Roger Caiazza
A couple of recent posts here have highlighted the difficulties of a transition to an electric grid powered primarily by wind and solar using New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) as an example. This post describes the New York Independent System Operator’s latest relevant report on this topic. The difficulties raised are so large that the question becomes is any leader in New York listening to this expert opinion.
Background
The Climate Act was passed in 2019 and became effective on 1/1/2020. The Climate Action Council has been working since then to develop plans to implement the Act. Over the summer of 2021 the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) and its consultant Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) prepared an Integration Analysis to “estimate the economy-wide benefits, costs, and GHG emissions reductions associated with pathways that achieve the Climate Act GHG emission limits and carbon neutrality goal”. Three Integration Analysis implementation strategies were incorporated into the Draft Scoping Plan when it was released at the end of 2021. The focus of the recent posts has been the Climate Act target for a carbon free electric generating system by 2040.
The two recent posts showed that the benefits are over-stated and the costs under-estimated in the Draft Scoping Plan. My last post here explained that there is a new Draft Scoping Plan Overview available and showed that their claim that the “cost of inaction exceeds the cost of action by more than $90 billion is bogus. More recently the Manhattan Contrarian post More Focus on The Impossible Costs of a Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System looked at the feasibility and costs of such a system using just solar resources as an example. The costs projected are far in excess of the Draft Scoping Plan estimates.
At the same time that the State has been developing its implementation plans for the Climate Act, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) has augmented their regular reliability planning process with supplementary analyses addressing the Climate Act challenge. The 2021-2030 Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP) report (appendices) released late year includes an excellent overview chapter “Beyond the Comprehensive Reliability Plan – Road to 2040” on this topic that is the focus of this post.
NYISO Reliability Planning
Appendix G of the CRP report describes the NYISO reliability planning process. The reliability planning component of the process consists of two analyses: the Reliability Needs Assessment (RNA) and Comprehensive Reliability Plan (CRP). The RNA evaluates the adequacy and security of the bulk power transmission facilities over a ten-year planning period, the resources in megawatts (MW), and the locations where required to meet projected needs. If necessary, the NYISO will request solutions for identified needs. The CRP determines if the proposed solutions are viable and sufficient then documents the solutions meet the identified reliability needs.
The CRP report itself provides an exhaustive description of all the reliability planning aspects considered in the existing process. The report describes reliability risk factors: “The Reliability Planning Process findings reflect the base case assumptions, which were set in accordance with applicable reliability rules and procedures. There are, however, numerous risk factors that could adversely affect the implementation of the plan and hence system reliability over the planning horizon. These risk factors may arise for several reasons including climate, economic, regulatory, and policy drivers.”
The report highlights some of the risk factors and provides the first instance where it is not clear whether New York State is listening to these experts. The CRP states “A growing amount of New York’s gas-turbine and fossil fuel-fired steam-turbine capacity is reaching an age at which, nationally, a vast majority of similar capacity has been deactivated and then concludes that “While transmission security within New York City (Zone J) is maintained through the ten-year period in accordance with design criteria, the margin would be very tight starting in 2025 and would be deficient beginning in 2028 if forced outages are experienced at the historical rate”. At the same time the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has rejected permits for new replacement generating facilities that addresses this risk factor. For example, the Danskhammer Energy Center proposed a replacement gas-fired combustion turbine but DEC denied the permit “The proposed project would be inconsistent with or would interfere with the statewide greenhouse gas emissions limits established in the Climate Act.”
Draft Scoping Plan
The Scoping Plan is supposed to provide the Climate Action Council with the information necessary to make decisions. The CRP describes several critical issues that must be addressed if the Climate Act transition to emissions-free generation is to succeed without creating a reliability crisis. The first is how to handle renewable resource intermittency. The second is whether battery storage devices will work as needed. It also raises issues with asynchronous wind and solar power and concludes with a discussion of the zero-emissions dispatchable resource needed to keep the system working. These are described in more detail in the addendum to this post. For the most part the Draft Scoping Plan ignores or glosses over all these issues.
