by Gordon Tomb
When a cold snap in December 2022 caused widespread power outages, central planners eagerly called upon the federal government to play a larger role in our power grids to minimize deadly blackouts.
The left-wing Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) dubbed the United States the only country “without a plan.” The electric system’s “fragmented planning framework is highly problematic because the power grid is under growing stress from climate change-related extreme weather,” claimed RMI.
Reuters published a lengthy special report about a “creaky grid” hampering wind and solar energy. The piece lamented how the federal government “lacks the authority to push through the massive grid expansion and modernization needed to withstand wilder weather and accommodate EVs and renewable power.” Furthermore, the article described the U.S. grid as “a Byzantine web of local, state, and regional regulators.”
To be sure, current grid management is far from perfect. The North American Electric Reliability Corp recently reported that more than half of the U.S. population is at risk of outages during frigid winters.
However, turning the electric system over to federal bureaucrats would be like making a vandal the property manager of an apartment complex.
The federal government’s overzealous environmental regulations and quasi-religious commitment to “green” energy have significantly contributed to grid reliability issues. And these problems are increasingly manifesting as life-threatening and costly blackouts.
Voters, consumers, and lawmakers should be skeptical of seemingly reasonable recommendations for “better planning and coordination” among the dozen regional power grids—especially when they demand increased federal oversight.
For example, RMI suggested that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) require “both a minimum amount of inter-regional transfer capability and a robust inter-regional planning process.”
However, inter-regional power sharing and planning already exist, and the real impetus for increasing federal involvement is the “green” agenda to add more wind and solar to the grid.
Unfortunately, we are already heading in the wrong direction, moving from stable, always-available power sources (e.g., coal, gas, and nuclear) toward unreliable wind and solar. This transition—imposed by subsidies and government fiat—is straining the nation’s electrical grid.
Our federal bureaucracy has undermined the integrity of the power grid by forcing early retirements of reliable coal-fired power plants. Targeted by federal and state regulators hostile to coal, the Homer City power station, Pennsylvania’s largest plant, closed last July. Two more, the Pittsburgh-area Keystone and Conemaugh plants, will shut down in the next four years.
Federal meddling in energy markets also includes the proliferation of “green” energy subsidies. These subsidies’ corrosive influence dilutes the original mission of power grids, such as the PJM Interconnection serving Pennsylvania and 12 other states, according to former FERC official James Danly.
“[Energy] markets have become something closer to a mechanism by which to harvest … subsidies, rather than what they were intended to do, which is ensure least-cost dispatch of available resources and to incentivize new investment,” said Danly.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will make matters worse.
“For the most part, [grids] have embraced the goal of economic efficiency,” writes Travis Fisher, the director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute. “However, some … have begun to include the ‘clean‐energy transition’ and ‘environmentally sustainable power system’ in their mission statements.”
Fisher’s worry: “The IRA will push [grids] further into a new era in which the goal of economic efficiency [i.e., affordable energy] is secondary to environmental goals or ignored entirely.”
Some state lawmakers want to head the federal government off at the pass. After several hearings, Pennsylvania’s Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee recently proposed an Independent Energy Office to sort out the complex issues of the commonwealth’s energy landscape.
Undoubtedly, there is much to do in the Keystone State, one of the nation’s largest energy producers. Pennsylvania’s elected officials must bolster the management of the life-sustaining electric system and increase access to affordable, reliable energy.
However, policymakers concerned about grid reliability should be wary of increased federal intrusion. What may be a dream come true for central planners ought to be everybody else’s nightmare.
This commentary was first published at Delaware Valley Journal on January 12, 2023.
Gordon Tomb is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank, and a Senior Advisor with the CO2 Coalition in Arlington, VA.
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Federal Power Grid Would be Everyone’s Worst Nightmare
National grid, anyone?
As it stands it wouldn’t take much to take down ERCOT…Just a prolonged cold spell in the middle of February with no available gas back-up.
Similar with the NYUP
However any situation that takes out smaller isolated grid systems will only put small regions in the dark.
