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Cloudy Skies What Hawaii Can Teach Us About Solar Power


Valin

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what-hawaii-can-teach-us-about-solar-powerVia Meadia:

Jun 29, 2015

 

Hawaii’s geography makes it well-suited for renewable energy—it’s forced to import and burn oil to generate electricity at great cost, and its sunny climate makes solar power an obvious choice. But for a state intent on going 100 percent green in just thirty short years, worrying signs of strain on power grids are already starting to appear. The WSJ reports:

 

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Grid stability is often overlooked or glossed over by renewable energy activists, but it remains a high hurdle communities will have to clear to significantly boost the share wind and solar have in the overall energy mix. Most grids as currently arrayed just aren’t equipped to send power in two directions, and as a result are destabilized when smaller, more distributed, and much more numerous solar and wind energy providers start providing power.

 

To make matters work, these renewables producers can’t contribute when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, meaning they need to draw from the grid during certain times of the day. Lacking any cost-effective commercial-scale energy storage options, that means Hawaii will continue to have to rely on fossil fuels for those cloudy, windless days.

 

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clearvision

They should just say sure you can have solar and tie into the grid. When the sun is out you have free power and any extra goes back to the utilities..... For Free. If you want to save the world with solar then you should be on board.

 

Everyone can't have solar and still expect reasonable power sources for night and cloudy days. A cheap ability to store your local solar power foe days will be required.

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