Alabama Power is paying less for power generated by third-party energy producers and imposing a cost for those companies to connect to its electricity grid.

The rule was approved by the Alabama Public Service Commission (PSC) in March; took effect in April and applies to companies that can generate at least 100 kilowatts of electricity.

Alabama Power said in an emailed statement the rates are updated each year, based on fuel costs and inflation, to keep prices as affordable as possible.

The company also said in a separate statement that the new integration cost is part of the monthly energy payment that the company pays to energy providers who are not Alabama Power customers.

Critics allege that the maneuvers are meant to stamp out competition in the market for electricity, especially for solar power providers looking to gain a foothold in the central and southern parts of the state and compete with Alabama Power.

“It is 100% about control,” said Steve Cicala, associate professor of economics at Tufts University, whose work focuses on the economics of regulation, particularly with respect to environmental and energy policy. “They are a business — and they don’t want competition.”

Daniel Tait, executive director for Energy Alabama, an advocacy group that hopes to increase renewable energy generation in the state, said Alabama Power was “trying to protect their monopoly, first and foremost.”

“It doesn’t really matter about the energy source,” he said. “Solar is just the one that is the most economical and the one most likely to challenge that monopoly, so that is why you see the fight on solar.”

The Alabama Public Service Commission said in a statement that the rate adjustments are appropriate based on the figures that Alabama Power provided.

“The cost is driven by the magnitude of the intermittency of certain generation, which requires additional operating reserves to maintain reliability on our system,” Alabama Power said in its email.

But some experts say the intermittency argument is overstated.

“We have gotten really good at predicting solar and wind output,” said Brendan Pierpont, director for electricity modeling for Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and environment think tank. “These are large-scale industries in the U.S. and there are many gigawatts of wind and solar being developed each year.”

Both Energy Alabama and the Southern Renewable Energy Association, another group that promotes the responsible use of alternative energy, sought to challenge the PSC’s ruling, but the PSC officially denied their request in a written order on July 22.

Tait said Energy Alabama has decided not to challenge the order in court and will wait until the following year, should Alabama Power request a rate update or rule change with the PSC.

The Southern Renewable Energy Association said it is still considering its options.

Solar charges

The most recent rule changes limit revenues for larger renewable energy companies with power-producing plants. Those are separate from the households and smaller solar-producing companies that also generate electricity.

“The utilities have been lobbying for this for a long time,” said Gilbert Michaud, assistant professor with the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. “Utilities are having more competition in their sandbox, and they are saying, ‘We really don’t want more distributed solar generation because folks will buy less power from us. But we still have to maintain all our power plants and the grid infrastructure.’”

Brendan Pierpont, director for electricity modeling for Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and environment think tank. said the ruling would discourage third parties from investing in renewable energy projects.

“While every solar project has different economic requirements, lowering the price a solar project receives or adding additional fees likely means fewer projects will get built, less investment in communities that would host those projects, few jobs in building those projects, etc,” he wrote in an email. “If the price received by a solar project is lower than the cost of operating Alabama Power’s own power plants, that’s also a missed opportunity for the utility’s electric customers to save money.”

The grid

Alabama Power, the largest utility in the state, has nearly 1.5 million customers and provides electricity to 57% of all customers in Alabama, according to a 2020 report published by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance.

In February, Alabama Power filed a document with the PSC, the state’s electricity regulator, that proposed cutting the rates they pay for third-party electrical generation, known as a Contract for Purchased Energy (CPE), by up to 50%. In one category, the price decreased from about 7.33 cents per kilowatt hour to about 3.65 cents per kilowatt hour.

Those figures are formulated through a model and the values are estimated. That can be subjective, according to Pierpont of Energy Innovation.

“What they do is estimate low avoided costs, so they don’t have to pay very much,” Pierpont said. “In the meantime, they’re running coal plants and gas plants that cost quite a bit more than the rate they would be paying under this type of contract.”

Throughout the country, Pierpont said, power distribution companies like Alabama Power have been working to reduce the amount they pay homeowners who contribute electricity back to the grid through rooftop solar panels.

In addition to the lower rate payments, Alabama Power introduced a Variable Integration Cost at $0.00193 per kilowatt hour for third-party companies. That would further reduce the revenue that those firms receive for energy purchased by Alabama Power.

Pierpont found a few examples of utility companies imposing an integration cost to connect to the system. One is PacifiCorp, an energy company that operates in several western states, and the second is Duke, which is in the Carolinas.

“This approach seems fairly rare and limited to regions without competitive electricity markets,” Pierpont wrote in an email.

Significant costs

Energy Alabama published a blog post in June alleging that the charges, which it called a tax, would amount to a $250,000 annual charge for an 80-megawatt solar farm based in Montgomery.

