MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) – While excessive chilly climate could also be much less widespread than hurricanes within the Sunshine State, the lethal Texas winter storm final yr that left thousands and thousands with out energy and uncovered them to record-low temperatures has motivated FPL to significantly contemplate how ready it will be within the face of the same menace in its protection space.
To accomplish this, the Juno Beach-based utility intends to maintain some energy vegetation in rotation, reasonably than destine them for retirement, and almost double the quantity of its future battery storage capability.
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“We believe it’s reasonable to expect that it’s going to happen in the future, and we need to be prepared for it,” FPL spokesperson Chris McGrath mentioned. “We learn from every single storm.”
Five producing items powered by pure fuel in Manatee County and the Panhandle which can be able to producing 1,790 megawatt-hours of vitality will probably be placed on “emergency standby mode,” McGrath mentioned, ought to the necessity come up to fulfill excessive electrical energy demand.
The two Manatee County items had been set to retire on the finish of 2021, after the corporate unveiled its solar-powered battery with a 409-megawatt capability in Parrish, and the opposite three items in Bay and Escambia counties would have gone offline over the subsequent six years.
FPL cold-weather plan outlined in submitting for state utility regulators
FPL outlined these plans in a 10-year outlook submitted annually to the Public Service Commission, which regulates investor-owned electrical and fuel utilities. While the local weather and grid system in Texas differs from Florida, the situation isn’t one anybody needs to see repeated.
After the February 2021 storm in Texas lasted for a number of days and was linked to the deaths of 246 folks, FPL mentioned in its almost 600-page doc that it “could not be sure of its ability to serve all of its customers in the event of an extreme winter weather event.”
The utility famous that demand for electrical energy within the winter is usually decrease than in the summertime, and excessive winter climate in Florida will be “infrequent,” however it cited two cases in its historical past when excessive demand in response to frigid temperatures left clients with out energy. Many succumbed to the consequences of hypothermia, whereas others died as a result of they relied on electricity-powered medical units.
The first instance introduced was a freeze round Christmas in 1989. The vacation weekend was met with arctic air, bringing space temperatures right down to the 20s. FPL was confronted with an overloaded system, with greater than 1 million clients throughout Florida hit with rolling blackouts, and 300,000 with out energy for a number of hours.
Almost twenty years later, 1000’s misplaced energy when an extended streak of chilly climate hit South Florida. FPL hit a peak for electrical demand at 21,500-megawatt hours on a January day in 2010, a file that is still immediately.
Had FPL not thought-about excessive winter climate on this yr’s 10-year outlook, the utility was ready so as to add 1,800 megawatts of battery storage to its fleet between now and 2031. Now, contemplating a possible climate menace to the grid, the utility needs so as to add 3,200 megawatts of battery storage.
How would Biden administration’s stalled Build Back Better laws profit FPL?
How shortly FPL expands its photo voltaic plant fleet may hinge one piece of laws: Build Back Better.
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The infrastructure spending package deal handed by the House final yr has but to move the Senate, with two Democratic senators throwing a wrench in the potential of the invoice ever transferring ahead.
Still, FPL is eyeing the potential tax credit related to new utility-owned renewable vitality. The laws boosts the tax credit score for batteries to 30% from 10% and lets utilities obtain a tax credit score primarily based on the quantity of megawatt hours generated from a brand new photo voltaic facility
For the primary time, the laws proposes a credit score for hydrogen vegetation at $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced. This may help FPL because the utility works on a pilot “green” hydrogen plant in Okeechobee to enter service late subsequent yr.
By utilizing photo voltaic vitality – which is why the method is taken into account “green” – to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, the corporate believes it may substitute pure fuel as a gas, additional weaning FPL off fossil fuels.
The cash saved by tax credit, McGrath mentioned, is “passed right onto customers.”
Without realizing what the way forward for this laws holds, FPL by 2031 plans so as to add sufficient photo voltaic services to supply 9,462-megawatt hours of vitality. New power-generating services, together with photo voltaic, are paid for by clients by their month-to-month payments.
But if these renewable vitality tax credit had been handed, the utility may greater than double that determine.
“Build Back Better would allow us to accelerate future builds into earlier years to take advantage of cost savings,” McGrath mentioned.
Other highlights of FPL’s 10-year outlook:
The utility will retire its stakes in 4 coal-powered producing items exterior Florida, a few of which had been absorbed by the acquisition of Gulf Power. The 76% possession in a 630-megawatt unit in Georgia was retired in January, whereas the 50% possession of two items totaling 500 megawatts within the Mississippi Power service territory will probably be retired by January 2024. Lastly, the 25% possession of one other 215-megawatt unit in Georgia will probably be retired by the tip of 2028.
By 2031, FPL plans to get 38% of its vitality from zero-emission sources.
FPL will formally join its system with Gulf Power by mid-2022 by putting in a 161-kilovolt transmission line.
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