Doug Pfitzenmaier: Secondary sources of energy

Regarding the July 2 letter “Clean energy mandates”: Since the letter-writer works for a company that is in business only because of the current law (and tax credits), his comments need to be considered on that basis.

I looked at a recent electric bill, and the line item for the renewable cost was $0.83. While this is not a lot of money, I don’t know what the basis of that is and whether that reflects true cost of the law.

I’m also sure that Google, Apple and Facebook care more about the generous tax credits and the already below the national average electric rates from Duke Energy than the true benefit of the renewable energy law as currently written in North Carolina.

While renewables may be a part of our energy supply future, they are not dispatchable and cannot be counted on when the load demand may require a certain amount of generation. On that basis they must be treated as a secondary or tertiary supply and other (fossil, nuclear, hydro) methods of generation must be maintained in a fully capable status to ensure that the necessary generation is always available when the load (100 percent driven by customer demand) requires it.

This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Doug Pfitzenmaier: Secondary sources of energy."