David Wojick
We are awash in urgent warnings that the electric power grid is increasingly prone to failure.
Some of these warnings have come from people who actually oversee the grid, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, and various Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs). My fellow skeptics have also been vocal on this growing threat of disaster.
The reason is painfully clear. States and utilities are recklessly shutting down their reliable power plants, especially coal-fired and nuclear. They claim to be replacing these with wind and solar generators, but they only work intermittently, so they are completely unreliable.
Rather than complaining about this madness, or in addition to that, it is time to prepare for the inevitable result. We must plan for blackouts.
Everyone talks about blackouts, but I have not seen a detailed analysis of the various ways these might occur in any given region. I suspect there are several different basic ways, each calling for a different planning approach. So here are some starter thoughts.
First of all, there are deliberate rolling blackouts versus uncontrolled blackouts. RTOs and utilities may well have internal plans, or perhaps rules, for running rolling blackouts. If so, it would be very helpful to know what these are. For example, emergency service groups at all levels of government could have rolling blackout warning systems and response plans.
Uncontrolled blackouts may be unpredictable, but they can still be planned for to some degree. I live way out in the country, and we get blackouts several times a year, so we have a well-prepared routine for dealing with them if they do not last too long. Towns, cities, and counties should do likewise.
Of special importance are the size and duration of blackouts, as both features deeply affect planning. Should we expect a lot more small blackouts or just a few more big ones? How about really big ones, a few of which have occurred in the past?
It also matters how hot or cold it is, especially for large, long-lived blackouts. Severe cold is really dangerous.
The 2021 Texas blackout disaster killed hundreds of people, and the East Coast almost went that way around Christmas 2022. It turns out extreme cold can mess up the natural gas supply system for gas-fired power plants, so this, too, needs to be planned for.
The first question is how much failure analysis can already be done using existing computer models. The RTOs and utilities do a lot of modeling. For example, they already can determine what system upgrades will be needed before a new large generating facility can be connected to the grid. The wind and solar people complain about this because it sometimes makes their remote projects very expensive.
If the utilities can do that kind of detailed analysis, they ought to be able to see where things are likely to break and what that might do to the system. I am reminded of The Wichita Lineman song line saying: “If it snows that stretch down south will never stand the strain”.
It may be that they are already doing this sort of failure analysis; they just don’t want to tell us about it, lest it worry us. But given all the warnings, we clearly need to worry and take steps to address that worry.
It also may be true that they cannot do the kinds of failure analysis I am describing. The growing threat is new, after all, so the software simply may not exist. If this is true, then given the huge amounts of potential damage, including deaths, we should be developing that software as fast as possible.
Not knowing the near-term impact of the so-called “energy transition” on reliability is a true public health emergency. We may be flying blind into the wall of impossibility.
Vague warnings are not good enough. It is time for all levels of Government to plan for blackouts.
Note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the spring edition of Range Magazine.
http://www.rangemagazine.com/ For the cowboy in all of us.
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Just as consumers have become aware of the limitations of electric vehicles and responded by refraining from purchasing them, so must governments deal with unreliable energy sources like wind and solar. Don’t depend on or subsidize them without reliable backup power sources such as provided by fossil fuels. This is only common sense rather than leaving taxpayers holding the bag after it’s been their money that propped up these renewables in the first place regardless of whether they can deliver 24/7 or not. At least with an EV, if it’s not working, the dealership will honor the warranty and provide a temporary replacement vehicle often the same day. With a power failure, if there’s no replacement source available, citizens may be left to be chilled in darkness for days.
Off Topic: Yay ads at WUWT. Thanks for adding the ads to WUWT. I enjoy watching the Malwarebtes ad slide into view in the lower right-hand corner of my screen and seeing how fast I can close it.
Regards,
Bob
I constantly have Elon Musk at the top of my screen in a pop down that won’t go away and the headline “Tragedy for Elon Musk”
Hmmm
In the middle of typing that last reply ads vanished
Not so fast yer varmint.
