Richard Perez, a senior research associate at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC), and his colleagues have developed a blueprint for achieving 100 percent clean energy in the United States. His cost-effective solution bridges the gap between the production of renewables, such as solar and wind, and customer demand. On this episode, Perez describes how oversizing renewable assets and energy curtailment, paired with changes in utility regulation, can helps states reach their ambitious clean energy goals.
Richard Perez, a senior research associate at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center (ASRC), and his colleagues have developed a blueprint for achieving 100 percent clean energy in the United States.
His cost-effective solution bridges the gap between the production of renewables, such as solar and wind, and customer demand.
On this episode, Perez describes how oversizing renewable assets and energy curtailment, paired with changes in utility regulation, can helps states reach their ambitious clean energy goals.
Perez's paper was published in PV-Tech Power in May 2019.
[Read more on Perez's research. ](http://)
The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.
Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.
Sarah O.:
Welcome to the UAlbany News podcast. I'm your host, Sarah O'Carroll. On our last episode, we spoke with Jeff Friedman, a research associate at UAlbany's atmospheric sciences research center on his project to create a wind extremes forecast systems. This week we're speaking with a senior research associate at ASRC, Richard Perez, on what he says is the blueprint for achieving one hundred percent clean energy in the U.S.. Richard, thank you for being here this morning.
Richard Perez:
You're welcome.
Sarah O.:
Now on your latest study that was recently published you describe that there is a perfect forecast model. What do you mean by this?
Richard Perez:
Okay, so there are actually two studies. One is the perfect forecast and the other one is the least cost ultra high penetration of intermittent renewals.
Sarah O.:
Okay
Richard Perez:
So I'm going to talk first about the ultra high penetration. There are all those plans to go one hundred percent renewable every state has that, every governor has their plan, but there is no blueprint attached to it. And you can see a lot of opposition because people think it's not realistic and they may be right at one level. But we can show that it can be done anyways. The reason why it may not be perceived as realistic is because there are only two renewables that are large enough to do the job. It's wind and solar, solar much bigger than wind. But both of them could do it. They both intermittent, so they cannot be dispatched 24/7. So you have to do something and if the something you do and everybody is looking at this way now is to use storage to put it in energy storage reserves when the wind doesn't blow, the sun doesn't shine and use it when you have excess or vice-versa.
Sarah O.:
Specifically, for seasons, is that correct?
Richard Perez:
Yes, seasonal and several cloudy days and nights, etc. You need so, so much storage that the thing is totally unaffordable, way, way too expensive. So the skeptics are right to doubt that situation. However, they're not thinking outside the box. To be fair, that's not my idea. It's an idea my son had for his PhD. at Columbia University.
Sarah O.:
Oh, wow, interesting.
Richard Perez:
He is one of the distant co-authors of that paper as well. But if you oversize your supply, say you need one kilowatt worth of photovoltaics to the job, but it's viable so you need to store it. But if you put two kilowatts instead and decide that I'm just going to use the stable part of that one kilowatt and spill away, curtail the excess then you need much, much, much less storage to the point where despite the fact that you pay twice as much for the wind or photovoltaics, you will pay so much less in storage that at the end of the day the cost of energy will be affordable and you can think of actually replacing everything else out there with that dispatchable [inaudible 00:03:15] or wind.
Sarah O.:
So when you say curtail do you mean kind of throwing it away in a sense?
Richard Perez:
Yup, throwing it away.
Sarah O.:
Okay.
Richard Perez:
So you build twice as much as you need and you throw away the excess when you don't need it.
Sarah O.:
And what's the perfect formula for that? Is it ... I'm sure it depends on the context in where it's going and the different variables at play, but is it twice as much as you just said or what's the kind of formula?
Richard Perez:
It's optimized and it depends on the climate you resource. So when you go way up North and winters are very dark and cloudy, you're going to need to oversize way more. If you develop a system for the Caribbeans, there is actually no seasons there and you are not going to need to oversize that much. For the U.S. it's in between depending on you're in Texas or New York. So we did that study in Minnesota, the one that at the basis of all those reports and that was led in fact not by Carl Robego and I but by Mark, my son, and Morgan Putnam from Clean Power Research, who are just accessories to that study. And in Minnesota, the bottom line was that if you oversize by 30 - 40%, you're going to get very low costs, pure renewable energy.
Sarah O.:
And then, you aren't diverting that cost to storage because you don't need to do that anymore?
Richard Perez:
You don't need that much. You always need storage. Storage is like the glue because at night you still need some stuff. There is no sunshine at night and if the wind doesn't blow you need something, but you need much, much less of it. And you can afford it.
Sarah O.:
What would be some counterarguments or what are some things no matter how perhaps misguided these arguments are ... what are they saying of why this might not be a popular idea and how might you counteract that?
Richard Perez:
Well the one I hear most often and it's easy to debunk is the fact that are you going to oversize photovoltaics, you are going to cover so much land. It's not going to be possible. But if you work down to the numbers, you can see that it doesn't take all that much space.
