Power to the People
During my town hall last week, I got a sincere question about solar power from a recent Arizona State University graduate. I’ve since read on social media some of the comments about this exchange that don’t reflect the actual dialogue, so I thought I’d clarify.
The man who raised the question pointed out entities like ASU and the island of Kauai are moving forward aggressively with solar. He’s right. ASU is a leader both in research and deployment of solar. But as I mentioned, solar only works when the sun shines, and we don’t have sufficient battery storage to keep the lights on and the air conditioners running when the sun isn’t shining.
Here was the actual exchange:
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Senator Flake: “As I said before, we have abundant sunlight here, and that’s great, and I am fully supportive of moving toward renewables as fast as we can. But we’ve got to also recognize that the sun doesn’t always shine.”
Questioner: “But that’s why we have batteries…”
Senator Flake: “Exactly. That’s what I’ve said, we do need more research into utility scale batteries. Frankly, we’re quite a ways off. In the interim, what concerns me, is that many of those concerned about climate change will also say that we need to get away from nuclear energy as well, and nuclear energy is almost the only carbon free energy out there. We have to ensure that we have base load power when the sun isn’t shining until we have batteries that can store it, and that’s going to be a long way off. In the mean time, we shouldn’t consign the planet or our kids to inaction. And so we can’t just say we will go all solar tomorrow. We’ve got to have other things, like natural gas, because that’s cleaner than coal, we’ve got have nuclear, because that’s carbon free…
Questioner: “The island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, is 100 percent powered by the sun. Tesla and Solar City have installed it.”
Senator Flake: “What we’ve got to do, is we’ve got to have base load power now. You can’t tell people we’re going to turn off your power at night because the sun isn’t shining.”
Questioner: “Batteries, Batteries.”
Senator Flake: “We’ll have them at some point, we don’t today.”
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While companies like Tesla are already marketing home-scale battery units, it will be years, or more likely decades, before we have significant utility-scale battery storage. When the questioner said that Kauai is 100 percent powered by the sun, he was a bit optimistic. Tesla has begun installing utility-scale batteries on the island of Kauai, but Kauai is not even close to being 100 percent powered by the sun. In fact, my understanding is that Kauai’s goal is to be 50 percent powered by renewables by 2023.