Now it says…
“Our hearts go out to Elon Musk”
That top pop down has ALWAYS been about Elon Musk
There is a solution for potential climate blackouts caused by increasing intermittent renewable penetration, at least for the US with abundant natural gas. It is to build sufficient backup CCGT to cover any foreseeable potential problems based on many years of weather history. These can spin up very rapidly from a cold start. They run 61% thermal efficiency at full power, and still run 59% efficient at 40% of full power (they cannot run at all below 40%).
Of course the underutilized CCGT capital makes this a very expensive solution for the grid. Question becomes, what are we willing to pay (and who pays) for what level of blackout insurance? The obvious structural solution is to cause the renewable operators to pay for the generating insurance against their unreliability. But then there wouldn’t be any more renewable investment. So that becomes a green political problem for which there is no rational solution.
Therefore climate blackouts are not a question of if, only when and where. It might take one or two ‘killers’ to wake the green woke up. ERCOT is a candidate—high wind penetration, no interconnections to other grids. New England is a candidate, because they are not expanding gas pipeline capacity to enable more CCGT. UK is definitely a candidate. Germany probably not because of interconnections to Scandinavian hydro. California sadly also probably not because of connections to Bonneville hydro.
Build the gas and nuclear and scrap the unreliables
Gas is also a problem in extreme cold. Dec 19, 2022 PJM had a 30% reserve on paper with almosrt no renewables and it vanished in Storm Elliot when the gas supply system froze up. I favor coal where the supply is a big pile at the power plant not a pipe.
Wasn’t the “freeze up” caused by the Feds requiring them to use electric instead of nat gas powered pumps? Somebody forgot to think about the effect of frozen wind turbines on electric generation…
There has never been a problem with gas lines freezing up in Michigan, and we hit 0 F nearly every winter. Texas chose not to protect its power and natural gas systems against cold weather.
The electric gas pumps with no backup was a second problem. It created a failure loop, where gas lines required electric power and power plants required gas. Interrupt either one and you need power from outside to restart after the problem is fixed. I’m very puzzled by this, because gas lines originally used gas-powered pumps. Why weren’t these retained as backups when they put in the electric pumps?
IPCC Co-chair John Houghton:
“If we want a good
environmentalENERGY policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.”https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Houghton_(physicist)
Dumb question: if CCGT equipment is only used occasionally, would it last longer, thus making the investment not as bad as it might at first seem?
Intermittent use results in more thermal stress cycles that will increase maintenance bills. The plant is perfectly happy operating at design output for months on end. Overall, you will get a shorter plant life unless you are completely mothballing it.
“…for which there is no rational solution.” The ‘greens’ appear to be unable to think rationally so the lack of rational solutions should not be a problem :<)
P-F Bach has a very handy analysis of international power flows in Europe. The position of France has swung around now that the grand carenage repair of their nuclear fleet has passed its peak. Scandinavia exports depend on reasonable hydro levels – Norwegian production can vary between about 100TWh to 145TWh, depending on snowfall – boosted by Swedish and now Finnish nuclear. Italy’s vulnerability as a big importer may be less well known.
That won’t happen where I live (Vermont) until they allow construction of new natural gas pipelines.
Ditto for new nuclear plants.
Maybe after a few years of really cold winter and a few thousand needless deaths, but even then I doubt it. They would first have to admit their mistakes.
I have tried to bring this to the attention of my Congressperson. Her staff is either not interested or is simply so ignorant that they do not understand what I am saying. So far I have 3 different letters from 3 different calls to them to speak with a real person about this issue, and each thanks me for contacting her office and tells me how she is pushing green energy and batteries to combat climate change, and also encouraging transmission upgrades. They are clueless to the potential immediacy of the problem.
Both. Not interested because green, and ignorant else they would not be green. AOC is exhibit A for both.
Transmission between a region of America, with weather in America and a region from outer space? Unless there is “transmission” with a completely different continent, the “transmission” will share the pain.
