Renewables blessing and curse in California
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California (source: flickr/ jeffgunn, creative commons)
Francisco Rojas
17 Mar 2015
Intermittent energy sources like wind and solar are fuelling the grid with too much power at certain times of the day in California. Geothermal and its baseload capabilities can be a remedy to this.
Renewable energy supply has increased significantly in California in the last couple of decades, but with this also come challenges.
Intermittent energy sources like wind and solar are fuelling the grid with too much power at certain times of the day “when demand for power is low” and with a lack of transmission lines, the power cannot be redirected to other needed areas within California.
To tackle the issue, the state government is looking at more reliable renewable sources and better transmission. This is the advantage of geothermal power as a base load source of electricity. It is able to fuel the grid at times when there is no sun and no wind and thereby providing some power security to California. This in turn also means that the traditional base load contracts by geothermal developers might have to be rethought and it could be that spot market contracts might actually be an economic option for some developers.
As posted last year, by adding base load renewables such as geothermal, more intermittent green tech, such as wind or solar can be expanded, or in this case, adding stability to the energy matrix without the need to use fossil fuels.
Source: Sacramento Bee