The updated rates, along with the integration cost, are separate from the charges that Alabama Power imposes on individual households who install solar to offset their electricity bill.

In 2012, the PSC approved an Alabama Power request to impose a $5 per kW Capacity Reservation Charge (CRE) on customers with solar panels, often known as a rooftop fee. Typically, households that generate about 5 kW on their solar array will pay about $300 annually, or $9,000 over the 30-year expected lifespan of the system.

That charge has since increased to $5.41.

Power companies in other states have been allowed to impose such charges, including Arizona. Michaud, at Loyola University in Chicago, estimates that residents in almost a third of all the states in the country must pay such a fee. Michaud said the fees are clustered “in more conservative states, like the U.S. South.”

This makes it less economical for households to install solar panels for their homes because they make up the upfront fixed cost of the system from the savings generated from their power bills, and lengthens the time needed to recoup the cost of the system.

“It is basically killing your payback period, or at least increasing it,” Michaud said. “I would do this in my class, and a lot of students find, ‘Hey, this increases the payback period from 10 years to 14 years.’ You are having folks paying for a longer time.”

‘Intermittency of certain generation’

For its part, Alabama Power said the rate adjustments to third-party energy providers, also known as the CPE, and newly imposed integration cost, are necessary for maintaining price stability for customers.

“Rate CPE keeps electricity costs stable for customers by ensuring Alabama Power pays a fair price for energy,” the company said in an emailed statement. “This approach, updated annually, protects customers from unexpected price shocks linked to fluctuating energy production costs.”

The company said that the Variable Integration Cost is not a fee and is factored into the calculation that Alabama Power pays third-party producers who are not customers of Alabama Power and who sell all their output to the company.

“The cost is driven by the magnitude of the intermittency of certain generation, like solar, which requires additional operating reserves to maintain reliability on our system,” the company said.

When electricity is in high demand, electricity third-party providers contribute is highly valuable. The power becomes less valuable very late in the evening or very early in the morning, the times when people are asleep, not very active, and have no need for electricity. Smoothing out the supply when the need is uncertain is a tricky question to answer.

Timothy Charles Lieuwen, a professor of engineering at Georgia Tech University, said that over time, the price power distribution companies have been willing to pay to third parties who generate energy has declined.

“It is a really hard question, what is the value of the power they (third party energy providers) are providing,” he said.

Power distribution companies, including vertically integrated ones such as Alabama Power, are less willing to purchase power from other companies in the face of that mounting uncertainty about when customers will need that energy.

The Public Service Commission deferred to Alabama Power in an emailed statement.

“The adjustments to Rate CPE (Contract for Purchased Energy) were found to be in the public interest because they accurately reflected Alabama Power Company’s most current projected avoided cost,” the statement said. “Alabama Power’s projected avoided costs are updated annually. The variable integration charge was approved because it mitigates the cost incurred with integrating the intermittent output of QFs (Qualifying Facilities) onto the Southern Company System.”

The Public Service Commission said in its statement that allegations that it gave Alabama Power more control over the electricity production market were not valid.

“The matters approved in the Commission’s March 5, 2024 Order in Docket U-5213 were designed to accurately establish the projected avoided cost rates for CPE and to allow for the recovery of the cost incurred by Alabama Power in integrating the intermittent output of QFs onto the Southern Company System,” the statement said.

Tait called Alabama Power’s claims about intermittency “absurd.”

“Basically, what Alabama Power is saying when they say something like that is, ‘Our engineers are dumber than everybody else’s engineers and they can’t figure this out,’” Tait said. “Alabama Power’s engineers are just as smart, and just as talented, as everybody else is.”

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and X.

Houston-based geothermal startup Sage Geosystems and the artist formerly known as Facebook, Meta Platforms, have announced a new agreement to deliver up to 150 MW of new geothermal baseload power to support the latter’s data center growth. The deal would be the first use of next-generation geothermal power east of the Rocky Mountains, the companies said, without revealing its precise location. The first phase of the project is expected to be operational in 2027.

The U.S. has geothermal power plants in seven states, which generated about 16.46 terawatt hours (TWh) of geothermal electricity in 2023, a .5 TWh increase from 2022 and the highest amount ever recorded. That accounted for about 0.4% (17 billion KWh) of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation last year.

The United States boasts roughly 3,900 MW of installed geothermal, about one-quarter of the world’s total capacity. Most of it is in California (66.6% of 2023 total U.S. geothermal generation) and Nevada (26.1%), with smaller concentrations of development in Utah (3.2%), Hawai’i (2.1%), Oregon (1.3%), Idaho (.5%), and New Mexico (.2%).

