By Admin,
May 9, 2022 4:27 PM
From California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, a gap that could lead to rolling blackouts during heat waves or other peak periods as soon as this year.
California’s grid operator said Friday that it anticipates a shortfall in supplies this summer, especially if extreme heat, wildfires or delays in bringing new power sources online exacerbate the constraints. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which oversees a large regional grid spanning much of the Midwest, said late last month that capacity shortages may force it to take emergency measures to meet summer demand and flagged the risk of outages. In Texas, where a number of power plants lately went offline for maintenance, the grid operator warned of tight conditions during a heat wave expected to last into the next week.
The risk of electricity shortages is rising throughout the U.S. as traditional power plants are being retired more quickly than they can be replaced by renewable energy and battery storage. Power grids are feeling the strain as the U.S. makes a historic transition from conventional power plants fueled by coal and natural gas to cleaner forms of energy such as wind and solar power, and aging nuclear plants are slated for retirement in many parts of the country.
The challenge is that wind and solar farms—which are among the cheapest forms of power generation—don’t produce electricity at all times and need large batteries to store their output for later use. While a large amount of battery storage is under development, regional grid operators have lately warned that the pace may not be fast enough to offset the closures of traditional power plants that can work around the clock.
Cheap? Not accounting for subsidies, or the miserable percentage of nameplate rating actually poduced?
Cheap AKA chintzy
As opposed to
Cheap AKA affordable
When it comes to energy production society can’t afford chintzy
All part of the plan.
Fessenheim, Grafenrheinfeld, Gundremmingen,Philippsburg, a Litany of stupidity (strongly suspected Merckel was actually Stasi, and deliberately made Germany 100% dependent on Russian energy).
(And what about shutting Ignalina, which made Lithuania 100% dependent on RUSSIAN and BELERUSSIAN NPPs)?
Belgium claims the Darwin award, stating it would phase out all NPP within the next 3 years…
All claiming as an excuse something to do with a RS9 earthquake in Japan which had F-A to do with Germany or Benelux.
Putin is laughing at them all.
Yes Belgium has 36 months to find a replacement for 40% of its electricity.
I’d argue that perhaps the lights literally going out would send a rather unambiguous message to Californians that their renewables plan isn’t ready for prime time. But I’d probably be wrong.
The wind investors in Texas tried gaslighting after the Valentine’s Day freeze.
Based on historical voting records, the majority of Californians would be incapable of understanding the problem.
supermajority, I’d say.
Well, there may be something to that, after all. I mean, just LOOK at how many ‘immigrants’ they have, now, from SH’s south of the border! Little or no education, not too bright in the first place. AND California encourages them to VOTE, by registering them at the DMV!
Democrats have the people too busy or too dumb to research convinced that that fossil fuels only have an advantage due to subsidies.
Ignoring, of course, the SUPER subsidies that are freely given to the ‘renewable’ energy con artist’s! We are talking, here, about $BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars!
Will blackouts bring people to their senses, or just increase the idiotic cries for even more wind turbines?
Will we get a few more politicians prepared to call BS on this climate nonsense when the blackouts arrive?
Given the high rate of idiocy in our leaders, I wouldn’t put much money on any sort of sensible response to them.
Good Lord, statements like “anticipates a shortfall in supplies this summer, especially if extreme heat, wildfires” from the grid operators give me the impression that they actually think climate change is at least partially responsible for the shortfall. They’re just playing long, surely (please say yes). Really big sigh.
The Chair of the MISO planning committee is a civil engineer.
It is usual that people appointed to senior positions in the Utilities are good politicians rather than good technocrats. They are certainly not sceptics because no sceptic rises through the ranks to a place of influence in utilities.
There has been NO useful planning for the ultimate wind and solar driven grid. If there had been, it would have dawned on them that it was not economic with current technology and unlikely to ever be economic until fossil fuels are banned or access is prohibitively expensive.
It is getting very close to the point where it is cheaper for home owners to make their own electricity than getting it from a grid.
Australia and UK are already subsidising the cost of electricity from general revenue for some people having difficulty paying the high cost. In the longer term, grid power will become so unreliable that anyone who actually needs reliable power will make their own.
