Tag: Energy Department

President Donald Trump has made his wind power aversion well known. On at least five separate occasions recently, he called windmills ugly, expensive and altogether useless.

His Transportation Department canceled $679 million in federal funding that would have benefited offshore wind projects, and his Interior Department ordered work to stop on a major wind project off Rhode Island that was nearly finished.

The U.S. Energy Department chimed in with a Sept. 5 post on X.

“Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and when the wind is not blowing,” the post said.

The following day, X users added a community note — a crowdsourced fact-check — to the post, saying the department was wrong because “batteries allow electricity to be stored and used at a different time than when it is generated.”

Many of the energy experts we contacted agreed that wind and solar energy can be stored. They added that wind and solar power also have other advantages, beyond their zero carbon emissions once they start operating.

“That’s like saying that a commercial aircraft is worthless when it isn’t flying,” said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy Institute at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Obviously, any piece of capital equipment does not operate 100% of the time. The question is whether the value it creates when it is operating justifies the capital investment.”

Elon Musk, whose company Tesla manufactures batteries (and who owns X), replied to the post with the comment, “Um … hello?” and linked to an article about one of his battery products.

The Energy Department did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

How to store power generated by wind and solar infrastructure

Experts said wind and solar powered equipment, on their own, do not store energy. The process requires an extra step.

Batteries, as the X community note said, are one method.

“We now have increasingly widespread and affordable battery storage at the home and the utility scale,” said Christopher R. Knittel, professor of energy economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. “That allows renewable energy produced during the day to be stored and used at night or during demand spikes.”

Storage of wind and solar power is “commonly done in California and Texas today, among other locations,” Borenstein said, contributing “significantly” to the electricity supply.

Another option is to use wind and solar power to pump water into an elevated reservoir and release water when needed, harnessing the gravitational pull to power turbines, said Kenneth Gillingham, an economist with the Yale School of the Environment.

Adding storage capacity does require additional cost, which might make the overall competitiveness of wind or solar energy less favorable. 

Batteries can help smooth out short-term supply and demand mismatches, but they are less economical for longer term use such as storage from one season to another, said Peter R. Hartley, a Rice University economist who specializes in energy policy.

Wind and solar power can be valuable additions to the energy mix

Even without a storage component, wind or solar power can still be valuable in any energy mix, experts said — beyond the benefit of producing carbon-free energy to combat climate change. 

For instance, in New England, the natural gas supply is used heavily for heating, so there is less available for electricity during winter months. In the absence of other types of power, that would translate into high electricity prices, Gillingham said.

“Wind and solar can reduce the amount of electricity needed during many hours of the day,” he said. This prevents utilities from having to switch over to more expensive fuels, such as fuel oil or diesel, he said.

“Solar power often coincides with peak daytime demand when electricity prices are highest, displacing expensive fossil generation and lowering overall costs,” Knittel said.

Many states have made wind or solar important pieces of their energy strategy.

In May, about one-third of the electricity generated in Texas came from renewable energy other than hydropower, a category that includes wind and solar. In California, that percentage was just over half. In Iowa, the percentage was about two-thirds. Nationally, the share is about 14%.

“Far from being ‘worthless’ when conditions change, wind and solar are vital contributors to our energy system, delivering high value, clean power when it’s available, and, thanks to modern storage technologies, ensuring that power can continue to be used even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing,” Knittel said.

Our ruling

The Energy Department said, “Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and when the wind is not blowing.”

Although wind energy infrastructure doesn’t produce power if the air isn’t moving and solar doesn’t generate power if the sun’s not out, those sources of energy still have value during those periods.

Energy can be stored either in batteries or in larger pieces of infrastructure such as reservoirs.

And when these systems are operational, they can handle electricity demand in real time, adding to the power mix in states including Texas, California and Iowa.

We rate the statement False.