Could renewable energy and natural gas team to meet power needs?Jun 13 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Jeannie Kever Houston ChronicleRenewable energy and natural gas could work together as sources of electricity generation, rather than as competitors on the Texas grid, according to a new report produced for the Texas Clean Energy Coalition. "The bottom line is that Texas is going to require a significant source of new generation in the immediate future," said former state Sen. Kip Averitt, the coalition chairman. "We believe there is a place for renewable energies, especially when backed up with natural gas as the base." Averitt, a Waco Republican, served as chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee before leaving the Legislature in 2010. The report, produced by the Brattle Group with funding from the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, looks at the relationship between natural gas and renewable resources on the grid run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which covers 85 percent of the state. A second report, due out in a few months, will consider how best to integrate the two sources. Texas is a key test market, since it has the nation's largest installed wind-generation capacity, at 12 gigawatts, and is also the leading producer of natural gas. But hot summer days squeeze electric reserves, leading to emergency notices asking customers to conserve power and the possibility of rolling blackouts. Still, efforts to encourage investors to build new generating capacity have fallen short. The Brattle Group report, "Partnering Natural Gas and Renewables in ERCOT," notes that in the short-term, wind power tends to displace natural gas-generated electricity on the grid because it's cheaper -- wind is free. Add in the 2.2 cent-per-kilowatt-hour federal production tax credit, and "wind generators are willing to bid their generation into the ERCOT market at a price of zero or even lower," according to the report. Even with low natural gas prices, a gas-fired generating plant can't compete. Mixing the two can help keep costs lower for consumers, said Peter Fox-Penner, one of the report's co-authors. Wind energy isn't always available, because it can't be stored and wind is intermittent. Natural gas plants can ramp up and down to complement wind output more easily than coal or nuclear plants, according to the report. "My concern is that our portfolio of generation needs to include the whole gamut of fuel sources," Averitt said. "Going forward, there's going to be room for some of the historical sources and some of the new. I don't buy into the fact that just because we've always done it this way, that's the way we have to do it in the future." http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=28964942 |