The CRP defines renewable resource intermittency well. It notes that “the variability of meteorological conditions that govern the output from wind and solar resources presents a fundamental challenge to relying on those resources to meet electricity demand. Solar resources will have little to no output during the evening and nighttime hours and reduced output due to cloud cover, while wind resources can experience significant and sustained wind lulls.” Additionally, it notes that “With high penetration of renewable intermittent resources, the system will need dispatchable, long-duration resources to balance intermittent supply with demand especially during extended periods where the intermittent resources are not available. These types of resources will need to be significant in capacity and have attributes such as the ability to come on-line quickly, stay on-line for as long as needed, maintain the system’s balance and stability, and adapt to meet rapid, steep ramping needs.” I don’t think the Draft Scoping Plan does an acceptable job describing the magnitude of this problem.
There is a section devoted to storage resources. It explains that seasonal power capability is the main consideration when evaluating most generation resources for their ability to serve load and provide for reliability. It goes on to explain that with energy storage resources, there are two other critical aspects that need to be considered. The first is the duration needed from the storage device and the second involves charging the storage device. Energy storage has been touted as the preferred alternative to peaking power plants but the CRP notes that “Since the ‘fuel’ for storage is electricity from local resources and the grid, the surplus energy in the ‘load pocket’ where storage is located needs to be more than the energy that is needed from the storage device including losses.” Furthermore, the CRP highlights the point that “battery storage resources help to fill in voids created by reduced output from renewable resources, but periods of reduced renewable generation rapidly deplete battery storage resource capabilities resulting in the need for longer running dispatchable emission-free resources”. Lastly, the CRP notes that Pathways to Carbon-Neutral NYC found “a stringent regulatory and siting regime for storage in New York City, including site-based limitations and fire codes regarding siting of battery storage”. I don’t think any of the people touting battery storage as a solution to intermittency understand the implications of these statements. For its part the Draft Scoping Plan ignores all the issues associated with energy storage.
The CRP section on Inverter Resources covers an aspect of the renewable transition that is very rarely considered. In short, existing generation is synchronized with the electric grid but wind and solar provide asynchronous power. This difference must be considered in order to maintain a reliable system. The Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative (EIPC) recently described a decline in grid performance when inverter-based resources displace conventional synchronous machines. The degradation in performance is due to a number of factors, including the loss of, or change in, location of reactive power resources, the lack of transmission facilities to transmit the energy to load, and/or the reduction in primary frequency response due to the loss of system inertia from the retirement of legacy synchronous generation. The Draft Scoping Plan does not address the implication of the following statement; “The ability of inverter-based resources to function properly often depends on the strength of the grid at or near the interconnection of the resources”. That means that if inverter-based resources are connected to a “weak” portion of the grid they “may be subject to instability, adverse control interactions, and other issues”. I think that it would be appropriate for the Draft Scoping Plan to discuss a situation where limitations of the transmission grid could cause wind and solar generation to not provide power to the grid but it does not.
The final relevant section of the CRP discusses the need for dispatchable, emissions-free resources. The CRP notes that the amount of dispatchable emission-free resources needed in their scenarios is over 32,000 MW in 2040, approximately 6,000 MW more than the total fossil-fueled generation fleet on the grid in 2021. The CRP states that providing this resource will “require an unprecedented level of investment in newand replacement infrastructure, and/or the emergence of a zero-carbon fuel source for thermal generating resources”. Furthermore, the CRP notes that the one-hour ramp requirements could be over 10,000 MW and a six-hour ramp of over 25,000 MW. Finally, they conclude that “While there are hundreds of projects in the NYISO interconnection queue, there are none that would be capable of providing dispatchable emission-free resources that could perform on a multi-day period to maintain bulk power system reliability. Such resources are not yet widely commercially available.” The Draft Scoping Plan response to this is claim that this resource could use green hydrogen as a place holder. Aside from the fact that it is not commercially available, the Scoping Plan does not address whether it can meet the technical criteria specified in the CRP.