Since Climate is a 30 year averaged trend, no such thing as Climate Outages, only weather caused outages as have occurred since electric distribution and transmission have been utilized by Society
Just wait.
When the power goes out, only those houses and businesses with gas powered generators will have power. It’s a class thing — or so they will say.
Then the call will be, “Generators for All!”
Here on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, our condo tower has a massive natural gas powered (aka spark ignited) diesel generator, tested every other day for half an hour. Suffices for elevators and common area lighting. Not for the condos themselves.
But we have never lost power (through Katrina, Wilma, Irma, Ian—last three were bad high Cat2 to high Cat3 judging from local damage), because FPL buried most distribution lines (most of the rest are on steel reinforced concrete poles) and hardened all their transmission lines to withstand a South Florida Cat 5. Ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure to FPL bottom line.
And we don’t have any renewables at all on our South Florida FPL grid because even a Cat 1 would be catastrophic for them.
I live in the US Upper Midwest where power outages are mostly due to fallen trees and can last from a few hours (mostly) to a few days for serious summer storms and the occasional tornado. Backup generators cost between $3500 and $19,000 plus installation which is a lot until you and your neighbors are sitting in the driveway waiting for the electric company to bring you back on-line.
They are becoming “standard” for new construction while portable units with enough juice to keep the refrigerator/freezer cold etc. are popping up.
We just spent $10K on a 12Kw Kohler propane generator (that included installation). The thing is seamless, lost power for 4 hours the other day and hardly noticed, used about 1 gal/hour. The trick is to put all your critical equipment, like computers, A/V, etc on UPS battery backup first, then wire in the generator/transfer switch in front of the circuit panel and also put in a surge protector at that point. None of the actors are even aware of a power loss as the UPS will let them float over the generator startup, which only takes a few seconds.
Isn’t CA working hard towards generators for none?
Suggestion: Call any power outage or reduction due to over-reliance on green/renewable energy a “Green-out” to clearly differentiate it from what happens when a tree falls on a power line or lightning hits a transformer, etc. Blackouts, Brownouts and Green-outs are different things. The more it gets used in comments & stories, the more people will be reminded what the real issue is.
In my area nearly 20 yrs ago after the timber beetle kill power outages occurred regularly.
I have a couple of gensets that we use. The main breaker panel has a “hurricane switch”
that requires the main breaker to be shut off so to isolate the main powerline. It’s
a manual type of system but there are automatic types available. I keep quite a bit
of fuel on hand.
I picked up a very nice used 10K genset at an estate sale for $350 a while back, I can’t believe the price increase on used equipment as of late. I could sell that unit for 10 times what I paid.
A bit off topic but might be of interest. I had a conversation with an insurance agent last week.
I was told that they have seen a large increase in people dropping their auto insurance
over the state of the economy. I have an uninsured motorist rider on my policy, hope I don’
need it.
Over the state of the economy?
I carry only the minimum liability insurance required to register the car. I have had no insurance claims and not traffic tickets for 40 years of so. I am now paying what would have bought full coverage not many years ago, just for minimum coverage.
Over the state of insurance and whatever drives it (BEV owners?).
Don’t know about your area but when we moved here and off the boat some 20 years ago we got the minimum required liability for our car. A couple of years ago I bought a new Honda. When I upgraded our insurance to 50-100-300 plus collision it was cheaper than what we had been paying for the minimum on one car. The agent said it was because people who got the minimum were typically higher risk so the company charged a higher premium.
Interesting. I wonder if it is still possible to question an insurance agent. Everything seems to be by robot over the internet now.
I don’t remember about rates back in the early 1980s but one year the CA DMV either did not send a license renewal notice or it was somehow waylaid. I, probably like many people, never had occasion to look at the license card. Perhaps as a joke from the gods I got stopped about three weeks after my birthday and : citation for expired license.
