GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  October 26, 2026   Francis Menton   On El Hierro Island in Spain, they set out to build an electricity system powered only by wind, with backup from a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant. The relevant statistics for El Hierro are: average electricity demand: 5 MW; nameplate capacity of the wind turbines: 11.5 MW (i.e., 2.3x “overbuild” compared to average usage); storage capacity of the pumped storage system: 70 MWh (i.e., 14 hours of average usage). The operator of the facility has provided eight years of operating data for the system. I reported on the results in my last post on October 23 . In summary, the wind/storage system provided 56% of the island’s electricity use in the best year, and only 35% in the worst year. During these years, the remainder of the island’s electricity — ranging from 44% in the “best” year for the wind system to 65% in the worst year — has been provided by a diesel generator. The wind/storage system has fallen far short of its stated goal ...

  By Marie J. French and Mona Zhang October 26, 2026 Good morning and welcome to the weekly Monday edition of the New York & New Jersey Energy newsletter. We'll take a look at the week ahead and look back on what you may have missed last week. RENEWABLE REALISM: There’s no clear way for New York to keep up the pace of renewable investments needed to (belatedly) achieve the state’s ambitious targets. “Without tax credits at the federal level, nobody sees a future for building rules in New York,” said Marguerite Wells, the executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. “That's a problem. How do we solve it? I have no magic bullets.” Wells’ bleak assessment — on the sidelines of the industry group’s fall conference in Albany — comes as the pool of new projects appears to be drying up, even as several legacy onshore solar and wind facilities enter construction. She pointed to the “tiny” number of renewable projects that have entered the upcoming New York Inde...