Solar looks bright on Long Island
The sun doesn't always shine. But it's still a power source.
A vast solar panel array at Brookhaven National Laboratory is now providing almost enough juice to the Long Island Power Authority to displace a fossil fuel plant. And soon, the lab will be able to gather data from that array to shed even more light on how we can better use this plentiful and renewable power source. This is big, not only for the actual energy it's producing, but for what it could mean to the future of solar power nationally and to the economy of Long Island.
The 32-megawatt Long Island Solar Farm at the lab is owned by BP Solar and Met Life. The Department of Energy is allowing the use of the lab's land. LIPA has agreed to buy the power it produces for the next 20 years. And it's now churning out enough electricity to supply up to 4,500 homes.
Batteries still do an inadequate job of storing solar output until it's needed. That means the pressing, elusive secret is how to predict how much power the farm will turn out, so LIPA can plan accurately to use electricity from other sources when the solar juice is lower. Early next year, data collection by the lab will start creating that predictability, by correlating the skies above -- down to the passage of a single cloud -- with the electrical output of the panels below.
Later next year, the lab will have its own array, producing up to 1 megawatt, near the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, where scientists are working on new solar materials that could create major cost and efficiency breakthroughs. That array will allow major companies to test out new technologies.
The other part of the good solar news is smaller, but also important. When LIPA asked for proposals for 50 megawatts of solar, it chose BP Solar for the lab and enXco, a San Diego renewable energy firm, for up to 17 megawatts at seven Suffolk spots: the Brentwood, Ronkonkoma and Deer Park railroad stations; two county facilities in Hauppauge; one in Riverhead; and the Cohalan court complex in Central Islip. Once they're all working, we'll know more about the ups and downs of solar power distributed over multiple locations, just as the lab array will teach us about the workings of a single huge one.
In the short term, though, what is this costing? A kilowatt-hour of solar energy is more expensive than one from coal or oil, though the difference is narrowing. LIPA says buying this green energy will cost the average residential customer a net of about 60 cents more a month. That's a wise investment in our energy future. Also, LIPA knows exactly what it's going to pay for this power source for the full 20 years -- a welcome change from the spiky volatility of oil prices. In sharp contrast to the unfolding scandal over a federal loan guarantee to Solyndra, a solar panel company that went belly-up, LIPA is dealing here with mature firms that have real experience in capturing and selling the sun's power over the long haul.
In any case, we have no choice. We clearly have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to cope with the dwindling reserves of oil. So LIPA, the lab and the county are pioneers in pursuit of something our nation needs: a brighter, cleaner -- and eventually cheaper -- energy future.