Conclusion
There were many good comments to the post More Focus on The Impossible Costs of a Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Energy System replying to some comments that suggested the transition to zero emissions electricity is easily achievable. Subsequently I found the NYISO Comprehensive Reliability Plan document. It supports those who argued that such a transition will be difficult and included some additional arguments that I thought would be of interest to readers here. I encourage interested readers to download that document.
Ultimately, the question in this post is whether any of these concerns are being considered by the Hochul Administration and New York’s Climate Action Council. These political appointees are supposed to be guided by the Scoping Plan but based on my evaluation to date of the Draft Scoping Plan most of the key issues are over-looked. I showed a specific example where current DEC policy and actions directly contradict the concerns expressed in the CRP. I can only conclude that no one in power is listening to the reliability experts in New York. I cannot imagine how this can possibly end well.
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Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. More details on the Climate Leadership & Community Protection Act are available here. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company with which he has been associated.
Addendum Highlights from NYISO Climate Act Planning Analyses
The biggest risk to future electric system reliability is the Climate Act. In order to respond, NYISO commissioned a couple of studies. The 2019 Climate Change Study – Phase I examined the impacts that climate change will have on temperature and the resultant impact on load as well as expected changes due to new policies. The most recent winter peak load was 22,542 MW and summer load was 31,723 MW. The study projects that load will increase in the winter to over 56,000 MW and in the summer to over 47,000 MW when the Climate Act is implemented. In 2020, the NYISO commissioned phase II of the Climate Change Study (“Climate Change Impact and Resilience Study”) that examined the resources needed to meet load in a 2040 scenario. That report concluded: “that the variability of meteorological conditions that govern the output from wind and solar resources presents a fundamental challenge to relying on those resources to meet electricity demand. Solar resources will have little to no output during the evening and nighttime hours and reduced output due to cloud cover, while wind resources can experience significant and sustained wind lulls.”
The CRP did additional work looking at the wind lull problem during development. These analyses considered an arbitrary wind lull of week-long loss of wind energy of either projected NY on-shore or off-shore wind energy. Not surprisingly, they found that this type of event could exceed the loss of load expectation reliability criterion. The CRP concludes:
“With high penetration of renewable intermittent resources, the system will need dispatchable, long-duration resources to balance intermittent supply with demand especially during extended periods where the intermittent resources are not available. These types of resources will need to be significant in capacity and have attributes such as the ability to come on-line quickly, stay on-line for as long as needed, maintain the system’s balance and stability, and adapt to meet rapid, steep ramping needs.”
NYISO Executive Summary Road to 2040 – Storage Resources (Verbatim)
Solar and wind resources are dependent on variable meteorological conditions, and thus their generating output does not always coincide with demand. Energy storage allows for time shifting of generation to meet the timing of demand. Storage resources charge during times of surplus and then discharge at other times when the power is needed.
The seasonal power capability of suppliers would typically be the main consideration when evaluating most generation resources for their ability to serve load and provide for reliability. With energy storage resources, there are two other critical aspects that need to be considered. The first is the duration needed from the storage device. Load duration curves can provide the context for how long a storage device may be needed for reliability. The duration of need can be a significant amount of time during a given day. The second critical aspect involves charging the storage device. Since the “fuel” for storage is electricity from local resources and the grid, the surplus energy in the “load pocket” where storage is located needs to be more than the energy that is needed from the storage device including losses. The NYISO Climate Change Study noted that battery storage resources help to fill in voids created by reduced output from renewable resources, but periods of reduced renewable generation rapidly deplete battery storage resource capabilities resulting in the need for longer running dispatchable emission-free resources. Additionally, the “Pathways to Carbon-Neutral NYC,” which was commissioned by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, Con Edison, and National Grid, noted a stringent regulatory and siting regime for storage in New York City, including site-based limitations and fire codes regarding siting of battery storage.