In California small gas or diesel generators such as a home owner might have are being outlawed.
are outlawed.
SACRAMENTO — California regulators voted on Thursday to ban the sale of new gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers starting in 2024 and portable generators by 2028, the latest step in the state’s aggressive effort to reduce harmful pollutants and transition toward a carbon-free economy. December 9th 2021
Los Angeles Times
Gas – that’s UK ‘gas’, you know, actual methane gas – would make a wonderful solution to electricity supply problems. Extend the gas grid, replace all oil boilers with combined heat and power units in each house. In winter use the waste heat from electricity generation to warm the house.
JF
If UK gas [or any other source] were actually effective, it would be suppressed; the whole import of the Green Religion demands the abolition of Hard Industry, and visceral ‘sacrifices’ in personal comfort to provide redemptive suffering – but only in their hated western world.
Get OUT of California! NOW, before it’s too late! It will only get worse as time goes by!
It is getting very close to the point where it is cheaper for home owners to make their own electricity than getting it from a grid.
_________________________________________________________
It won’t be cheaper, but it will be more reliable.
That’s what we do in Queensland Steve, we have the worlds greatest % of rooftop solar, so I have not paid an electricity bill for 5 years. If and when thye develop reliable and safe household battery packs, we will get that too , but I am not holding my breath on that!
I blame the progressive-democrat controlled media for the almost total ignorance of the real science behind natural climate change.
Because the climate skeptic message is not scary enough to sell news, they ignore it, pandering instead to the loud apocalyptic environmental lobby that wants to slow down modern scientific technological progress and neuter expansive capitalism that requires ever more energy to run our easy electronic lifestyles. However, as we now know, the climate business is no longer about science or the environment but socialist and globalist politics.
These deluded fanatics are backing renewable energy to the hilt and trying to close down reliable dispachable power from both nuclear and fossil fuels, so they can control the future.
However, let the green idealists go back to the past, simpler but meaner lifestyles if that’s what they want, and leave the rest of us to our modern prosperity that we have worked hard for. In the past they would have migrated to some pristine forest or hinterland area where they could run their enviro-religious society, like the Mormons etc.
Sanity from the masses will eventually prevail, when the costs of the GND hit them in the hip pocket hard enough, meanwhile we try and mitigate the coming energy disasters the climate alarmists foist upon us, by telling the truth about climate and energy polices.
The blackouts have already arrived! 90+ degrees here this past few days; wait until it starts hitting plus 100 degrees!
Yes indeed … the many are expected to suffer while the few do otherwise … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtBT3M-RIZ0
Here’s an unqualified prediction –
“Demand Management” will become the most-used response to power supply issues.
Too many households wanting to cook their dinner?
Just turn off their power supply.
Simples.
Lights Out!!
watch
I did an analysis of remaining coal fired baseload generation a few years back using the FERC stations data. At that time, the average age at retirement was 42 years. Using that standard, one third of the remaining coal generating capacity (MW) will have been retired by 2025.
There is no conceivable way more nondispatchable intermittent renewables can replace the inevitable end of useful plant life loss of that much dispatchable capacity. No matter what the Green New Deal hopes or senile Biden ‘thinks’.
Hydropower is also a long lasting investment lasting between 50-100 years according to this link. Manitoba is a member of MISO, the only Canadian province to be part of a US electric system although there are other connections to the US from ON and QU in particular. I like the comment “hydropower is predictable”
https://www.manitobahydropower.com/energy-security/
Sure hydropower is predictable . . . just read the following:
“Water levels at Lake Mead, the vital reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam, hit an all-time low as a crippling drought exacerbated by rising temperatures due to climate change took hold of the West, the Guardian reports.
“According to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Lake Mead’s water level has ducked to 1,068.55 feet above sea level, leaving the largest reservoir in the United States about 35 percent full. Overall, the reservoir has fallen 140 feet since 2000, according to the Washington Post. Lower water levels don’t just strain water supply but also the dam’s electric capacity: ‘Every foot of lake level decline means about 6 [megawatts] of lost capacity’, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Reclamation told CNN.”
