percent by 2022, according to California’s grid operator, and 15 percent in the early afternoons of March 2021. ![]() In early 2017, just more than 3 percent of the state’s solar was wasted this way. This maddening problem-a result of what energy wonks call the “duck curve”-has been getting worse as the amount of available solar power outpaces the state’s ability to move that power around. ![]() When that happens, the state’s solar farms make more energy than the state can use, and some panels are simply turned off. When the highs dip toward more seasonably appropriate numbers, they’ll be accompanied by one of California’s unfortunate traditions: wasted clean energy.ĭuring the fall and spring, cloudless afternoons produce a spike in solar power at a time when milder temperatures necessitate less air-conditioning. Endless blue skies and afternoon highs near 90 degrees linger long after Griffith Park opens its Haunted Hayride. ![]() In Los Angeles, where I live, the rites of autumn can feel alien.
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