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sees tremendous potential for geothermal development, suggesting there may be more than 100 GW of capacity in the lower 48 states.

Fittingly, the new announcement was made at the DOE’s Catalyzing Next Generation Geothermal Development Workshop. Executives from Sage and Meta joined U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk and additional Biden-Harris Administration officials along with, investors, utilities, and other energy stakeholders to discuss the opportunity and growth of geothermal.

“The U.S. has seen unprecedented growth in demand for energy as our economy grows… And new industries like AI expand,” said U.S. Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk. “The Administration views this increased demand as a huge opportunity to add more clean, firm power to the grid and geothermal energy is a game-changer as we work to grow our clean power supply.”

“This announcement is the perfect example of how the public and private sector can work together to make the clean energy transition a reality,” added Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems. “We are thrilled to be at the forefront of the next generation of geothermal technology and applaud the DOE for supporting the commercialization of innovative solutions.”

Sage will utilize its proprietary Geopressured Geothermal System (GGS) to provide carbon-free power to Meta’s data centers. Sage says it validated the technology in the field in early 2022, which promises to harness geothermal energy almost anywhere. Hot dry rock is a vastly abundant resource compared to traditional hydrothermal formations, making Sage’s GGS technology more scalable than other approaches, the company says.

Sage previously announced the first geothermal project in Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) territory, a unique 3-MW baseload power and energy storage system in partnership with San Miguel Electric Cooperative in Christine, Texas. That project is expected to begin operating later this year and is slated to be the first commercial-scale deployment of GGS, according to the company. It was financed by a $17 million round of Series A funding by fracking pioneer Chesapeake Energy earlier this year.

“Our EarthStore facility in Christine will be the first geothermal energy storage system to store potential energy deep in the earth and supply electrons to a power grid,” boasted Sage Geosystems CEO Cindy Taff.

Don’t forget about Fervo

Another Houston geothermal company is also making deals with companies hoping to fuel their data centers with renewable power. Fervo Energy, which raised $244M led by Devon Energy earlier this year, started working with Google in 2021 to develop next-generation geothermal power and has since launched projects sending power back to the Nevada grid to power its own data center operations.

Earlier this summer, Fervo signed a pair of 15-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Southern California Edison to provide up to 320 MW of electricity from Fervo’s 400 MW Cape Station project under construction in Beaver County, Utah. The first 70 MW phase of the project should be online by 2026, and it should reach capacity by 2028.

The race for RECs, PPAs, and EAPAs

Meanwhile, Meta and its contemporaries in the data center space are gobbling up renewable energy certificates (RECs) left and right.

Meta recently partnered with Arevon Energy on a third Environmental Attributes Purchase Agreement (EAPA) for Arevon’s Heirloom Solar in Pike County, Indiana.

This month, Google announced a 1.5 GWp solar development contract with Energix Renewables and closed on a tax equity investment with Swift Current Energy on the massive 800 MWdc Double Black Diamond project in southern Illinois.

Microsoft and Pivot Energy signed a five-year framework agreement to develop up to 500 megawatts (MWac) of community-scale solar energy projects across the United States between 2025 and 2029. In May, Microsoft inked two 15-year PPAs with developer RWE for two new onshore wind farms in Texas with a combined capacity of 446 MW and shook hands with Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management on the largest single corporate PPA ever, agreeing to develop more than 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity.

According to BloombergNEF, Amazon was the most active company in the PPA space last year, purchasing more solar and wind power than the next three companies combined and announcing 74 PPAs totaling 8.8 GW of capacity. The other top PPA purchasers: Meta (3 GW), LyondellBasell Industries (1.3 GW), and Google (1 GW). 

Originally published in Renewable Energy World

Today New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard executed a pair of long-term leases for projects on state lands. One was awarded to EDF Renewables to develop a wind energy project on 23,840 acres in Grant County; a second lease was awarded to Innergex Renewable Energy for a wind project on 12,192 acres in Hidalgo County.

When it’s finished, the EDF project is expected to generate around 400 MW of wind energy, making it the second-largest wind project on New Mexico state lands, trailing only Pattern Energy’s massive Western Spirit Wind, which has 1,050 MW of installed capacity encompassing four sites in Central New Mexico. Garcia Richard signed off on that project as well, in 2020.

Innergex’s new wind farm is expected to put out about 150 MW. Bids for each lease were unsealed at public auctions at the State Land Office building in Santa Fe, per Garcia Richard.

