A new report shows the unreliability of solar energy while Tennessee continues to pursue it as an alternative to fossil fuels.
“Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that production from solar panels plummets in the winter,” Isaac Orr, a public policy fellow at the Center of the American Experience said.
He used Minnesota’s solar grid as a case study.
“Minnesota solar panels are most productive in June and July, when they produce almost 30 percent of their potential output,” he said. “Unsurprisingly, solar panels produce far less energy in November, December, and January, where production capacity factors are seldom above 10 percent.”
In other words, during winter, solar panels are fortunate to generate 10 percent of their maximum output.
Another obvious reason for the winter decline is that the sun is out for far fewer hours per day than during the summer. Snowfall can also greatly affect solar energy output.
Isaac describes solar technology as “less reliable than nuclear, coal, or natural gas power plant.”
But in Tennessee, Former Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) is making a fortune through his solar energy firm, called Silicon Ranch. Financial disclosures from Bredesen’s ultimately-doomed 2018 U.S. Senate campaign showed his net worth to be at least $88.9 million, and possibly up to $358 million. Some of that cash, no doubt, has been earned through his position as Founder and Chairman of Silicon Ranch.
That company is the solar energy platform for energy titan Shell.
The Nashville-based company recently closed on a deal that raised more than $225 million in new equity capital from its existing shareholders.
In 2020, Silicon Ranch inked a deal with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the state’s electricity utility, that would allow it to work with local power companies to provide five percent of their total energy output, which means those local power companies will use five percent less energy from the TVA.
The company did not say how much it would be paid for the project, but it did say it invested back into the community.
“In the process of building the project, Silicon Ranch invested millions of dollars of private capital into the local community and created more than 100 construction jobs, most of them hired locally,” a press release said.
The company broke ground on another such project in June.
“As the partners announced last September, the project is the first to enter the construction phase under TVA’s new Generation Flexibility Program that is designed to encourage local power companies (LPCs) to develop new distributed generation facilities,” it said at the time. “The Martin Solar Farm will allow BrightRidge to generate clean energy to lower costs and support community and economic development.”
Silicon Ranch is currently valued at more than $1 billion.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