NYISO Executive Summary Road to 2040 – Inverter-Based Resources
There is so much detail in this section that I chose not to reproduce it verbatim. The first two paragraphs state:
With the planned increased to renewable energy resources on the system, there are several important considerations to evaluate in addition to traditional steady state and dynamics analysis. It is expected that many renewable generators will be connected to the grid asynchronously through power electronic devices (i.e., inverter-based resources). The Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative (EIPC) recently issued the “Planning the Grid for a Renewable Future” whitepaper indicating a decline in grid performance when inverter-based resources displace conventional synchronous machines. The paper finds that degradation in performance is due to a number of factors, including the loss of, or change in, location of reactive power resources, the lack of transmission facilities to transmit the energy to load, and/or the reduction in primary frequency response due to the loss of system inertia from the retirement of legacy synchronous generation.
The ability of inverter-based resources to function properly often depends on the strength of the grid at or near the interconnection of the resources. Grid strength is a commonly used term to describe how the system responds to system changes (e.g., changes in load, and equipment switching). In a “strong” system, the voltage and frequency are relatively insensitive to changes in current injection from the inverter-based resource. Inverter-based resources connecting to a portion of the system rich in synchronous generation that is electrically close or relatively large is likely connecting to a strong part of the system. Inverter-based resources connected to a “weak” portion of the grid may be subject to instability, adverse control interactions, and other issues.
This section goes on to describe measures related to this issue and where they are problems in New York. “The prevailing measure of system strength is the short-circuit ratio calculation. Short-circuit ratio is defined as the ratio of short-circuit apparent power (SCMVA) at the point of interconnection (POI) from a three-phase fault at the POI to the power rating of the resource.” “Another measure of system strength is voltage flicker caused by the connection of large reactive devices (such as a shunt reactive device or a large motor). Flicker not only affects lighting but has the potential to disrupt industrial processes and consumer electronics.” The document shows that there are some locations in New York where these problems will have to be addressed.
NYISO Executive Summary Road to 2040 – Dispatchable Resources
The final portion of this section discusses the need for significant amounts of dispatchable resources to address the intermittency of wind and solar. Results from several studies are mentioned.
The Climate Change Study looked at 100 x 40 (emission-free electric grid by 2040). It noted the significant amount of dispatchable resources that would be needed to meet that goal but did not describe the technology that would be able to provide a dispatchable resource, instead choosing to refer to generic dispatchable, emission-free resources. Not surprisingly, the Climate Change report found that a similar amount of dispatchable resources as the RNA case would be needed to maintain reliability under baseline assumptions. However, under CLCPA assumptions, the amount of dispatchable emission-free resources needed increases to over 32,000 MW in 2040, approximately 6,000 MW more than the total fossil-fueled generation fleet on the grid in 2021. The Climate Change Study noted that the current system is heavily dependent on existing fossil-fueled resources to maintain reliability and eliminating these resources from the mix “will require an unprecedented level of investment in new and replacement infrastructure, and/or the emergence of a zero-carbon fuel source for thermal generating resources” (emphasis added). The Climate Change Study did note that while the amount of installed capacity (MW) of dispatchable resources is significant, the amount of energy generated (MWh) required from such resources would likely not be significant, with the percent of total energy being in the range of 10% ― 20% range depending on the penetration level of intermittent resources.
The report “Pathways to Carbon-Neutral NYC,” issued April 2021 stated “Both low carbon gas and battery storage can supply dispatchable electricity to the grid. However, both technologies are untested at the scale required to deeply decarbonize the city. Batteries are limited by the amount of energy that they can store and how fast that energy can be discharged. Batteries also require capital to build and space to occupy. At the same time, low carbon gas availability is uncertain, and there is no policy framework to develop these resources at scale. While maintaining gas-fired electricity generation assets can avoid new capital expenditures, sources of renewable natural gas (RNG) would need to be connected to the existing pipeline gas transmission and distribution system, requiring investments. Additionally, RNG combustion still generates air pollutant emissions, which must be considered (emphasis added).”