“We are continuing to help the renewable energy sector grow with each major wind or solar deal on state lands. The fact that there were multiple qualified bidders on both of these leases shows that companies are taking us seriously when we say we are open for business,” Commissioner Garcia Richard said. “New Mexico is blessed with plenty of wind and sun, as well as nine million acres of state lands, making us well-positioned to expand our renewable portfolio even more. These wind projects will provide real, long-term revenue to help make a difference in New Mexico’s classrooms.”

Commissioner Garcia Richard created the first-ever Office of Renewable Energy within the Commercial Resources Division at the State Land Office intending to triple renewable energy leasing and production on state trust lands. The Office has exceeded initial expectations, as renewable energy on New Mexico state lands has increased more than six-fold since its inception- growing from 400 MW when Commissioner Garcia Richard assumed office to about 2.5 GW of wind and solar energy under lease today.

Here comes the Sun(Zia)

According to the American Clean Power Associations’s Clean Power Quarterly for Q1 2024, New Mexico had installed the second-most wind power capacity in the country year to date, trailing only Wyoming.

Texas and California were the top two states for under-construction projects, with 18.9 GW and 8.6 GW, respectively. New Mexico (5.2 GW), Wyoming (5.1 GW), and Arizona (4.7 GW) round out the top five states for under-construction clean power capacity, per ACP’s report.

We can expect to see New Mexico remain near the top as Pattern constructs its game-changing SunZia Wind and Transmission project; both new wind lease areas intersect its transmission line.

Wind lease areas EW-0111 (left) and EW-0113 (right) are shown shaded in red. The Southline Transmission Line is indicated in black, the SunZia Transmission Line in blue. Courtesy: New Mexico State Land Office

SunZia Transmission is a 550-mile ± 525 kV high-voltage direct current transmission line between central New Mexico and south-central Arizona with the capacity to transport clean power all the way out to California. It will utilize Pattern’s 3.5 GW SunZia Wind project, the largest wind project in the Western Hemisphere, which will be simultaneously constructed alongside SunZia Transmission. Pattern Energy recently announced that the projects are expected to generate $20.5 billion in total economic benefit, including more than $8 billion in direct capital investment, at no added cost to ratepayers, according to the results of an independent study conducted by the research firm Energy, Economic & Environment Consultants LLC. 

Pattern Energy broke ground on the project last September, and it’s expected to come online in 2026. In June, a U.S. district judge dismissed claims by Native American tribes and environmentalists who sought to halt construction along part of the $10 billion energy line, asserting the plaintiffs were years too late in bringing their challenge.

Fund V will invest in power and energy infrastructure assets, platforms, and companies, LS Power said.

“Demand for electricity in the United States is growing at the fastest rate in decades, driven by electrification, data center proliferation, and an American manufacturing renaissance.,” Paul Segal, CEO of LS Power, said. “Our portfolio of assets and businesses—which spans generation, transmission, and decarbonization solutions—is designed to ensure the reliability and affordability of electricity while accelerating the energy transition. We look forward to investing this capital to help meet the historic challenges facing the U.S. energy sector.”

Since its inception, LS Power has raised $60 billion in debt and equity capital and developed and acquired more than 47 GW and 160 power generation projects to support North American energy infrastructure. In addition, LS Power Grid has developed 16 transmission projects, including 6 utilities in operation across 5 ISO/RTOs that serve 185 million people. These projects include 780+ miles of high voltage transmission, beyond which LS Power Grid has another 350+ miles in development. 

LS Power said it will leverage its market knowledge, industry network, and in-house expertise to invest Fund V’s capital. To date, Fund V has invested or committed approximately $1.6 billion across renewable and gas-fired generation, renewable fuels, and green hydrogen, with an extensive pipeline of additional opportunities. Recent investments include the announced acquisition of Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp.’s North American renewable energy business, comprised of 3 GW of operating projects and an 8 GW development pipeline spanning 12 states, 4 provinces, and 5 U.S. power markets.

“Over the past thirty years, LS Power has built a platform to meet this moment in the energy transition,” said Darpan Kapadia, Chief Operating Officer of LS Power. “The success of this fundraise is a testament to our team’s deep expertise and strong track record through multiple market cycles. We are grateful to our investors, both new and long-standing, for their partnership.”

CPV Rogue’s Wind would join the CPV Maple Hill Solar and the CPV Fairview Energy Center projects in Cambria County. The project would consist of 19 Vestas V-162 wind turbines.

CPV Rogue’s Wind is expected to come online in 2026. The project is part of the company’s 10 GW pipeline of renewable and dispatchable generation projects, including utility-scale power generation with carbon capture.

CPV Rogue’s Wind is the first project tied to the company’s recent partnership announcement with investment management firm Harrison Street. The partnership, in which Harrison Street acquired one-third of CPV Renewables, will support an accelerated build out of the 4 GW renewable development pipeline.

