Hurricane Sandy on October 28, 2012

One knock on renewable energy is that it depends so much on the weather. Solar panels won’t make electricity unless the sun is shining. Wind turbines won’t work unless the wind is blowing.

Meanwhile, hydro power (dependent on dams), fossil fuel, and nuclear plants produce electricity constantly in all weather. That is, of course, until something shuts them down. Like Hurricane Sandy.

I have just read an article that claims Hurricane Sandy Uncovers Strength and Simplicity of Renewable Energy Systems.

Comments to the article are pretty scathing, but at least it can form the basis of considering if wind and solar offer any advantages in natural disasters.

Japan’s Fukushima-Dalichi nuclear plant was designed to withstand powerful earthquakes, but for some reason when it was built so close to the ocean, no one thought to design it to withstand a tsunami–a fairly standard consequence of an earthquake at sea. We all know what happened to that plant.

Wind turbines offshore suffered no damage. Of course, nothing very far off shore will suffer damage in a tsunami. The damage comes from piling up and crashing of water onshore. So what does that have to do with weather?

Catastrophic weather and electricity generation

Hurricane damage comes from the storm surge, strong winds, and flooding. Electric power plants can suffer rupture of gas lines , a fire and explosion hazard. Flooding of a power plant will pollute the flood water as it picks up oil, ash, and other hazardous materials stored on site. Nothing that happens to solar or wind installations will have such catastrophic environmental consequences.

The CEO of a Canadian wind power company pointed out that losing a blade on a wind turbine does not cause the other turbines to fail. Because the design of renewable technologies mimics nature, they can be more resilient and better withstand natural disasters. At least in theory.

The author quickly surveyed renewable energy projects in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy and repeated no reports of damage. The article contains no assessment of what damage may have been sustained by conventional power generating plants. In any case, many millions of customers lost power not because of failure of generation, but because of failure of the grid.

America’s power grid is seriously obsolete. We need to redesign it and reconstruct it. And when we do, there is no likelihood that we will ever weatherproof it completely. As things stand, whatever wind or solar projects feed into the grid can be of no avail when the grid fails.

On the other hand, many solar and wind installations are either off grid or can work independently of it. If wind or flooding does not destroy a building completely, the installation should continue to work as before. If some solar panels break, the others will keep working.

Implications for the future

While I agree that the article paints too rosy a picture of the resilience of wind and solar power, it raises an issue that certainly warrants close and careful attention. It also illustrates a certain tunnel vision in describing renewable energy resources.

I have expressed my opinion rather frequently on this blog that small-scale projects at the building or neighborhood level will be of more immediate benefit than the kinds of huge projects most likely to get government grants.

Solar and wind power are wonderful. They have some obvious advantages over industrial-age technologies. One advantage may turn out to be contributing to less widespread power outages in future storms. But let’s not be so much in love with them that we fail to notice other, newer kinds of renewable energy.

Here are two technologies on the horizon that use sewage. Neither has yet progressed beyond relatively small trials, but they both seem entirely weatherproof. At least, I can’t see why either one would stop working even if a flood overwhelms a wastewater treatment facility.

• It is now possible to use a heat pump to transfer heat from water running through sewer mains to a large building’s clean water supply. This underground geothermal energy can provide hot water to a building and also heating and cooling. That building will no longer need to use and maintain hot water heaters and other expensive equipment.
• Once the sewage reaches the wastewater treatment facility, technology called a microbial fuel cell is under development that will be able to use ordinary biological activity to generate electricity. If it becomes practical on a large enough scale, wastewater treatment plants may become a municipal profit center rather than an expense.

Photo credit: Satellite image from NASA