Renewables Broke a US Record in March

Three months ago, for the first time ever, wind and solar energy supplied more than a tenth of U.S. electricity. That data comes to us courtesy of the Energy Information Administration (EIA):

For the first time, monthly electricity generation from wind and solar (including utility-scale plants and small-scale systems) exceeded 10% of total electricity generation in the United States, based on March data in EIA’s Electric Power Monthly. Electricity generation from both of these energy sources has grown with increases in wind and solar generating capacity. On an annual basis, wind and solar made up 7% of total U.S. electric generation in 2016.

Electricity generation from wind and solar follows seasonal patterns that reflect the seasonal availability of wind and sunshine. Within the United States, wind patterns vary based on geography. For example, wind-powered generating units in Texas, Oklahoma, and nearby states often have their highest output in spring months, while wind-powered generators in California are more likely to have their highest output in summer months.

Regular readers will have noticed our healthy skepticism of renewables over the years, but this hasn’t stemmed from an a priori rejection of the undoubtedly green energy sources, but rather a criticism of their ability to compete with fossil fuels without heavy government subsidy in order to deliver consistent, cheap energy to the consumer. Consistency and cost remain renewables’ biggest challenges, but to that latter point the technologies underpinning wind and solar power are incrementally improving and are dragging their price down in the process.

Of course, wind and solar are still receiving state and federal support, so it’s too early for greens to declare that they’re ready to take on our cheapest energy option at the moment—natural gas—on a national level. But in especially windy and sunny places, siting renewables makes a lot of sense, and we’re seeing that reflected in their share of the overall energy mix.

Wind and solar still haven’t solved their consistency problem, or perhaps more accurately their intermittency issue. When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, consumers still need electricity. In this context, the rising share of renewable power generation is actually a growing problem, because it puts a tremendous amount of strain on grids that weren’t designed with these sorts of day-to-day fluctuations in mind. To this end, the perhaps politically motivated but still important grid stability review ordered by Department of Energy chief Rick Perry is looking more and more necessary. We need to know that our grids can handle these inconsistent power suppliers.

In the broadest sense, this all falls under the “good problem to have” category. It’s yet more evidence that we’ve moved out of an era of energy scarcity and into one of energy abundance. Almost everywhere you look here in the United States, concerns over the security of energy supply have diminished sharply this century, and where once we were worried about how to properly ration gasoline and keep the lights on without price gouging, today we’re concerned about how to build a clean and cheap energy mix. That’s major progress.

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