From the “when the going gets tough, renewables can’t cut it” department. Wind power generation actually dropped 5% during this period
From the Daily Caller: Coal-fired power plants kept the lights on for millions of Americans during January’s bomb cyclone, according to an Energy Department report warning future plant retirements could imperil grid security.
Energy analysts at DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory found that coal power kept the lights on for millions of Americans during the bomb cyclone that pummeled the eastern U.S. from late December to early January.
NETL analysts found that coal plants made up most of the incremental power utilities relied on to keep electricity flowing during the cold snap. Nuclear and oil power plants played a big role, NETL found, but coal provided 55 percent of extra power across six grid operators.
“During the worst of the storm from January 5-6, 2018, actual U.S. electricity market experience demonstrated that without the resilience of coal- and fuel oil/dual-firing plants … the eastern United States would have suffered severe electricity shortages, likely leading to widespread blackouts,” NETL researchers reported.
NETL found that “without available capacity from partially utilized coal units, PJM would have experienced shortfalls leading to interconnect-wide blackouts.” PJM Interconnection is the largest independent system operator in the U.S., serving 65 million customers.
“In PJM, the value of fuel-based power generation resilience during this event was estimated at $3.5 billion,” NETL reported. Coal power capacity retirements could mean baseload power plants that kept the lights on this winter won’t be around during a future coal snap.
Coal plants have been prematurely retired en mass since 2012, due to a combination of federal and state policies and low-priced natural gas. Republicans and the coal industry blamed Environmental Protection Agency regulations for contributing to coal plant closures, which President Donald Trump seized upon during the 2016 campaign.
“The 30 GW of coal that ramped up to meet the surge in PJM load clearly includes the units most likely to retire due to insufficient market support, given those units were not running at baseload levels before the event,” NETL reported. As more of these units retire, the ability of the system to respond to extreme events with reliance, let alone economically, deteriorates.”
…
NETL’s study is only the latest to highlight risks of continued power plant closures. ISO New England warned in January that continued coal, oil and nuclear plant retirements increased the risks of rolling blackouts during extreme weather.
New England has become increasingly reliant on natural gas and renewable energy, stemming from state and federal policies to shutter coal and oil power plants. However, pipeline capacity has not kept up with demand, causing supply issues and high prices.
ISO New England president Gordan van Welie said “coal and oil power plants rarely run most of the year, but they are still needed during extreme weather events. Nuclear power is also a key contributor.”
Two of the region’s four nuclear plants are set to retire in the coming years, along with coal and oil plants. More wind and solar power won’t be enough to support the grid during cold snaps, van Welie warned.
New England was so desperate for natural gas to keep the heat on it took two shipments containing liquefied natural gas from Russia.
More here
Full DOE report here: https://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/temp/Power%20System%20Reliability_Report_Published.pdf
UPDATE: Local copy, because some people reported issues in downloading from the DOE site: Power System Reliability_Report_Published (PDF)
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Coal brings radioactive materials into our living environment, which kills humans and everything else.
Sure probably by some time all of it will get burned, but slowly the rate of coal use, will slow the rate of destruction of the planet and humans.
Living above ground exposes humans to direct radiation that causes cancer and shortens human life. And unlike coal, there’s no filters or scrubbing. Having most humans living underground will slow the rate of destruction of both the surface and humans. Eloi are suckers.
LOL due to winds/snow heavy trees) I DID lose power for hours.
gas powered generator helped.
20″ of heavy wet stuff in my area (not including the 4 ft drifts) and was hard plowing.
Energy suppliers are trying to build more gas pipelines in the northeast, but are being thwarted by “environmentalists.” As the northeast has been taken over by liberals, a situation which will intensify, I believe the coming decades will see more switchover to solar and wind power, and more and more brownouts and blackouts during critical events such as storms. I “4cast” that people who have known reliable electricity supply will just become inured to interruptions as they are told by their “leaders” that it is for their own and the planet’s good, even as global temperatures remain steady or perhaps even decline.
Just another case where the only thing that we’ve run out of is something that we “can’t run out of.”
The recent UK power shortage fiasco was predicted here, by me, five years ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1462890
An Open Letter to Baroness Verma
“All of the climate models and policy-relevant pathways of future greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions considered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report show a long-term global increase in temperature during the 21st century is expected. In all cases, the warming from increasing greenhouse gases significantly exceeds any cooling from atmospheric aerosols. Other effects such as solar changes and volcanic activity are likely to have only a minor impact over this timescale”.
– Baroness Verma
[excerpt]
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.
As always in these matters, I hope to be wrong. These are not numbers, they are real people, who “loved and were loved”.
Best regards to all, Allan MacRae
Turning and tuning in the widening gyre,
the falcon cannot hear the falconer…
– Yeats
Dang, we missed such a good show.
I guess New England residents and their leftist politicians would prefer looking for wood burning stoves on craigslist and buying whale oil futures to provide heating and lighting.