An array of critics came out swinging in January when Duke Energy first filed its plans in North Carolina for one of the largest fossil fuel investments in the country.  

But as the months have dragged on in the development of the company’s biennial carbon-reduction plan, some notable detractors have relented. 

Just before expert witness testimony was set to begin in Raleigh late last month, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate, Public Staff, and Walmart endorsed a settlement with Duke on its blueprint, which includes building 9 gigawatts of new natural gas plants that the utility says could be converted to run on hydrogen in the future.

A few days later, the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, a consortium of solar and wind developers, announced it had signed on too.  

The agreement, which contains some small concessions from the utility, led to low-key hearings that ended in less than two weeks. It makes it more likely that Duke will get what it wants from regulators by year’s end, including a greenlight, if not final approval, for three large new natural gas plants in the near term.

Chris Carmody, executive director of the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, says the proposed compromise also helps lock in forward progress on solar energy and batteries, however incremental. 

“It’s a more aggressive solar spend. It’s a more aggressive storage spend,” he said. “Certainly, we would like to see more. But first of all, we like to see it going in the right direction.” 

Clean energy advocates believe Duke’s push for new gas plants will harm the climate, since the plants’ associated releases of planet-warming methane will cancel out any benefits of reduced carbon pollution from smokestacks. At the same time, they say the investments could become useless by midcentury or sooner, before their book life is over, saddling ratepayers with costs that bring no benefits.

“There’s not much in it for their customers except unnecessary risk, cost, and more pollution,” Will Scott, southeast climate and clean energy director for the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a blog last month. 

But Duke’s gas bubble has proved hard to burst. For one, the company’s predictions of massive future demand from new data centers are based in part on confidential business dealings that are challenging to rebut from the outside. 

Unlike two years ago, when Duke proposed its first carbon reduction plan, no groups produced an independent model showing how Duke could meet demand without building new gas. 

“We can talk about costs, or market conditions,” said Carmody. But, he said, “we did not do any modeling.”

Public Staff ran its own numbers and has urged more caution on new gas plants than Duke proposes. But the agency is unwavering that at least some are needed.

New Biden administration rules haven’t yet proved the death knell for gas that some expected. Duke is suing to overturn the rule, but it insists that building new plants that will run at half capacity is the most economical plan for compliance.

And even as Duke is proffering more gas, it’s also undeniably proposing more solar.

Clean energy backers still object to annual constraints on solar development the utility says are necessary. But the limits have increased from less than 1,000 megawatts per year in 2022 to over 1,300 megawatts. And the settlement would result in another 240 megawatts of solar than Duke had first proposed.

“It’s an iterative improvement,” said Carmody. 

What’s more, the settlement opens a discussion with Duke about the scores of 5-megawatt solar projects across the state whose initial contracts will soon expire. A proposal for how to refit them could come in April of next year. 

“This is a really important issue to our members,” said Carmody.  “These are projects that could be repowered. They could be upgraded with storage. They could have significantly more efficient solar technology than was on them 15 or 20 years ago.” 

Still, Carmody said his group tried to word the settlement in a way that left room for clean energy advocates to continue to advocate for less gas and steeper emissions cuts sooner — and that’s certainly their plan. 

“Three power plants that will be really expensive to build and then operate for only a few years is just a ridiculous proposal,” the settlement notwithstanding, said Maggie Shober, research director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. 

“We remain hopeful that there’s a lot that the [commission] can do in this carbon plan proceeding and in their final order, to move us forward on a clean energy trajectory.”

Nick Jimenez, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, acknowledges the settlement stacks the deck somewhat against his clients. 

“Historically, the commission approves a lot of settlements,” he said. “It likes to see parties settle, especially when Duke and the Public Staff are involved.”

This article first appeared on Energy News Network and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina Senate on Thursday started its homework assignment of coming up with a comprehensive bill to guide energy policy in a rapidly growing state and amid a quickly changing power- generation world.

The Special Committee on South Carolina’s Energy Future plans several meetings through October. On Thursday, the committee heard from the leaders of the state’s three major utilities. Future meetings will bring in regular ratepayers, environmentalists, business leaders and experts on the latest technology to make electricity,

The Senate took this task upon itself. They put the brakes a massive 80-plus page energy overhaul bill that passed the House in March in less than six weeks, and the bill died at the end of the session.

Many senators said the process earlier this year was rushed. They remembered the last time they trusted an overhaul bill backed by utilities.

State-owned Santee Cooper and private South Carolina Electric & Gas used those rules passed 15 years ago to put ratepayers on the hook for billions of dollars spent on two new nuclear reactors that never generated a watt of power before construction was abandoned because of rising costs.