Richard Perez:
And in fact we published a peer reviewed paper last Fall and we compared hydropower to solar energy. If we covered only a quarter of the artificial reservoirs in this country with oversized, twice oversized, photovoltaics you would produce 100% of the power of the U.S. demand for energy with photovoltaics. And mind you the lakes, the hydropower only produces 7% today. So we already committed to huge swaths of space with those artificial power dams, hydropower dams, and we're only producing 7% while we could only cover a fraction of that with photovoltaics even after oversizing and spilling away, Half of it and produce 100% of the U.S. electricity. So these put things way, way in perspective. People still think that, yeah you're going to tear down forests, build giant power[inaudible 00:06:18], but no. In New York, it would take maybe one to one and one-half percent of the real estate of New York State to produce 100% of the energy via photovoltaics.
Sarah O.:
Wow.
Richard Perez:
So if you put it in your backyard, that's a big one percent. But if you [inaudible 00:06:33] proceeds intelligently and you do a study where can I put photovoltaics, you find out that there are tons of spaces where you can do that.
Sarah O.:
So when for instance Governor Cuomo is saying we want to mandate 100% clean power by 2040 and California doing the same thing by 2045, you're saying that this is possible by using this type of, this thinking and this plan?
Richard Perez:
Yes, those plans are nice, but they come without a blueprint. And unfortunately if we let the system work its way through the current regulation, it's not going to work. It's going to hit a wall. And the reason is that nobody pays for oversizing and curtailment today. The regulations are not adapted to that. So if you are a sole developer in the business of making money building power plants, today you have no incentive whatsoever to build an oversize because for you, it's a loss.
Sarah O.:
So it seems like that's what is at least one of the big things that has to change in changing the regulations [inaudible 00:07:33] for utility companies.
Richard Perez:
Absolutely. The key is not technology, the key is regulation. The key is intelligent regulation.
Sarah O.:
And it sounds like in order to do that we'll have to change the ideological thinking behind because it's not wasting as you said because it's a curtailment but that rather this is creating a more sustainable solution.
Richard Perez:
It's the optimized solution. And if you think of it nature curtails solar already. We're already curtailing solar, I mean, that parking lot that gets hot in the summer where does the solar energy go? It goes in the air. It heats up the environment. So the solar energy is being curtailed under our very eyes every minute, every day but we just don't see it happening. So it just doing a little more of the same.
Sarah O.:
So I don't necessarily have to view it as bad politics because this is already happening naturally.
Richard Perez:
No, its been viewed as bad politics because it's a carryover from the old days when solar was really, really expensive and you just wanted, you could not afford to build a little more. You wanted to ... today the thing that has happened, solar is probably the cheapest way to make electricity today with solar panels.
Sarah O.:
And I saw that the International Renewable Energy Agency had just announced in May that electricity generated by solar and offshore wind, onshore wind would be cheaper than any fossil fuel source by this year, by 2020.
Richard Perez:
Yeah it is cheaper already in many places and that's where people call great parity. So great parity is producing a kilowatt hour of electricity with gas turbines. So if you're below that you're below great parity because the main ingredient on the power grid today is natural gas. However, I'm careful when I hear those things from IRENA or the other groups about being the cheapest way because they're still talking of unconstrained electricity which is intermittent electricity. And the real costs comes to supply the dispatchable, the 24/7 electricity. And that's where the solution of overbuilding and curtailment comes into play. But nobody thinks about it, yet.
Richard Perez:
So you hear a lot that it's the cheapest and everything, but it's not a fair statement because you cannot compare today a very cheap solar kilowatt hour to gas turbine kilowatt hour because one is available 24/7, dispatchable, the other one is not. However, what we bring to the table is that if you think a little bit outside the box and apply smart ideas you can transform that very cheap intermittent kilowatt hour from wind or solar into 24/7 dispatchable kilowatt hour that can be cheaper than gas.
Sarah O.:
Hm, that's interesting. I want to return to your son, your son's idea that kind of spawned the study. What was that conversation like? Was it something ... did he have this idea talking with you over conversations or how did you hear about his idea?
Richard Perez:
Well, he grew up in an all-solar house. So he's been infused with solar energy research since he was a baby. And then he went to work for New York City building photovoltaics on the skyscrapers up there for private companies, actually hands-on stuff. And then he joined the graduate program at Columbia University.
Sarah O.:
Oh great.
Richard Perez:
He had an idea and he received an NSF grant to do his research. Yeah, we discussed the project throughout with his advisor. It was a very constructive thing. His idea was how can I do 100% solar and zero into the optimum solution which is what [inaudible 00:11:23]. That didn't come like that, but it came after thinking, eliminating all the possibilities and you say at the end of the day, "yea," the cheapest way is to oversize.
Sarah O.:
That does seem to be the biggest critique of these national proposals or the Green New Deal. It sounds wonderful but a bit vague as a critique.