—source: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-hoover-dam-is-running-low-on-water.html
See, everyone knows that climate change™ leads to predictable results, not unpredictable ones. There’s no evidence otherwise, is there?
/sarc off
Yes I know about Lake Mead but the point that Manitoba Hydro is making is that the rivers here are always flowing and the Nelson in particular falls quite a bit in altitude on the way to Hudson Bay. It’s predictable but not always able to provide as much power if there’s drought. There was here last year and last winter they said they might not be able to offer as much power to the US since we had to take care of our own needs (province produces 95% of our power by hydro). Right now we have near record flood conditions here in the Red River valley, all that water must end up in the Nelson so we should have plenty of extra power to send south this summer.
Part of the problem is that almost all of the best hydro-power sites have already been developed. One has to take into consideration the rate of siltation of the reservoir, and the distance to market to make an economic case. In any event, I don’t think there is enough potential to replace existing fossil fuels. And then, there is the loss of habit and disruption of riparian ecosystems to at least consider.
Note that the government has over-allocated the rights to take water from the Colorado River. Bowing to political pressure, the government has not restricted water withdrawals in the face of periodic droughts and the fact that political forces have stopped any significant water development projects to replace Colorado River water withdrawals. Populations are continuing to grow in the region with no corresponding development of significant new water resources.
It may be that costal cities will be forced to develop desalinization of seawater to meet current and growing needs. Then again, where would they get the electric power to do so? This will not end well.
SMRs?
JF
Still just “decades away” . . . pretty much the same situation as 40 years ago.
To be fair, 40 years IS “decades” 🙂
The brine from the desalinization plants will play havoc with the local marine ecosystems. It might be better to use the effluent from water treatment plants as the source water. Instead of flaring off the methane from the digestors, they could use the heat to evaporate some of the water for initial treatment.
The fact is, even if we could cover every square foot of land area with solar panels, there still wouldn’t be enough power generated to eliminate petroleum from the mix! Then adding more and more windmills would only worsen the problem. In most areas, most of the time, the wind blows very little, or none, at night! Also, in most places MOST of the time, the sun does not shine AT NIGHT, either! So, even running those windmills and solar panels ALL DAY at full capacity, you can NOT generate enough energy to charge up enough batteries to keep the lights on all night, much less to keep those inefficient EV’s running! NOTHING is free! Even those ‘wonderful’ SP’s and WM’s cost a FORTUNE to build and maintain, and they have a very finite working life. NONE of this is ever mentioned when the Warmist’s and ‘Renewables’ crowd are demanding MORE $Billions or $Trillions!
I’m pessimistic regarding what will happen in California. Regardless of how many electricity supply problems occur in California in the next two years, the decision to close Diablo Canyon will not be reversed. That decision is just too deeply embedded in the political and cultural psychology of the state.
Californians need to get what they demand, good and hard. True enough, most of them will never understand.
You misspelled psychopathy.
Wait til the power cuts hit harder mate, then society will wake up and learn some basic lessons about science, engineering and power infrastructure. They will want reliable power from what ever source and Diablo Canyon will reopen, just like the German’s have recently learn to keep the nuclear stations open that were all to close this year, and also reopen their dirty brown coal mines to keep their remaining industry afloat.
But remember, boys and girls, make your next car purchase a BEV because it’s good for the environment.
That is probably true, according to this paper by the Manhattan Institute: “The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced”.
And how many kWh of electricity are used for every pound of battery produced?
Moreover, what is ROI (payback) time for each pound of battery produced, factoring in accumulating lost interest that could have been earned on the money paid up front for production . . . 40 or 50 years?
What is the expected lifetime of the batteries?
If there isn’t enough power for all the homes, how is there going to be enough power to charge the batteries?
An Elbe river cruise in Germany 2004. Note all the spinning wind turbines LOL
Sad.
I recommend a presentation given at the Steamboat Institute Energy Conference in early March, recorded and broadcast by C-Span’s “Book TV” channel.
Robert Bryce on his book A Question of Power (very troubling concerns about the stability of the current electricity grid):
https://www.c-span.org/video/?518435-3/a-question-power
I loved Bryce’s presentation. He doesn’t sugarcoat his message. We’re headed for disaster and he’s mad as hell.