Create a National Grid under FERC will create a situation where a problem could cascade taking the entire country out … For months at a time as a section couldn’t easily reenergize if they had no power to transport replacement infrastructure to damage locations. Remember, transportation is also electric and needs to recharge
in defense of ERCOT they have to utilize what is available. I blame the Texas Legislature for the lack of reliable resources.
Not casting blame on ERCOT or any ISO in particular. They just make a great poster child for the folly of too much ruinables and not enough reliables
National gridlock, I think you mean. Or National gridloss. Maybe both.
“Federal Power
GridGrab Would be Everyone’s Worst Nightmare”fixed it
The issue is how big is ‘national’?
There are real technical problems with phase delays in having one USA sized synchronised grid.
Issues which don’t happen in UK grid.
At a minimum there need to be I think three US grid – West, central and east. and it might be better to make that six, splitting things along the north south axis. I am sire that are suitable state or natural boundaries along which that split might take place.
These grids would then be interconnected by HVDC links to break synchronisation.
Because they would be de facto monopolies, they would need some sort of central oversight.As is done by OFGEN in the UK.
I think that would be the least worst way of organising things.
That gives plenty of room for privately owned profit making generation companies and retail companies, with only the distribution networks having essentially having Federal oversight.
All the federal oversight has to do is to guarantee minimum standards of delivery by the retail companies, come hell or high water, and cap operating profits on them. Who will thereby be incentivised to buy cheap reliable electricity from whoever can deliver it.
And if that turns out to be nuclear, not renewable, well so what?
If the desire is to limit fossil consumption then carbon tax the [independent] power stations that burn the fuel and deplete the reserves and generate the emissions.
It is a simple model that allows the minimum of federal intervention, and uses the market to dictate the technology, not green idealism and boondoggling. Straight carbon tax will achieve best cost benefit solutions on either emissions, if you believe in climate change, or preservation of vital fossil reserves when other sources are as cheap. Customers will be protected by a Federal office for oversight, that will offset the natural monopolies that grids must inevitably be.
And you avoid huge Federal bureaucratic structures as well, by limiting Federal powers to taxation of carbon, and price and profit caps and performance guarantees on the grid businesses.
So the USA as a whole becomes responsible for setting the agenda of grid development, but is not involved in actually delivering it.
But if the Feds take over any part or aspect of the grid, they will not be able to keep from increasing their control over any parts they do not govern (camel’s nose into the tent, anyone?) Minimum becomes maximum.
The issue is how big is ‘national’?
That’s something I was thinking – there is a massive scale difference between a national grid in a European country vs. USA. (as an aside, I’ve noticed that many Europeans don’t really have a sense of the scale of the US – as an example, while staying in New York, you can’t really “hop over” to Portland for the weekend as I’ve heard some say they were planning)
But I agree with oeman about Federal intervention. It NEVER ends as “we’ll just do this”
Another option to HVDC links is using phase adjusting transformers. These allow for transfer of both real AND reactive power while allowing he connecting systems to operate at slightly different frequencies. Another advantage is that the phase adjustment can control the power flow between the two connected system.
GE was making these transformers 15 years ago, but I don’t know if that product line survived GE’s meltdown.
______________________________________________________________
The electric system’s “fragmented planning framework is highly problematic because the power grid is under growing stress from climate change-related POLICY” Should have been what RMI claimed.
Beat me to that comment, Steve!
“…the power grid is under growing stress from climate change-related extreme weather …..“creaky grid” hampering wind and solar energy.” Talk about creating a problem then offering to fix it their way. This is like the current practice of eliminating farming which will lead to food shortages that they can solve by eliminating people.
I experienced a hundred years worth of warming this morning in only a couple of hours when just after the sun came out the temperature rose from -12 to -10F.
Well, I didn’t actually experience that whole change as I went into my natural gas heated home between starting, coffee break, and finishing shoveling my walk and driveway. Truthfully, -12F felt warmer than -10.
I posted this over at Manhattan Contrarian a while ago…
“…creaky grid hampering wind and solar energy.” Oh really? They must live in backwards world.