The NYISO Grid in Transition study noted that it is generally recognized today that meeting New York load with high levels of intermittent renewable resource output, particularly solar and wind generation, will require the NYISO to have sufficient flexible, dispatchable and potentially fast ramping supply to balance variations in intermittent resource output. These variations will include not only short-term variations in output during the operating day as a result of changes in wind speed and cloud cover but also a sustained ramp up of solar output at the beginning of the day as the sun rises and a sustained ramp down of solar output at the end of the day as the sun sets. The Climate Change Study noted in the winter under the CLCPA scenario that the one-hour ramp requirements could be over 10,000 MW and a six-hour ramp of over 25,000 MW.
This section of text concludes with the following highlighted text: “While there are hundreds of projects in the NYISO interconnection queue, there are none that would be capable of providing dispatchable emission-free resources that could perform on a multi-day period to maintain bulk power system reliability. Such resources are not yet widely commercially available.”
The only thing that could work for “emission free” and dispatchable power are nukes. Which would mean telling their hard Green faction to sit down and shut up, and stop blocking nukes in court.
If they actually believe their rationale on CO2 and climate change, nuclear power is the only technology existing that would work to reduce emissions.
In other words, it’s not about climate.
The CRP is missing a letter.
Nor has it ever been about climate.
I agree with your main point but it is worth noting that nukes are not dispatchable. They are for baseload. Something still needs to meet dynamic demand. That’s the part no one seems to have a convincing answer to that doesn’t involve burning gas. (OK, maybe a bit of hydro but I don’t find new hydro convincing.)
NUCLEAR, NUCLEAR, NUCLEAR, the answer to our power needs, but that would screw up their putting us under their thumb!
Beyond the obvious in this analysis, there are some IMO deeper issues.
The grid engIneers have been saying for years ‘this GND stuff isn’t gonna work’.
Yet politicians in CA, NY, UK, and BRD persist anyway. Why?
There are obvious and less obvious reasons.
There is an old saying attributed to the bureaucracies in the Soviet Union and other communist countries:
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”.
I will update that to the current status of the people vis a vis the Federal Government and the governments of most states in the USA:
“The politicians pretend that we are going to achieve net-zero, and we pretend to believe them”.
Vaclav Havel in Power of the Powerless , calls it “living the lie.”
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf
“The politicians pretend that we are going to achieve net-zero, and we pretend to believe them”.
In the present context, that doesn’t make any sense. The voters earnestly believe the GND crap, believe it’s really a climate crisis, and that every storm is proof of an apocalypse. And the politicians pushing this stuff also act like they totally believe it, or at least they believe it because the voters believe it. Behind it all are all the cronies and companies profiting from it all, mining the subsidies and green power mandates and bogus carbon credits.
The thing about being at the bleeding edge of weather dependent grid means reliable alternatives have to be found that can be operated without fanfare. New York has been deploying power generating barges for a long time and continues to increase its fleet:
https://www.powermag.com/new-york-city-to-get-eight-floating-aeroderivative-gas-turbines/
There are plenty of LNG bulk carriers that could be hitched up to the barges as need arise.
Any coastal city can set up this sort of power supply quite quickly at the present time. Will no doubt take much longer if everyone adopts this approach.
That option would have been logical. That option would have ensured that reliable power was available. That option ran afoul of the latest group think that any new fossil fuel infrastructure is evil so the proposed plan to install those turbines has been scrapped.
the option is logical, so the NY law bans it and anything like it. Fossil fuels has the cooties for NY lawmakers, no logic allowed in the Empire State.
Great. Now do something for the poor saps in New York State hundreds of miles from these barges. I guess they get to freeze in the dark.
New York has tolerated around sixty five years of the thruway commission, near twice that for the state electrical public utility oligopoly. The net zero/green revolution con probably has another good century of milking tax money left in it.
Local Law 97 requires buildings to start reducing emissions by 2024.
This will impact 50,000 buildings.
The base emissions for each building must be calculated by 1 Jan 2023.
Fines for non-compliance begin 1 May 2025.
This will be a bureaucratic disaster.
Building owners will need to form “relationships” with assessment consultants, authorities and offset providers.
Look at the bright side: This will increase the ongoing exodus of people and businesses from NYC. I wonder how the City plans on paying for the emissions reductions for the increasingly vast number of vacant buildings left by bankrupt prior owners? I’m sure the legions of bureaucrats are already hard at work on this, but how does one calculate the “base emissions” of a vacant building?
