Great Letter to WILCO Sun on Georgetown Green Energy Claim

Gary Pitt, a retired IBM engineer had a letter to the editor published today which he has graciously allowed me to post here. He makes great points on the Green Energy claim by Georgetown and provides new data.

Georgetown Not 100% Renewable

The city of Georgetown has received considerable press and accolades for the recently announced plan to move to 100% renewable electric energy by 2017 with contracts for wind and solar farms. Unfortunately, there are times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining and these sources will not supply required power. During those times, Georgetown will rely on the grid managed by ERCOT. Last year, the grid got 88 % of its energy from natural gas, coal, and nuclear. Therefore, Georgetown will be dependent on non-renewables when solar and wind are inadequate. The City estimates this will happen about 2% of the time which seems small but is about 29 minutes a day or 175 hours a year. The claim of 100% renewable is inaccurate; wind and solar cannot meet that claim and storage technologies are not available to back them up. This is important to understand because electric providers are getting political and regulation pressures to put more renewables on line. And yet, to provide consistent power, the renewables must be backed up with fossil fuel or nuclear generators. In the end, we consumers have to pay for this redundancy.  I believe my view and concerns are shared by the Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman, Donna Nelson who addressed this issue at Texas Tech law school early March of this year. (http://lubbockonline.com/education/2015-03-02/public-utility-commission-chair-speaks-against-clean-power-plan-texas-tech-law#.VWPgwl1FC71)

The internet has numerous articles praising Georgetown’s plan to go all renewable with few mentions of the grid dependency for consistent power. My concern is the city of Georgetown is generating a false set of expectations regarding renewable energy. If all utilities in Texas followed Georgetown’s example, we would have a disaster on our hands.

Gary Pitt

Georgetown, TX

Stay tuned as more information and analysis is forthcoming!