But those dire memories are being mixed with dire predictions of a state running out of power.

Unusually cold weather on Christmas Eve 2022 along with problems at a generating facility nearly led to rolling blackouts in South Carolina. Demand from advanced manufacturing and data centers is rising. If electric cars grow in popularity, more power is needed. And a state that added 1.3 million people since 2000 has a lot more air conditioners, washing machines and charges for devices, the utility leaders said.

Senators stopped Duke Energy’s president in South Carolina, Mike Callahan, in middle of his presentation after he told them his utility’s most recent predictions for growth in electricity usage over the rest of this decade were eight times more than they were just two years ago.

“Growth is here, and much more is coming. We need clear energy policy to plan for that growth,” Callahan said,

The utility leaders told senators their companies need to know what kind of sources of power — natural gas, solar, nuclear, wind or others — the state wants to emphasize. They would like to have a stable rules from regulators on how they operate.

“A quick no is a lot better to us than a long-term maybe,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said.

Another complicating factor are federal rules that may require utilities to shut down power plants that use coal before there are replacements with different sources online, Staton said.

Others aren’t so sure the state needs a rapid increase in power generation. Environmentalists have suggested the 2022 problems that led to blackouts were made worse because power plants were nowhere near capacity and better cooperation in the grid would allow electricity to get to where its needed easier.

Those less bullish on the overhaul also are urging the state not to lock in on one source of power over another because technology could leave South Carolina with too much power generation in inefficient ways.

There will likely be plenty of discussion of data centers that use a lot of electricity without the number of jobs, property taxes or other benefits a manufacturer provides.

Staton estimated about 70% of Santee Cooper’s increased demand is from data centers.

“We clearly need them. I don’t want to go back in time,” committee chairman Republican Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey said. “What I’m trying to get at is a better understanding, a better handle on how much of the projected growth is based on data centers or on everything else.”

Massey has been hard on Dominion Energy, which bought South Carolina Electric & Gas after the abandoned nuclear project at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station. But Dominion Energy South Carolina President Keller Kissam said it is important that all options, including a new nuclear plant, remain on the table.

“Everybody thinks if we build anything that we’re going to absolutely repeat what we did with V.C. Summer” Kissam said. “Well, I promise you, that ain’t gonna happen. OK? I’ll pack up and leave.”

Massey said he appreciated Kissam’s candor and felt he was a straight shooter, but there are a lot of other people involved in the failed project who lied and hid problems.

“I can’t put that behind me. And I don’t think a lot of people can put that behind them,” Massey said.

Massey’s goal is to have a bill ready by the time the 2025 session starts in January.

That seemed entirely doable until those dang data centers became such an energy suck (shaking my fist like I just got caught by the Scooby Doo crew).

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions are headed in the wrong direction, fast- they’ve increased nearly 48% since 2019.

“This result was primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions,” an annual Google environmental report read. In 2023, Google’s data centers consumed about 24 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. A single ChatGPT query uses 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, nearly 10 times as much as a classic Google search (.3 watt-hours). As consulting firm Slalom’s Tim Stafford put it recently: think before you check the Yankees score on ChatGPT.

Now Google more or less admits the uncertainty around an AI arms race for more and more computational power may make achieving such targets… difficult.

But the company that allows you to type drivel like “Boyband 90’s not NSYNC or Backstreet or 98 Degrees” and find the O-Town song you’re looking for is coming out of the corner swinging.

Google’s new renewables

This week, Google announced a 1.5 GWp solar development contract with Energix Renewables and closed on a tax equity investment with Swift Current Energy on the massive 800 MWdc Double Black Diamond project in southern Illinois.

In the first deal, Energix will supply electricity and Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) generated from its solar projects to Google and the agreement includes an option for future expansion. The parties have already signed the first two Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) under this agreement. That’s some much-needed good news in PJM territory, as expressed by Asa (Asi) Levinger, CEO of the Energix Group.

“This joint effort with Google not only strengthens our position in the PJM market but also opens up opportunities for future expansion into other power markets, we expect to deliver the 1.5 GW in the next 2-3 years,” he said.

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to decarbonizing our electricity grids and no one company can do it on their own. We are proud of our work with Energix Renewables to unlock new clean energy in PJM,” added Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of data center energy. “This type of collaboration is essential as we continue to progress towards our ambition to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy on every grid where we operate every hour of every day.”

Google’s tax equity financing of Double Black Diamond Solar, expected to be the largest solar project east of the Mississippi when it reaches commercial operations in early 2025, utilizes Energy Communities and domestic content adders in the Inflation Reduction Act. That project is expected to reduce regional carbon dioxide emissions by about one million tons per year.