This will increase the ongoing exodus of people and businesses from NYC
As long as it’s not to NC.
By the time reality demonstrates the futility of carbon free generation it may be too late to turn back. I see rolling blackouts and energy rationing in New York’s future along with Cali and other progressive jurisdictions. We should probably expect to see articles about how the luxury of reliable continuous electricity is unsustainable and racist.
But they have that covered, kinda.
NYISO considered subsequent updates to system plans. These updates included a reduced demand forecast to account for economic and societal effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, and new local transmission plans and operating procedures by Con Edison for the New York City service territory. With these updates, there are no remaining violations of reliability design criteria.
Of course in the very next section.
Over the next ten-year period, the NYISO is forecasting a decrease in energy usage due to energy efficiency initiatives and increasing amounts of behind the meter solar generation. However, significant load-increasing impacts are forecasted due to expected growth in electric vehicle usage, large cloud-computing data centers, and other electrification (i.e., conversion of home heating, cooking, water heating and other end-uses from fossil-fuel based systems to electric systems).
So their Forecasts don’t have to reflect Reality.
This is the money quote. I not sure exactly what the source is. Help me.
Page 48 of the 2021-2030 Comprehensive Reliability Plan – URL in the article
Every “plan” to switch over to renewables so far has been a shoot, ready, aim. Virtue signaling is the name of the game.
I’ve only ever seen ‘shoot’. When do they get to ready and aim?
The NYISO stuff is technical engineering, which the political scoping people probably cannot understand. I do not understand all of the quotes. As you said earlier, their position seems to be that the engineers will take care of things when the time comes.
In fairness it strikes me that your statement of these issues is often stronger than the ISO text you quote. Engineering language tends to be mild like that. Not that your way of putting it is wrong, quite the contrary, but it is not as the ISO says it.
An interesting related development is that PJM, sort of the ISO for the Mid Atlantic, has just proposed a two year moratorium on approving solar projects. I think they fear destabilizing the grid.
The biggest point by far seems to be that reliability requires huge amounts of a technology that does not exist. That is certainly my conclusion as well. You can’t get there from here. Nor is there time to develop, perfect, build and build out such a technology, to the required scale, if one even exists, which I doubt. Plus it would never get the permits. Haha.
I don’t think the NYISO wants to be the one who is blamed for bringing down the house of cards so they describe things in technical engineering jargon that none of the people on the Council understand. It takes an outsider with nothing to lose to say this is what they really mean but can’t say.
I don’t know how well it works nor know anything about its economics but this is the first I’ve seen that might be more than smoke and mirrors. At least it seems that the company is going forward on commercial projects. Are large subsidies involved or is it a genuine commercial project?
It offers potential both for thermal generation and for fuel cell generation.
https://www.chiyodacorp.com/en/service/spera-hydrogen/innovations/
I suppose they use a palladium catalyst.
Expect to hear a lot “save the world” from non-existent problem schemes in the next few years. “Hydrogen as liquid methylcyclohexane (MCH), which is produced from toluene and hydrogen,” – why do so-called green projects get a few pass no matter what toxic materials they use, as long as they mention the magic words “net-zero” or “green” or whatever in the prospectus. Same goes for mowing down forests or carpeting the oceans with turbines.
“… the engineers will take care of things when the time comes.” is the Deep State version of “and then a miracle occurs” in Leftist planning efforts.
“Finally, they conclude that “While there are hundreds of projects in the NYISO interconnection queue, there are none that would be capable of providing dispatchable emission-free resources that could perform on a multi-day period to maintain bulk power system reliability. Such resources are not yet widely commercially available.””
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I don’t necessarily think that this is all gloom-and-doom if a wind-and-solar intermittent energy game plan is implemented in the Empire State. I mean with the power outages that will probably be experienced, this means that the leftist TV network news outlets will go off air and the NY Times will not be able to operate.
