Every year, the US Department of Energy (DOE), grants more than $1 billion to universities to build and test wind and solar plants—with specific targets set so that only about one-quarter of the costs can be covered by the funds. These grants are usually for up to five years, so the first few years will be spent on getting enough financing to get the plants started. This phase will be a big “marketing event,” since there’s a need for investment in wind and solar installations to make sure that they can continue to grow.
As the DOE writes in its wind and solar grants FAQs, “There are many ways to get involved in the clean energy market, including directly funding wind and solar, working with utility companies, government entities, and universities, supporting legislation that affects the development of renewable energy, and participating in wind and solar auctions through your local or state wind and solar cooperative.”
But funding isn’t enough, according to the DOE. “We want to see sustained investment from the public, utility, and other stakeholders to make the grid more stable, more reliable, more secure, more affordable, and more productive than it is today,” said John Hartigan, DOE’s regional administrator for the Midwest. “But the key is for the industry – the companies and individuals committed to these technologies – to show real results now.”
How much money does it really take to build a new wind or photovoltaic plant that has a grid-connected backup system? Just a few million dollars, at least. And that’s to build the plant itself: The backup power must come from somewhere, otherwise the generator gets fed up with all the power the system was supposed to deliver to it.
According to the DOE, there are three different kinds of plants that meet these standards: wind turbines and photovoltaic arrays that convert sunlight into electricity, and hybrid projects to use a generator as part of the electricity grid—sometimes, but not always, that generator will have enough capacity to run the grid on its own:
The typical wind turbine has a blades that move along a guideway, and has an electric current as a back-up. In wind, this generates electricity that’s passed through the blades and the generator to run a generator.
The photovoltaic array is made up of mirrors and semiconductor strips. These create a magnetic field that is then transmitted back down the blades:
Wind turbines typically have turbines that have blades that go along a highway
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