How long until Big Gov places limits on the sales of EVs to keep the grid from total meltdown?
I can just see those millions of EV’s sitting idle at the recharging stations, due to brownouts!
Foolishness on parade!
I will predict the course this will take. The above paragraph suggests the first step will be to demand more renewables at a faster pace. When it becomes apparent that the effect is to make the grid increasingly unstable, there will be talk of keeping some coal fired plants going by delaying their decommissioning. But there won’t be any discussion of making these plants more efficient (advanced super critical upgrades), or building new advanced baseload coal plants. That, after all would lead to — “Stranded Assets!!!” Then there will be subsidies paid to keep old coal fired plants going no matter what, but still no upgrading.
A decade or so of crazy may be upon us.
Another possible scenario is that the option of keeping old coal plants going by delaying their decommissioning is effectively foreclosed by government actions which dictate an acceleration in the rate of plant decommissioning under a stipulation that all plant closure decisions are final and cannot be reversed.
These closure stipulations might include a provision that all plant facilities and equipment be quickly removed and disposed of, including the onsite power transmission and distribution infrastructure, thus eliminating the option of using that legacy plant site for a new gas-fired facility or for a nuclear power facility.
In this alternative scenario, electricity shortfalls will be managed through two primary mechanisms. Significantly higher prices will discourage consumption. And the simple fact that sufficient supplies of electricity are no longer available to support demand will force all residential, business, and industrial consumers to use less electricity regardless of what they might be willing to pay for it.
So true Kevin, exactly the same process is going on in Australia, where we still have about 70% fossil fuel power and no one is investing in necessary upgrades to 20-50yr old coal plants to keep the lights on. Net Zero will kill these plants and all heavy industry with it – to what benefit to the country or climate? Total illogical madness!
There is no suitable replacement for conventional power.
That’s the bottom line.
There is double edged irony while renewable energy is bringing many grids to the brink world CO2 emissions keep on rising. If we keep up this sort of progress towards net zero by 2050 we should be pushing some truely record CO2 levels by then.
Or maybe society will finally blink at the economic waste this process will bring, and vote for a party that will provide sanity and bring back cheaper reliable power and the jobs that ensue from it.
It’s going to be a festive time in California when all the power plants close, the ‘green’ technology doesn’t keep up with demand, and they have clowns like this pushing even harder for their insane policies. Should be fun watching all those electric cars at the side of the road or stuck in their garages, when the power goes out for hours at a time, every day or so, during the summer. Madness on the coast!
California lays out plan to drastically cut fossil fuel use (msn.com)
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for an entrepreneur. Buy yourself a fleet of flatbed trucks, put some big honkin’ diesel generators on them, and when you have EVs stuck where they can’t recharge, Mobile Rechargers to the rescue!
and charge $1000.00 for 50% charge or $1995.99 for a full charge.
cash only.
Historically, government-created crises have led to government price controls and often to confiscation and nationalization of resources, industry, and of private property. We have national governments worldwide with two to three years of experience abusing emergency authority.
From what I’ve been able to learn, it appears the most economical way to accommodate, solar and especially wind variability, is having small battery storage (1 hour maximum) to instantaneously pick up when RE drops off to enable bringing online a single stage gas turbine to replace the RE, which may be back in an hour or so! This avoids the cost of running a combined cycle gas turbine on warm “standby”.
The problem is once wind and solar gets above 10%, more or less, grid penetration, it requires so much storage, and so much single stage gas turbine capacity, that the RE accommodating infrastructure ruins the economics. The best solution IMHO is ending the W&S farce. N2N, Natural Gas to Nuclear with small scale modular leading the way (search NuScale).
Cheaper batteries aren’t the answer, they would still be too expensive even if free because the site prep, labor, enclosures, switchgear, over current protection, fire suppression and more costs $200/kWh.
Battery, $176. total $395 kwh ($219 “other stuff”) Final%20-%20ESGC%20Cost%20Performance%20Report
see page 33.