To the left, the solution to every problem is more government.
And fewer free-range citizens!
As Texas showed in 2021, any grid with significant wind will be unstable. Wind produces jack in still air and freezing rain, and displaces investment in reliable power sources.
It was not the lack of wind and solar that did us in. It was the lack of contracts with significant penalties for not delivering natural gas. The operators did not winterize their wells since there was no economic incentive to do so. They did not suffer a penalty if they could not deliver. This was fixed after the debacle in 2021. During the next cold spell in 2022, (getting down to 17°F in Houston) we did not have any major issues. The forecast is for another polar express next week with a predicted low of 20°F. I am cautiously optimistic but prepared.
The 2021 event has been discussed MANY times on WUWT.
It was the EPA requirement to take natural gas powered pumps/compressors out and replace them with electric motors, then the loss of electric power to those motors reduced the ability to INCREASE supply of natural gas even more.
Government failure, intentional in my opinion, and you want to sue the gas companies??
AND lets all help the trial lawyers amass even more money at the expense of every person, and to the benefit of Democrat politicians, who receive massive campaign donations from lawyers.
IF the EPA had not changed rules under Obama, the failure of the gas suppliers to supply 300% of normal demand instead of the 290% they did supply would not have happened.
(the % indicated above are not actual numbers, just guesses. We all know gas suppliers saved whatever parts of the Texas grid that survived and were the primary reason the grid could restart. Someone can probably provide the actual numbers, or a link to an old post here at WUWT that includes that information but the coffee pot just dinged and I need coffee before doing the research)
The 2022 event was cold, but freezing rain, ice storm, etc.?? not so much so apples to oranges there. The real solution would be to just put the old natural gas engine driven pumps back in service.
The “fragmented planning framework” is what competition, innovation and ultimately the capitalist system is all about. Successful strategies will be adopted by other fragments. The more the frameworks vary, the more likely that successful approaches will evolve and ineffective ones be abandoned.. A centralized, one-size-fits-all paradigm is unlikely to ever satisfy every constituency and make adaptation more difficult and scrapping bad policy harder or impossible.
Central planners, when faced with a failure or potential failure, always insist on solving it with more money and more bureaucracy. Whereas a competitive market system will elect to accept failure and try something else another time…that is if, in light of knowledge gained by failure, the problem is still worth solving.
Wind and solar grid penetration at 5% harmless, 10% nuisance, 15% expensive waste, 20% grid destabilization and economic destruction, 25% insanity (OK, with flexible hydro the insanity can be deferred to 30%).
All governments cause inflation by issuing fiat money and then say they will cure inflation by issuing more fiat money.
At some point it all collapses. Always has, always will.
As Planning Engineer has written over at Judith Curry’s site. There are physical limits to the size a grid can be. This is for technical reasons about current flows phase angle shifts and circulating currents. It is better to have smaller grids with interties, often DC.
That looks very much like what there is now.
Yes, but, but, but the government can always make it better!!!!
Good article, Gordon…glad to see your expertise in action again.
This site could use some educational materials specific to Pennsylvania’s/PJM issues that can be distributed to neighbors and friends?
This is a great site and has contributors with excellent visualization methods, but they don’t seem to get that the nearly constant variability of wind /solar production– at the scale that the grid is operated on.
One needed visual is to show the generation output to the existing grid on much smaller time scales than typically shown and discussed.
It is necessary to show the many large gaps in wind/solar generation–typically changing with clouds or wind velocity and direction in minutes for hours and days on end. Then the full-time, second to second availability of fossil, nuclear, gas/oil, or hydro would show how customer demands are meant…instead of just weeks or months on average typically shown.
The grid has many sensors and equipment operating in a fraction of second along with human monitoring and ordered switching that create the frequency stability, voltage within specified limits, and uninterrupted power needed by customers.
The grid was built and improved constantly over 100 years. It is a massively rational, structured, and efficient device.
Arbitrary “green” generators are truly oppositional reductions to desired and expected available, reliable, stable, and lowest cost electric service.
