New England’s transition to renewable electricity is complicated by differences between the generation mixes in and the renewables targets set by its six component states. New England’s approach to fostering renewables by replacing dispatchable fossil fuel generation with wind and solar also does not help. New England does not have enough pipeline capacity to feed its gas plants during high-demand periods when gas generation is most needed, and during the cold weather at the end of 2017 it had to mobilize essentially all of its remaining coal and oil-fired capacity to keep the lights on. If coal and nuclear plant retirements continue blackouts would appear to be inevitable during future cold weather periods. Barring a miraculous advance in energy storage technology New England’s electricity sector also has essentially zero chance of ever going 100% renewable. (Inset: 670 MW Pilgrim nuclear plant, scheduled for shutdown in 2019).
I’m always eager to add more electricity grid data to my collection, and regular correspondent Willem Post recently sent me 2017 daily generation and demand data for the New England Independent Service Operator (ISIO) grid that appear to be reliable and which I have used as the basis for this analysis. So a hat tip to Willem.
New England consists of six states in the northeastern US (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine) with a total population of 8 million and an annual electricity demand of ~115 TWh, about the same as the Netherlands. State locations are shown in the map below:
There are, however, large differences between generation mixes in the different states:
- Connecticut: 50% nuclear, 50% gas (0% renewables)
- Maine: 11% wind, 25% gas, 29% hydro, 27% biomass (77% renewables)
- Massachusetts: 13% oil, 62% gas, 15% nuclear, 9% renewables
- New Hampshire: 50% nuclear, 33% gas, renewables “most of the rest” (maybe 15%?)
- Rhode Island: 94% natural gas, 4% renewables
- Vermont: 16% wind, 5% solar, 56% hydro, 23% biomass (100% renewables)
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