Richard Perez:
Absolutely. So what we bring to the table is the blueprint to make it happen. You don't need to re-engineer the power grid or make it super, super smart. It can actually replace current generation which is dispatchable 24/7 available with the same, but cleaner.
Sarah O.:
Back to the perfect forecast model, what's the dynamic between these studies? Do they cross over?
Richard Perez:
Okay, the perfect forecast model uses the same approach. You overbuild and you curtail as your least cost solution, but what you're trying to achieve is like a baby step compared to doing, replacing everything 100%. So when you're going to do 100%, you're going to try to transform your solar and wind viable output into something that the power grid needs every day, day in day out with peaks, valley, nights, something very flexible.
Richard Perez:
In the case of perfect forecast, we're going to do something much easier. The only thing we're going to try to transform is our viable wind solar into something we predicted 24 hours ahead. So since our forecasts are pretty good to begin with, it's not a very hard job to fit it into that shape. But you use exactly the same approach of overbuilding a little bit using storage, optimizing it, curtailing. But the job is much easier. So for me, I see that as a baby entry step for grid operators to start with perfect forecasts and as you put more and more resource, renewable resources, on the grid then you up, you make the job more difficult.
Sarah O.:
Okay
Richard Perez:
The first step perfect forecast is a very low cost proposition. And that's what we're going to try to demonstrate here on the campus, operating a power plant as if it were delivering precisely what we predict 24 hours ahead.
Sarah O.:
That's great. And what's the timeline for that project?
Richard Perez:
Timeline? Hopefully I hope that will be running by the end of the year or early next year.
Sarah O.:
That's great. And can anybody...how can people get involved or at least be able to witness what's going on and learn more about it?
Richard Perez:
Read our papers. Currently we are still at the stage where we are looking for both technical partners and a little bit of funding. We have some of the funding not all of it to make it happen. All the actors are pretty much in place. The university facilities are very much on board with the idea and they love it. So it's going to happen one way or the other. We're lining up in fact technical partners. We need to change the inverters so we can actually talk to that inverter to tell it to curtail because that's what... you know what an inverter is between a photovoltaic system on your roof and the power grid there is something that transforms solar power from DC to AC.
Sarah O.:
Okay
Richard Perez:
That's [inaudible 00:14:48] compatible. And if you want to curtail PV output you have to talk to an inverter that's smart enough to listen to what you have to tell. Tell him I only need 80% of what you can give me now, not more. The inverter will just do it for you. Technology can do that today. But we have to change the current equipment to do that. We have to have batteries optimized in size.
Sarah O.:
Okay.
Richard Perez:
But by next year, I hope we'll have data in and the thing will be demonstrated and workable.
Sarah O.:
That will be exciting to see it play out. Now do you have any lingering questions on the study that we started out talking about as far as oversizing and curtailment? What are some things that you might want to explore or how else might others build on this avenue of research as well as how they might practically implement this?
Richard Perez:
So the biggest thing with oversizing and curtailment is change the perception that curtailment or wasting excess solar or excess wind is a bad thing. It is the catalyst. It's a good thing that will lead you to the least cost solution. It's very counterintuitive, almost contrarian. That's the biggest hurdle. You have to change the frame of mind that way. And the regulators, the people who set the rules of the game for people to inject solar and wind on the grid have to take that into account if they want to reach the least cost solution for massive solar and wind they have to enable that capability. Today, it's totally ... you won't want to do that today.
Sarah O.:
And even if energy storage becomes cheaper in the long run that still might not be cheap enough to beat what you're saying?
Richard Perez:
Yeah, I'm going to quote my son again so that optimum point of curtailment and oversizing is an optimized economic model based on the cost of solar and the cost of storage. So if solar is cheaper and storage is more expensive you would want to oversize more and use less storage. But if storage gets much less and solar doesn't get as cheap as we think of it then you're going to want to optimize less. But there will always be an optimum solution. oversizing will always be part of the solution. But that optimum oversizing point will depend on the cost of storage, the cost of solar and the climate where you are.
Sarah O.:
Do you have any final takeaways that you would want to share with our listeners?
Richard Perez:
Takeaway, we're also having ... we had that big Minnesota study where we were just part of it, but we're also actively involved into grids in the Caribbeans and the Indian Ocean where they're actually looking for solutions to do 100% solar. So those results will also hit the publication stage by the Winter I would say.
Sarah O.:
Looking forward to reading those and learning more about it.
Richard Perez:
All right.
Sarah O.:
Richard, thank you so much for being here.
Richard Perez:
Thank you, it was a pleasure.
Sarah O.:
Thank you for listening to the Well Body News podcast. I'm your host Sarah O'Carroll and that was Richard Perez, the senior research associate at UAlbany's atmospheric sciences research center. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by emailing us at mediarelations@albany.edu or you can find us on Twitter at UAlbanynews.