Characteristics of Wind and Solar Power For Decision Makers Jay Apt Tepper School of Business and Department of Engineering & Public Policy Carnegie Mellon University June 13, 2011

Briefing given to 2 sets of decision makers FERC staff May 26, 2011 –Jamie Simler, the Director of FERC’s Office of Energy Policy and Innovation; –Arnie Quinn, the Director of the Division of Economic and Technical Analysis within the FERC Office of Energy Policy and Innovation; –Ed Murrell, the Deputy Director of the Division of Economic and Technical Analysis –Aaron Bloom, the "forecasting guy" in that office. Equinox Energy Summit June 5-9, 2011 –17 Ontario and Canada federal government ministers and staff 2

3 Hydroelectric Wind Geothermal

4 Operating Wind Farms Wind farms > 5 MW

5 Land use can be benign

6 Or, Not so Benign

8

Extreme wind events are much more likely than predicted by Gaussian statistics 9 Gaussian (normal) statistics Actual Texas data

Wind sometimes fails for many days Sum of ~1000 turbines

11 15 Days of 10-Second Time Resolution Data

Smoothing by Adding Wind Farms … has diminishing returns Source: Katzenstein, W., E. Fertig, and J. Apt, The Variability of Interconnected Wind Plants. Energy Policy, (8):

Hydroelectric Power has Droughts

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Wind Probably Does Too Source: Katzenstein, W., E. Fertig, and J. Apt, The Variability of Interconnected Wind Plants. Energy Policy, (8):

16 Operating Solar PV Units > 5 MW

17 Comparison of Wind with Solar PV 4. 6 MW TEP Solar Array (Arizona) Minutes kW

18 Nameplate capacity Capacity Factor: 19%

19 CO 2 and NO x from natural gas that fills in n = Firm PowerVariable Power Compensating Power Time Power Gas Wind

20 Emissions Factors

21 Final Comments None of this means that wind or solar (if costs ever come down) can't be used at large scale, but wind/solar will require a portfolio of fill-in power (some with very high ramp rates, some with slow), good land use planning, and R&D to optimize emissions control for fast and deep ramping.

Thank you. Jay Apt 22