“As we work to responsibly grow our infrastructure, we need to partner with companies like Swift Current who understand the nuances of the energy markets where we operate and can help unlock new clean energy at a rate that matches the pace and scale of demand growth on electric grids today,” said Google’s Amanda Peterson Corio, pulling double duty in the press release statement department.

Constellation NewEnergy will purchase a portion of the energy and RECs generated by Double Black Diamond Solar to serve seven big customers: The City of Chicago (O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport), Cook County Illinois, CVS Health, Loyola University of Chicago, PPG, State Farm, and TransUnion.

In June, Google entered into an agreement with Berkshire Hathaway electric utility NV Energy to power some of its Nevada data centers with about 115 MW of geothermal energy. A little further back in 2022, Google teamed up with ENGIE on a 100 MW PPA to provide more than 5 TWh of renewable energy from Scotland’s Moray West wind farm.

Google reports more than 7 GW of renewable energy projects worldwide, as colorfully displayed on the site tracking Google’s carbon-free energy progress.

But what about the other guys?

Google’s data center growth-driven compatriots are finding themselves in similar predicaments, and a couple of the big ones, notably Microsoft and Amazon, are amping up their commitments to renewable energy in kind.

Microsoft’s total carbon emissions have risen by nearly 30% since 2020, according to its latest Environmental Sustainability Report. That is bad news bears for a company aiming to be carbon-negative by 2030, removing more carbon from the atmosphere than Microsoft and its supply chain emits. By 2050, the company wants to have removed as much carbon as it ever emitted since it was founded in 1975.

Fittingly, this year there has been a flurry of announcements tying Microsoft to renewable energy development.

This month, Pivot Energy announced an ambitious five-year framework agreement with Microsoft to develop up to 500 megawatts (MWac) of community-scale solar energy projects across the United States between 2025 and 2029. The agreement will enable Pivot to develop approximately 150 U.S. solar projects in roughly 100 communities across 20 states. Microsoft will purchase the project Renewable Energy Credits for a 20-year term, and the first projects are expected to come online before the end of this year.

In May, Microsoft inked two 15-year PPAs with developer RWE for two new onshore wind farms in Texas with a combined capacity of 446 MW and shook hands with Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management on the largest single corporate PPA ever, agreeing to develop more than 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity.

Microsoft is partnering with Google and Nucor Corporation to develop new business models and aggregate their demand for advanced clean electricity technologies, intending to accelerate the development of “first-of-a-kind” and early commercial projects, including advanced nuclear, next-generation geothermal, clean hydrogen, long-duration energy storage (LDES), and more.

Microsoft also recently announced a partnership with the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to use high-performance computing in the cloud and artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery, with an initial focus on chemistry and materials science for battery solutions.

Amazon aims to reach net-zero across its operations by 2040, co-founding The Climate Pledge in 2019 and investing more than $2 billion in support of sustainable technologies. Last year, Amazon claimed 100% of the electricity it consumed globally was matched with renewable energy, initially a 2030 goal for the company.

Some recent Amazon PPAs include a 98.4 MW wind project with Avangrid, a couple of solar farms in Ohio, one in Japan, and a 473 MW deal with ENGIE on the Moray West offshore windfarm Google signed with back in 2022.

According to BloombergNEF, in 2023 Amazon purchased more solar and wind power than the next three companies combined, announcing 74 PPAs totaling 8.8 GW of capacity. The other top PPA purchasers: Meta (3 GW), LyondellBasell Industries (1.3 GW), and the aforementioned Google (1 GW). More than 200 corporations announced PPAs in 2023, highlighting how the agreements are being used to promote decarbonization efforts, per BloombergNEF.

Is this “matching” or actual matching matching?

How much of an impact PPAs actually make is a more complex question that deserves digging into. Offsetting carbon in bulk doesn’t necessarily belay the larger impact of that carbon.

In some cases, there’s an opportunity to go beyond a PPA and more effectively decarbonize the grid through hourly load matching, or 24/7 matching, according to an analysis by RMI. RMI defines hourly load matching as “where a buyer attempts to procure sufficient carbon-free energy to match a given facility’s load in every hour.” RMI’s Clean Power by the Hour determined that costs increased with the level of hourly load matching compared to costs for meeting annual procurement targets, near-term emissions reductions for hourly load matching depend on the regional grid mix, and hourly procurement strategies can create new markets for emerging technologies.

Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007 through carbon offsets, and was one of the first companies to purchase renewable energy directly through PPAs in 2017. The company is now in the process of transitioning from 100% annual renewable energy matching to 24/7 matching as part of its 2030 goals.

