Posted by Cherie W
a resident of Jackson Park
on Feb 24, 2017 at 12:33 pm

As a condo owner whose HOA won't let us install solar panels on our shared roofs, I am super happy we will now be able to get carbon free electricity!

Posted by Max Hauser
a resident of Old Mountain View
on Feb 24, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Max Hauser is a registered user.

I'd like to get carbon-free electricity, too. Unfortunately, this program is "100% carbon-free" chiefly in (what silicon-valley product designers sometimes call) a "marketing sense." SCVE's power sources are certainly cleanER, therefore I support this program. But SCVE's cavalier "100% carbon-free" marketing rhetoric, which the Voice innocently repeats here, confuses public discussion even as it makes engineers wince. AFAIK no large-scale electricity source is 100% carbon-free in real-world accounting.

To claim wind, hydroelectric, or solar generation as "carbon-free" requires examining them in isolated operation, as if the equipment (a) appeared by magic and lasts forever, and (b) isn't sourcing power into a wholesale grid. That avoids accounting for the carbon costs of (a) manufacture, maintenance, and decommissioning ("life cycle"), and (b) side effects of feeding wholesale power distribution.

"Carbon-free" is particularly misleading with wind power. Wind generation is fine for self-contained tasks like rural pumping (that use the power whenever available for cumulative result). But to feed such an unpredictable and "chaotic" power source into an electricity grid, you must add a megawatt of dedicated, fast-response secondary generating capacity for every megawatt of wind generators, to fill in when the wind power drops out during demand. This secondary plant won't be a constant source (or it'd replace the wind generation). Normally it's an added fossil-fuel plant, whose fast response requirement entails higher greenhouse-gas and other emissions -- so much for "clean" power.