Last summer, California experienced several rolling blackouts. At one point, high power demand during an August heatwave left 800,000 California homes and businesses without electricity.
Six months later, Texas went dark during a bitter cold snap as demand surged past available generating supply. Unfortunately, it now appears that these electricity reliability crises are a preview of more trouble to come.
Take California. The state’s grid operators have just warned that California may run into power shortages again this summer.
Those concerns are echoed by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which fears that several western states could run short on electricity during a summer heatwave.
According to the WECC, states such as Nevada, Utah, and Colorado frequently rely on imports of electricity from surrounding states. If a heatwave were to hit the entire region, there simply wouldn’t be enough surplus electricity to go around.
That could leave western states running short by potentially hundreds of hours of available electricity.
Commodity traders are already betting on such limited summer supplies. In fact, the Palo Verde hub in Arizona has seen electricity prices nearly quadrupled since last summer. And prices have tripled in the Pacific Northwest’s Mid-Columbia hub.
There are a number of reasons why states are experiencing a serious power crunch.
But the common factor is increased reliance on intermittent, renewable sources of electricity along with reduced capacity from traditional on-demand power generation, including coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants.
In California, last summer, heavy reliance on solar power left the state short of electricity after sunset. Solar generation plummeted in the evening, but air conditioners still kept running at full-tilt to battle triple-digit temperatures.
This follows a pattern that’s increasingly common in California—too much power supply during midday and not enough in the evening.
It’s a problem that will only grow worse since the state continues to mandate additional renewable power generation.
As one California Assemblyman remarked at a hearing on the blackouts, “today we have a grid that is increasingly expensive, unreliable and unavailable when the people of California need it the most.”
For Texas, the challenge has been the state’s shift away from coal plants in favor of wind turbines and natural gas. This past winter’s brutal conditions wreaked havoc on natural gas infrastructure.
But the bitter cold snap also demonstrated the vulnerability that comes with increased reliance on wind generation that’s unavailable at the worst possible time.
Roughly half of Texas’s wind turbines froze in icy Arctic conditions, taking at least 12,000 megawatts of power offline.
Neighboring Oklahoma experienced the same challenges as Texas—but fared much better. Oklahoma’s governor reported that the state’s wind and solar production “dropped to almost zero” during the deep freeze, and “gas wells froze and compressor stations went offline.”
But Oklahoma was able to fall back on coal-fired power plants to provide 40 percent of the state’s electricity generation.
The lesson here is that there is no perfect power generating system. For example, America’s use of natural gas has jumped dramatically in recent years.
But utilities are still constrained by the limits of gas pipelines and infrastructure spread across hundreds of miles. Similarly, wind and solar power are becoming more affordable, but will always face inherent weather limitations.
The answer is flexibility. States must maintain a well-rounded energy portfolio that can adjust to the endless variables of winter storms and summer heat.
The United States is just embarking on a large-scale energy transition. But it’s already becoming clear that to preserve a reliable and affordable supply of power, states must put more emphasis on a balanced electricity mix.
What’s needed is a no-regrets grid. That means embracing and properly valuing the reliability provided by traditional sources of energy such as coal and nuclear power—even as the nation adds increased amounts of wind and solar.
Anything less will leave states like Texas and California more vulnerable to power disruption—and needlessly put lives at risk.
Read more at Washington Times
Here in NJ we have solar panels on our telephone poles…. they do not work at night…They do not work when covered with snow and ice and when the snow begins to melt it slides the snow on cars and sidewalks…. Now I noticed we have barely any rain for two weeks and the pollen and dust accumulated on the panels are blocking the sunlight so I doubt they are working well now.
This reminds me, uh, that man pushing for severe reduction in the human population of the world while saying we should all get vaccinated so that we can live… oh yeah, Bill Gates, anyway, I heard he wanted to send up some kind of special dust into the atmosphere to dim the sunlight to cool the planet and how would that work out for our solar panels?
I have been following the global warming/climate change fraud for 18 years so here is a little history related to “send up some kind of special dust.” At one time it was proposed so put some kind of aerosol, I believe sulfur, in the upper atmosphere as a solution to global warming. It was met with instant hostility. The plan was criticized saying we didn’t know what the side effects might be before the impact could even be considered. These same people were predicting certain doom if we didn’t take drastic action to reduce emission, yet were concerned about an unknown with the aerosol. It was obvious that the hostility had nothing to do with risks of the aerosol. The real goals of the global warming movement depended on a drastic reduction of emissions and no other solution to the fake problem was acceptable.
Today’s socialism was founded by the United Kingdom in the 20th century. Two wars and unionism created lean times. Rationing was prescribed by the rulers and accepted by the public . Today’s energy troubles are more of the same stinginess. Apparently, we have it too good. Waste not, want not. Sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake will make you a better citizen, too.
The author points out one of the major drawbacks with depending on natural gas as baseload generation. Unlike nuclear, which only needs refueling infrequently, and coal, which stockpiles a supply of fuel onsite, natural gas cannot adequately stockpile so if there is a supply crunch then the plant may either go offline completely or reduce power generation. During the polar vortex that hit Minnesota winter a year ago Xcel Energy was asking residents to reduce their thermostats to cut back on residential consumption leaving more gas for their gas-fired power plants.
That’s the plan. The Green New Deal is not what is it advertised to be … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpVAHZCNTa8&t
Renewable Wind & Solar – An Investment Opportunity ?
(A fantasy rooted in reality)
You have to supply 1000 Mw of 100% reliable power via government mandated contract that will pay you 12c per kWhr but will subsidise “renewables” to the tune of 60c per kWhr for the 20 year “lifetime costing” of the wind and solar.
You build 2000MW of wind and solar. (Since this is only going to be 20-30% loaded we might go as far of 3000 or 4000 depending on how big the “subsidy” is.)
You also build 1000MW of natural gas CCGT to fill in the gaps when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. (As you must contractually be able to supply or incur huge penalties).
You wring every last cent out of your wind and solar for 20 years whilst using the CCGT to fill the gaps.
After 20 years demolish the now worn out / no longer economical wind and solar and continue to supply to contract for another 20 years using your CCGT’s (which will last 40).
Plead with the government for another 20 year feed in tariff to replace the worn out wind and solar.
Repeat this circular economic process over and over until someone wakes up to the scam that it is!
You can now see the logic behind Lord Monkton’s comment :-
“Unreliables, therefore, inflict not only a deadweight cost but also a deadweight surplus capacity to the grid, to say nothing of the costly instability caused by giving unreliables precedence over thermal in meeting demand.”
What strange times we live in.