Precisely and why all the lithium batteries with the NEM grid do in Australia is provide short run FCAS to cream off the problem the unreliables created in the first place. That certainly pays well for early adopters but the fallacy of composition awaits serious battery penetration with solar and wind farms.
The true cost of these unreliables would be obvious if tenderers to the communal grid had only been permitted to supply that level of power they could guarantee 24/7/365 along with FCAS. As it stands they’re simply dumping cheaply on the grid and driving out dispatchables to the detriment of consumers.
The Great Reset, cometh.
That reset is changing the energy rich world, into the energy poor world.
The consequences of that ‘reset’ are well known and well planned.
Only the ‘important’ people will have access to energy supply. The rest of us, will be returning to serfdom and doffing your cap, “thank e kindly maam, we is so grateful for yer kindness and generosity”
“ wind and solar farms—which are among the cheapest forms of power generation”
On what planet?
I’d read the article with “pro-storage technology” glasses. With the “among the cheapest forms of power generation”, I’d say the piece is written by an unreliables proponent.
Oddgeir
The last paragraph demonstrates that Katie Blunt is clueless about electricity generation.
From the article: “The risk of electricity shortages is rising throughout the U.S. as traditional power plants are being retired more quickly than they can be replaced by renewable energy and battery storage.”
Wind and solar will not power the grid. Battery storage is a bad joke. Anyone who thinks differently is delusional, including writers at the Wall Street Journal.
Tom too true mate, I hope a power crisis comes to California very soon, so that a massive lesson on the liability of renewables is learn by them and us in Australia so we can pull back from the madness of Net Zero, start thinking properly about reliable cost effective energy and climate- related suicidal policies advocated by our policy elites.
It seems no government or NGO is bothered to conduct due diligence on our power infrastructure or grids to see what requirements, costs etc for present policies to work, or new options. Don’t mention green hydrogen, large scale battery storage, carbon sequestration or fusion energy as potential answers to these problems. Small scale nuclear could work, if there was political will.
However, in reality, none of this is required, because there is no climate problem in the first instance that requires us to power down our economy and limit CO2 emissions that are actually helping to bolster plant productivity and save the planet for ongoing human development! Talk about a storm in a teacup!
Every serious study of renewable energy has pointed to two facts:
1) more RE means you need big interstate transmission lines to move power between regions. These aren’t getting built because of NIMBY and Federal permits.
2) more RE means you need more gas peakers. These aren’t getting built because regulators and market makers know that the business case for RE is dismal if you include the cost of these investments.
These investments are expensive. Making the system reliable means undermining the inflated value of RE. This is career suicide. Electric systems are political. Telling unpopular truths leads to unemployment.
Using wind turbines to generate electricity:
*Kills millions of birds and bats
*Destroys the local environment/landscape
*Tears up the earth mining some rare earth metals used in their magnets and for the manufacture of steel, which is made of iron
*Units last around 20-25 years, then these massive monstrosities fill up our landfills
*Very unreliable. Power is only generated when the wind is blowing.
*Power-lines lose energy during transmission process
*Batteries to store wind power longer term still not developed. Those will result in more mining of rare earth metals that tear up the earth.
Its renewable since the planet will always have a pressure gradient that erratically causes wind.
However, wind power is FAKE green energy.
“The challenge is that wind and solar farms—which are among the cheapest forms of power generation—don’t produce electricity at all times and need large batteries to store their output for later use.”
Sigh. First. there is no such thing as “the cost of wind power” or “the cost of solar power” because those systems do not exist on their own. They CANNOT exist on their own. There are only “hybrid power systems” which include wind and/or solar power combined with a traditional baseload power source such as gas, coal, or nuclear.
When computing the cost of wind, you have to include the cost of maintaining and running the backup capacity.
Wind and solar are NOT cheap. Coal and natural gas a cheap, reliable and abundant. The only reason wind and solar LOOK cheap is because the idiots in charge have artificially raised the cost of coal/natural gas through fees/taxes and massive regulations. If coal was not cheap, India and China would NOT be building huge number of coal plants for power. Was not long ago coal was providing electricity to homes here in the US for <6c/kwhr.