It would also be helpful to have land area needed for “green’ alternatives and the full cost to provide “make-up” energy to fill the inherent gaps in sporadic wind/solar to compare equally with coal plants.
It’s preferable that “maku-up” facilities and grid connections are installed and paid for by wind/solar investors–not taxpayers or rate payers as is now.
Keep trying on this site. We need your expertise.
John Furst
“The grid has many sensors and equipment operating in a fraction of second along with human monitoring and ordered switching that create the frequency stability, voltage within specified limits, and uninterrupted power needed by customers.
The grid was built and improved constantly over 100 years. It is a massively rational, structured, and efficient device.”
Just like with a pipeline carrying liquid or gas needs intermediate pumping stations the electrical grid needs “pumping stations” as well. They are known as “generators”. The only stable pumps for electricity are fossil fueled. Unstable pumps are worse than none at all. If you don’t have pumps then local systems have to be built to stand-alone systems – meaning survivability is enhanced.
Very nice.
“Energy] markets have become something closer to a mechanism by which to harvest … subsidies, rather than what they were intended to do, which is ensure least-cost dispatch of available resources and to incentivize new investment,” said Danly.”
This says it all.
The government sticking it’s nose in this business is the worst possible alternative.
The wind, solar, battery subsidy harvest racket, encouraged deception of the EIA, etc., and various financial advisor entities.
EXCERPT from
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-s-largest-offshore-wind-system-developer-abandons-two-major
Levelized Cost of Energy Deceptions, by US-EIA, et al.
Most people have no idea wind and solar systems need grid expansion/reinforcement and expensive support systems to even exist on the grid.
With increased annual W/S electricity percent on the grid, increased grid investments are needed, plus greater counteracting plant capacity, MW, especially when it is windy and sunny around noon-time.
Increased counteracting of the variable W/S output, places an increased burden on the grid’s other generators, causing them to operate in an inefficient manner (more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh), which adds more cost/kWh to the offshore wind electricity cost of about 16 c/kWh, after 50% subsidies
The various cost/kWh adders start with annual W/S electricity at about 8% on the grid.
The adders become exponentially greater, with increased annual W/S electricity percent on the grid
The US-EIA, Lazard, Bloomberg, etc., and their phony LCOE “analyses”, are deliberately understating the cost of wind, solar and battery systems
Their LCOE “analyses” of W/S/B systems purposely exclude major LCOE items.
Their deceptions reinforced the popular delusion, W/S are competitive with fossil fuels, which is far from reality.
The excluded LCOE items are shifted to taxpayers, ratepayers, and added to government debts.
W/S would not exist without at least 50% subsidies
W/S output could not be physically fed into the grid, without items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. See list.
1) Subsidies equivalent to about 50% of project lifetime owning and operations cost,
2) Grid extension/reinforcement to connect remote W/S systems to load centers
3) A fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the variable W/S output, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365
4) A fleet of power plants to provide electricity during low-W/S periods, and 100% during high-W/S periods, when rotors are feathered and locked,
5) Output curtailments to prevent overloading the grid, i.e., paying owners for not producing what they could have produced
6) Hazardous waste disposal of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. See image.
Green Energy cost-benefit.
Bloomberg estimates $US200 trillion to stop warming by 2050. There are about 2 billion households in the world, so that is about $100,000 per household. The developing world, where about 90% of the households live, can’t afford anything additional, so that will be about $1 million per household in the developed world.
Most families would rather have $1 million extra in the bank and a degree or two of warming.
Gov. Greg Abbott talks about preps for winter weather headed to Texas – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS1WJFa8Bdk
and it’ll all be:
…while every other ‘life support system’ of heating, lighting, food, transport, communications are completely dependant on ALL the above
You can see it happening can’t you, they are engineering The Perfect Train Wreck.
One tiny little thing, e.g. a possum short circuits itself across a domestic transformer, and an entire nation of 300+million people goes cold, dark, motionless and quiet in an instant – a lot of it to never move again.
T’would make a good Hollywood blockbuster – if you’re into busterbusters that are only 2 minutes from beginning to end.