I say it again: The NY Times will not be able to operate. Think about that. The other option might be to have the NYT and the TV networks go off grid now with wind and solar. I’m sure they would be very proud of their contribution to fighting climate change.
I have to concede that would be a benefit
First good news I’ve heard about the energy transition, bring it on.
So, what are the political class going to say when the lights go out? NY needs to think about what happens when the grid crashes. It ain’t coming back up overnight, and it will probably take the whole NE US grid with it. WOW, NYT will be off the air, along with CNN, MSNBC, and CBS, and NBC, and, ….
Who cares? There will be a whole new crop of political leeches to blame when the fit hits the sham. It is described at the end of the project cycle diagram: “Punish the uninvolved.”
Jeeves, would you please start the generator?
All of these studies coming out of New York that this article deals with are a perfect example of people with incredible speaking and writing skills hired to justify the unjustifiable. I hate crap like this. They use a bunch of fancy words to say over and over that wind and solar can’t cut the mustard. They don’t say it in those words rather they use terms like asynchronous generation. They use more fancy words to say we don’t have storage to make up for the shortfall or the transmission facilities to support it. They also say we need a zero carbon fuel resource to make up the difference only there are none available. In desperation they mention RNG (renewable natural gas) but unfortunately that is a fossil fuel which they are eliminating. All of this huffing and puffing to fix a problem we don’t even have. It is insane. Build a couple more nuclear plants, refit the coal you have, refit the gas you have and everyone will have plenty of power, we will have a clean environment, we will be cool in summer, warm in winter and our factories and homes will be humming right along. Best of all it is incredibly cheaper than what these knuckleheads are talking about.
The main takeaway from the electricity issues as described by Roger seems to be: if you want reliable electricity that won’t cost too much, don’t go near NY. That could be why the state is losing people and industries. As the jobs go, the demand will drop. The politicians will pat themselves on the back until they realise all the people left would qualify for Spaceship 2 as defined in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Mr Adams would be pleased to know from up there that he was being as prophetic as Monty Python.
This is all good news for U-Haul and similar outfits.
… and for generator manufacturers. And for Hank Hill. His propane and propane accessories business will be booming in green utopias where people with the financial means have to go off-grid for their fossil fuel needs.
The whole thing has nothing to do with climate. It could be about hedge funds reaping in profits from the green wave which are profitable only thanks to Government subsidies, selling these assets before they collapse and reinvest in conventional energy stock which due to the unfair market bias are cheap to buy, and thus gain control over the energy sector at an unbeatable discount. Otherwise, there’s no real clue as to why the big three (Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street) are pushing the green agenda. Technically and economically, it just doesn’t make sense.
Yep
It’s a giant pump and dump scheme. Buy in, drive the prices up based on fat government subsidies, then sell high before the subsidy spigot dries up. Worked like a charm for early investors in Solyndra (provided they got out before the house of cards collapsed).
Very similar points can be made about the equally insane Net Zero project in the UK
Why is it that the problematic electrical systems have an ISO in charge? The southeast system and the Florida system have lower rates and little reliably problems.
I don’t know if it will ever be realized that Science has become a product for sale. No foundations needed, media support is helpful, and you can buy any form or direction of science you need, want, and will pay for. Sadly it is no more than the icing on a cake that does not even exist. It is the foundation of computer technology – garbage in garbage out, and we are the puppets.
Or listening to the bears?
Drone spots polar bears taking over unusual Arctic playground | AccuWeather
These reports were quite interesting, and I commend the reporting of them here. It is a little bit encouraging that at least some people recognize we do not have an economic or technological pathway to net zero, at least not today. I do think they tend to put a gloss on this though, perhaps enough that policy makers will just continue to pretend there is no problem with getting to net zero. One must read carefully. One of the terms I learned from reading the reports was “Loss of Load”. When it comes to an electrical power grid, one might think that would mean that the demand for power suddenly went away; quite the contrary, it refers to the situation where the demand cannot be met, so, presumably, the system fails, or part of it does. It reminds me of when I first figured out that when people talked about subprime lending, they weren’t talking about the interest rate, they were talking about the borrower, heh, subprime indeed.