It was soon corrected. This required showing up in person to prove it but I paid no fine. Shortly after I got a notice from the insurance company of a large increase because “the court revoked your license”. My attempted conversation with an agent to correct their record resulted in nothing more than a disgusted look; he wouldn’t even say a word.
I dropped that company. The issue was not raised, nor the premiums raised, by the new company.
Planning never prevented a blackout. Actual engineering for system robustness is not politically viable.
Rather than governments planning for blaming everyone else for electrical failure, how about governments getting their hands of the scales and out of the till by deregulating power generattion? How about ending government sponsored incentives for unreliable power delivery? Rather than penalizing and taxing customers all the time, why not contractually penalize providers for non-delivery?
Ans: politicians and public bureaucrats won’t possibly profit by failure proofing the system, especially when they can more easily blame someone else for the failures. This simple fact will also prevent any effective fixes from taking place before the fact, as well as slow responses when the failures eventually occur.
Governments don’t prevent anything, they only spend revenue.
governments only remedy, most of the time, is to bring everyone down to the lowest level.
Two years ago I purchased a 10 kW dual fuel (gasoline /propane) generator for use as a backup unit at the house. I then purchased a 30 amp transfer switch from a company called Generlink. The unit goes between the meter base and the meter and comes with a cord that connects the switch to the 30 amp outlet on the generator. It senses which source is energized, generator or commercial power, and prevents either source from closing in on each other or the generator back feeding onto commercial power. For example if you are running the generator and commercial power is available the switch will automatically disconnect commercial power and load the generator. If commercial power goes out and the generator is operating to supply the house the switch will not allow commercial power back onto the breaker panel until the generator is turned off then the switch automatically connects to commercial power. It’s kind of a semi-automatic system. Someone has to be at the house to start the generator during an outage and be there to turn it off when commercial power is restored however since it allows the generator to feed directly to the breaker panel all of the circuits in the house are energized. 10 kW is sufficient to run all of the refrigeration, furnace, well pump, computer, TV and lights. Sketchy on the central air but I can deal with that. The biggest concern is heat, water and refrigeration.
It sounds like you are well prepared.
We all need to get that way.
I have one too, came with the house. It has an automatic transfer switch and the generator starts on its own, 10 seconds after power out. Refrigerators and main room lights are on it, no other appliances. AC is not, so it can get a bit uncomfortable during the summer. For winter, we have a wood fireplace.
Since our load is pretty low, we only use minimal propane when it’s running. Form what I’ve read it can run several days 24/7 on a full tank, possibly even more than 2 weeks. Never had to run more than 3 days though.
Imagine no refrigerated food.
Been there, done that. I the latest outage (storm damage to the lines), I lost an entire freezer full of meat because the power was down for three days.
Some BS in this article. Some US states like California and Texas may indeed have screwed the pooch. Do not pretend that conditions which prevail in some US states have anything to do with conditions elsewhere. Four Canadian provinces are planning to build new nuclear power stations, with seven new nuclear reactors called for by the Ontario government alone.
For those unfamiliar with the workings of Canada’s government, electricity and natural resources are under the direction of the provinces, not the federal government.
The Southwest Power Pool is also ringing the alarm bells on their grid situation. They have closed 2.3 percent of their reliable generation capacity (coal) recently and the grid managers are voicing concerns about brownouts and blackouts now.
You are ignoring the fact that this applies to the US. It may have nothing to do with the rest of the world.
Most people care about where they live, not the rest of the world.
I also live in the countryside and I plan for backouts by having a generator ready. I do not want to lose all the contents of my freezers. I also have a wodburner and two camping stoves.
My woodburner has saved me on more that one occasion.
With all due respect to the maturity and common sense of the author, dealing with this issue in a timely manner is likely to be the most expensive outcome. Letting the fantasists run for a few more years will see regular blackouts and lead to an awakening of the public to the con that has been perpetrated upon them.
Only then will the grid be reconstructed in an efficient and reliable fashion.
The really good part, in south-east Arizona. If you have to buy ice during an outage, the power company will reimburse you.