In one of the US's hottest deserts, utilities push gas rather than solar

This whole article seems light on nuance. The plant in question is a peaker plant. The entire point is to run it as little as practical. It's not being built to satisfy base load or to produce enormous amounts of total energy -- it's being build to supply capacity to the grid. Unlike solar or wind or even a battery system of any reasonable size, it can be run when needed and turned off when needed. It's entirely reasonable to build a sustainable grid based on lots of renewables and gas-fired peaker plants to keep everything working reliably under adverse conditions.

So surely the article should talk about the economics (to the grid operator and to the rate-payers) and how it, or a plant like it, affects the average emissions per unit energy supplied by the grid.

The next someone gets excited about installing a shiny new heat pump in a place that can get very cold (which includes parts of Arizona!), remember that its coefficient of performance can get quite low on a cold winter night, that it's really nice to keep one's house warm, that the sun won't be shining when this happens, and that the worst-case grid capacity has to come from somewhere. And, as some Texans can remind you, it really sucks when that energy fails to show up when needed. (Not to mention that parts of Arizona get very very hot and surprisingly humid, too, and the capaity needed for cooling and dehumidification on the worst days also has to come from somewhere.)

To be clear, I'm entirely in favor of calmly and carefully phasing out residential natural gas, but doing so is not at all a free lunch. In places where gas infrastructure already exists, and to the extent that leaks can be controlled adequately, an efficient, low-emission natural gas boiler/furnace is a very nice way to produce efficient heat in very cold weather, and it is just as efficient in very cold weather as it is in more mild weather. Unlike, say, a heat pump. Far too many people who want to phase natural gas out quickly don't consider the tradeoffs.

I have family who lived in Arizona for awhile, and I visited them. I was always confused why everything in Arizona wasn't covered in solar panels, because it seemed like ideal solar energy scenario. Of course, with these kinds of things there's often some thing you don't think of at first but it just seemed like every single parking shade and roof could be covered in solar and it would work very very well. Not only is solar radiation intense there, but it's a daily expectation, and the trees to the extent they exist (mostly mesquite) generally don't grow higher than the surrounding buildings.

This seems more reasonable than I expected from the headline. They already have a solar farm, they're looking to add a gas-fired peaker plant right next to it to handle spikes in demand. It won't run 24/7.

It's not great, but it's probably less bad than a coal-fired plant which is what they imply is used to meet the demand currently. And it's probably significantly cheaper than deploying enough battery storage to meet the demand.

There's also complaints about the location and about the plant being just under the size that would require an environmental review. Those are fair, but the utility is working withing the rules, so folks should really be taking those complaints to their legislature if they want the rules changed.

When you drive through California, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico it's surprising that not every house has solar plants and the deserts isn't full of large solar plants. If there ever has been an area that's perfect for solar, it's the southwest of the US.

Putting on the side the shady tactics that the energy company used to get a gas peaker close to houses...

For context:

"Arizona households use 66 million Btu of energy per home, 26% less than the U.S. average.

The combination of lower than average site consumption of all energy, but above average electricity which is relatively expensive, results in Arizona households spending 3% less for energy than the U.S. average."

source: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/sta...

So people in Arizona are using a lot less energy than the rest of the country, and only pay marginally less. Someone is making even more money on the energy bill.

And yes, solar is not perfect, and sometimes one needs some extra electricity on the grid (peakers). For a 16,000 household community, maybe batteries should be considered ? It is not like they have an heavy industry requiring high energy consumption 24/7. It is a small community (houses, and RV parks).

For instance, a Tesla Megapack 2 costs $1.5M and delivers 3.854 MWh so to replace the 98MWh gas peaker, we would need 25 x Megabuck 2, for a cost of $37.5M. How much the gas peaker is going to cost ? We can run the cost on maintenance too, which I suspect would also favor the battery solution.

This part of Arizona is just north of Lake Havasu (a reservoir on the Colorado River). Summer highs average 109 degrees (hottest days are 120+), nighttime lows average 85 degrees - so people need to run their air conditioning units after the sun goes down. Adding to the duck curve with more solar panels won't provide power for overnight use of AC systems.

The proposed gas plant is a 98MW gas peaker turbine. The alternative to gas peaker plants for this part of Arizona are pumped hydro and 'cold storage', where AC systems are run during off-peak hours to build up a reservoir of cold.

The Salt River Project (Arizona water/power company) is building a new pumped hydro facility, with a new reservoir uphill from Apache Lake (east of Phoenix): https://www.srpnet.com/grid-water-management/grid-management...

Downtown Phoenix has an 'ice storage' system that generates cold water using off-peak power, and uses this to cool ~40 buildings during the hottest part of the day: https://kjzz.org/content/527332/district-energy-system-under... / https://www.nrg.com/insights/innovation/nrg-energy-center-ph...

Surely there's an opportunity for pumped storage somewhere on the Central Arizona Project, which starts at Lake Havasu (738' elevation) and deposits its water at Lake Pleasant (1700' elevation): https://www.cap-az.com/

Don’t care about it until it’s in their backyard

> lawmakers and commissioners who are ideologically anti-clean energy

I don't believe anyone is actually pro pollution. More likely they stand to benefit financially from prolonged use of fossil fuels before it inevitably gets phased out.

I have a feeling that someday people are going to realize that the 1 or 2 EVs (with bidirectional power) in their home garage can handle most of the rooftop power storage needs. This would greatly remove the utilities out of the picture.

We still do need base & peak load and batteries are not sufficient currently.

These plants currently do have to be in someone’s backyard.

If we really care about transitioning as fast as possible, we should probably end our trade war with China over solar panels and EVs. “Buy America” requirements for green products will hamstring us.

Having tariffs on Chinese solar panels should help this calculus I’m sure.

The explanation for this is simple and has been true for decades: the major investors in utility corporations have huge holdings in fossil fuels. So if you own the electric utility and are trading gas futures and hold many shares in gas producers, then a transition to solar - while good for the customers and for the utility's balance sheets - hurts the investor's other larger interests.

It's comparable to kerosene lamp manufacturers and kerosene producers trying to block rural electrification because people would use electric lights if they only could get access to them.

Of course, this is why the US government - whose politicians are little more than middle managers for the investment capitalism system - implemented huge tariffs on Chinese monocrystalline silicon PV panels.

10-1 odds they’ll still vote for Trump and republicans in November.

Well as they say "You get what you vote for". I am sure these people will continue to vote against their own and the world's long term interests even after the plant is build :(