Microsoft has been signing 24/7 hourly matching agreements with projects fueling its data centers, including one with Powerex Corp and another with ENGIE in Texas. 100s of global companies have signed the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, including Google and Microsoft but notably not Amazon, which has yet to announce plans for 24/7 matching.

Vineyard Wind said it has obtained federal approval to resume construction of the wind farm – work that was suspended following the partial collapse of a previously installed turbine blade on July 13.

A press release issued at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning said the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement had given the developers of the wind farm permission to resume the installation of towers and nacelles (which sit atop the tower and convert wind energy into electricity), but a suspension remains in effect for turbine blades and power generation.

Vineyard Wind is a 62-turbine project and only 24 had been completed at the time of the accident. Work is resuming on the remaining 38 turbines but blades cannot be installed nor power produced under the terms of the revised suspension order. Of the 24 completed turbines, 11 were generating electricity at the time of the incident and 13, including the one that broke, were undergoing testing.

In a joint press release, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the wind turbines, said a barge departed the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal Tuesday morning for the wind farm carrying turbine components, including several tower sections and one nacelle.

“The vessel will also carry a rack of three blades solely for the purpose of ensuring safe and balanced composition for the transport,” the press release said, adding that the blades will not be installed and will be returned to New Bedford later in the week.  

The press release said the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement revised its suspension order after examining records and a structural load analysis conducted by a third party. The federal agency had no mention of a revised suspension order on its website Tuesday morning.

Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova also said “a substantial amount” of what remained of the damaged blade was cut away on Sunday and Monday.

“During the operations, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova mobilized maritime crews on multiple vessels nearby to secure as much debris as possible for immediate containment and removal as well as land-based crews managing debris recovery,” the press release said. ”Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova are currently assessing next steps to complete any additional cutting necessary at the earliest opportunity, secure and remove the debris on the turbine platform, remove the blade root, and address the debris on the seabed.”

The blade incident at Vineyard Wind, a joint venture of Avangrid and Vineyard Offshore, has been a major setback for the first industrial scale wind farm in the United States. Foam and fiberglass from the turbine has washed up on Nantucket and other beaches on the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard and raised questions about wind energy at a time when the industry is trying to ramp up production.

A preliminary investigation by GE Vernova has suggested the blade breakdown was caused by a “manufacturing deviation” – specifically insufficient bonding of the blade materials. The company has indicated no problems with the design of the Haliade-X blade, which is 853 feet tall.

It was unclear when Nantucket officials were notified about the resumption of construction of the wind farm. Updates posted on the town website indicated the Select Board was aware of the efforts beginning on Sunday to remove more of the damaged turbine blade.

During an executive session on Thursday, the Select Board met to discuss “strategy with respect to potential litigation in connection with Vineyard Wind,” according to the agenda.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

That’s according to the latest reporting from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). For perspective, the 40.4 GW of generating capacity added in 2023 was the most in a year since 2003.

EIA said 20.2 GW came online during the first half of 2024, 3.6 GW (or 21%) more than the capacity added during the first six months of 2023.

Solar continued to lead all U.S. generating capacity additions in the first half of 2024, representing 12 GW (or 59% of all additions). Texas and Florida made up 38% of U.S. solar additions. The largest new projects included the 690 MW solar and storage Gemini facility in Nevada and the 653 MW Lumina Solar Project in Texas.

Nearly 60% of the planned capacity (25 GW) for the second half of 2024 is from solar. If this planned capacity comes online, solar additions will total 37 GW in 2024, a record in any one year and almost double last year’s 18.8 GW.

Battery storage made up the second-most capacity added so far this year, according to EIA. Battery additions made up 21% of new additions and were concentrated in four states: California, Texas, Arizona and Nevada.

10.8 GW of battery storage is planned for the latter half of 2024. If it all comes online, the 2024 total (15 GW) would be a record. Plans for storage capacity in Texas and California currently account for 81% of new battery storage capacity in the second half.

Wind power made up 12% (2.5 GW) of U.S. capacity additions. Canyon Wind (309 MW) and Goodnight (266 MW), both located in Texas, were the largest wind projects that came online in the first half of 2024.

Nuclear power also increased in the U.S. during the first half of 2024, with Vogtle Unit 4 in Georgia coming online in April.

Retirements slow

Retirements of U.S. electric generating capacity has slowed so far in 2024. Operators retired 5.1 GW of generating capacity in the first half of the year, compared to 9.2 GW retired during the same period in 2023.

Natural gas units represented more than half (53%) of the capacity retired in in the first half of 2024, followed by coal (41%).

According to EIA, about 2.4 GW of capacity is scheduled to retire during the second half, including 700 MW of coal and 1.1 GW of natural gas.