(Inc 110 seconds of adverts)
and The Real Nightmare is – there’s now no way to stop them doing that.
People who live in the UK and Australia don’t have a 2nd amendment. Your mistake. But you still have sugarwater don’t you? Send them a case of soft drinks monthly.
One practice that would help regarding outages would be if they did better work on tree work along the power lines. I should think it’s much cheaper to get arborists out there removing threatening branches and entire trees- than sending people out in a storm to restore power. Burying much of the lines would be helpful but of course that would be far more expensive- yet I think it happens in some fancy neighborhoods.
As a child in Virginia, the Vepco power company direct employees would come through with the company bucket trucks and trim around the lines at least 2 times a year in at least MY neighborhood.
If asked, they would drop and chop trees that could become a hazard if asked by a property owner, not to rounds, just small enough to get off the street.
As labor costs increased, mostly due to benefits and retirement, every utility company went to outside contractors and reduced their direct employees.
The guys that would need to fix downed lines in the cold and rain/snow naturally did a better job of keeping the lines clear than contractors IMO.
Federal Energy Grid? Maybe that was what President Reagan was thinking about, when he said: the worst thing to hear was “I’m from the government and I’m her to frack you”, or something like that, maybe “I’m from the government and I’m here to stop fracking you”? Something appropriate, anyway.
How I miss the Gipper!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTc_u_HQm5w
“Aegrescit medendo“ (it worsens with healing).
It’s climate quackery the treatment is worse than the supposed ‘disease’ analogous to assuming a death was the result of an ailment when the actual cause was bloodletting, for instance as probably in the case of George Washington.
Remember the blackouts of the ’60’s and 2003? “I am from the government and i’m here to help”. Right.
A perfect set-up for a single-point-of failure that causes a national grid collapse – not to mention, rampant technical incompetence, higher costs, sloth, preference for “green” (i.e., hopelessly inappropriate and expensive) solutions, and a collapsed economy.
a single-point-of failure that causes a national grid collapse
That reminds me: some years ago they determined that only 15 substations, in the right locations, could take down the entire national grid. Has that changed in any way since then?
Expecting power to be available from ruinables during ‘wilder weather’ shows how out of touch with reality these green fools are.
No sun – solar useless
Too much/little wind – wind generators are useless.
Do they have a touch-feely benign definition of ‘wilder weather’ that will keep the lights on and it’s CAGW’s fault when they are sitting in the dark?
Once we silly humans stop plundering and colonizing our world, and put Gaia back up on the highest pedestal where she belongs; the weather will stop wilding, and yetis, unicorns and Pegasi will come out of hiding to once more frolic among their infantile playmates!
Isolated grids can be a good thing. You only need to remember what has happened.
The night the lights went out
The second not so pretty one
Will they ever learn
LOL, nice post.
Yes, let us trust NE liberals to control the whole of the US grid.
I don’t know much about the US modern governing structure, but it’s clear that Europe “cooperation”/centralized structure wrecked the Europe continental grid:
At the end, we got way too little capacity on our grid, and too little interconnections anyway to compensate bad local choices in time of crisis.
Also, more electrification means more weather dependency in winter (in MW/K).
Whenever I hear some whining commie say “America is the only country without a plan for…” (whatever…breakfast cereal bowl size standardization, etc.), all I can think is damn right and thank God we don’t.
Given the choice between central planning and a grid that evolves and adapts to true market forces, I won’t spend much time considering pros and cons. The market wants my business and will drive whatever change is necessary to encourage me to willingly buy the product I want and/or need.
The central planners just want to keep their jobs while being accountable to nobody. They will spend all their time trying to defeat any process that can remove them from office or make them accountable. Central planners will work on the widely disseminated theory that it is wrong for me have reliable access to energy and to use that energy for the betterment of my life and that of my family.
A market driven grid’s performance will determine its own success or failure and, as a result, it will evolve to be increasingly efficient, affordable and reliable. the central planners will continually suck the life out of the economy until the word economy becomes a forgotten concept applied to a long extinct civilization.