At meetings of energy regulators, policymakers, consumer advocates, and industry this summer, the content and tone of the conversations around electric system reliability have changed dramatically. Executives from across the industry all agree that dispatchable generation is needed now and will be needed for many years to come.
Most prominently, the realization and willingness to say publicly that dispatchable resources like natural gas-fired generation will be needed as the energy expansion continues and load growth accelerates for the first time in decades is a welcome admission.
For several years the discussion around the future of the electrical grid was about how inexpensive it will be and how “out of political favor” resources would be moved off the grid in favor of politically favored ones without creating any disruptions or reliability challenges. And just like that, the story has changed – dramatically. Why?
First, load growth – and a substantial amount of it is expected in the short term. The second is the pace of dispatchable generation retirements, without replacement generation with similar performance characteristics. The third is consistent and increasing warnings coming from reliability organizations and grid operators that a crisis is coming and coming quickly if system planning does not improve.
What does this mean? In short, it is a long-awaited recognition of the reality of grid operations combined with the acknowledgment (albeit grudgingly in some circles) that dispatchable resources, like natural gas, will need to be retained and operated for a longer time horizon than many were willing to admit. This recognition matches the significant number of credible studies, including work done by McKinsey and EFI, that all said dispatchable natural gas generation would be needed even in a high renewable resource penetration scenario.
As the reality of load growth, supply chain issues, permitting, siting, and construction challenges impacting all types of resources settled in and the sharp warnings of imminent reliability issues combined, it became clear that the rhetoric was far ahead of reality. Recognizing the problem is the first step in solving it.
Because all resources are now accountable for reliability, including dispatchable, intermittent, and storage resources, the requirement to acknowledge and adapt to grid realities is no longer optional – it’s mission critical. The retirement of significant amounts of dispatchable resources without adequate replacements has pushed us ever closer to a system with zero margin of error.
To correct this situation, policymakers and regulators should take steps to minimize the risk to customers. First, the timing gap between retirements and additions to the system must be addressed; we can’t let existing resources off the grid before the replacements are ready. The process for connecting new generation to the grid must be reformed to ensure projects match system needs, not just policy pronouncements. Permitting and siting reforms are needed so we can deliver development of all types of energy projects.
Second, policymakers must temper enthusiasm and set goals that align with the reality of system needs and operational constraints. This could mean pausing policies that hinder the deployment of needed resources or including offramps in legislation to ensure grid reliability.
Third, grid operators must move more quickly to adjust markets to send the appropriate signals that will drive investment of the required resources. States must recognize the broader benefits of market participation and positive outcomes for their constituents and stop merely demanding grid operators do what one state wants to the detriment of another. States must again appreciate that the benefits of their utilities joining markets far outweigh their ability to dictate resources and timelines and then disclaim responsibility for the issues those decisions create.
To close, lest anyone accuse market participants of not wanting to reduce emissions or only wanting to profit from their current resources, this reality check in no way means walking away from striving to meet policy goals. Bottom line – we can set goals, but they must be tethered to operational reality to ensure success and reliability are both achieved.
Todd Snitchler is President and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA)
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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Mr. Snitchler is correct. However, as long as energy policy and government energy development money is hitched to politics-lots of luck in getting his ideas implemented. However, maybe the recent reality checks being laid on the “wind industry” on the U.S. East coast will bring long needed reforms.
It should have been obvious after the February 2021 storm in Texas. There was too much wind on the grid, which delivered as expected in still air and freezing rain—bupkis. No matter how much the greens tried to gaslight conventional sources, the investment in wind was useless in adverse weather.
When the gospel tells you the Devil is responsible, you don’t need to look further.
And that’s the problem: Having alighted on poor, innocent CO2 they stopped looking…
Not to mention the less visible Odessa events
Odessa Disturbance Illustrates Need for Immediate Industry Action on Inverter-Based Resources (nerc.com)
https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/Documents/Odessa_Disturbance_Report.pdf
https://www.nerc.com/comm/RSTC_Reliability_Guidelines/NERC_2022_Odessa_Disturbance_Report%20(1).pdf
If there is a new sense that intermittent, unreliable too much when you don’t need it, too little when you do wind and solar electricity is a reliability concern I don’t see any evidence of it other than here on WUWT, IER, and the mentioned Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA), RealClearEnergy and RealClearWire. Will it get a mention in the Debate Tuesday (9/17/24)? Doubtful.
A sophisticated analysis of the optimum wind and solar mix in each of the US electrical grids is required, but an all or nothing wind and solar vs natural gas and nuclear is pointless. Those 20 year W&S power purchase agreements from 2014 are going to be honored until at least 2034 and those from 2024 until 2044, (Tragically IMHO but the reality is almost certainly until at least 2054).
I have been going back and forth with wind and solar aficionados on Quora at least weekly for the past couple years. They now concede that some gas turbine backup is required because of the impossible cost of storing excess summer solar for winter use. However, they insist overbuilding several fold solves most of the week to week intermittency issues when backed up by single digit percent “firming” (gap filling) and that firming and the other “imposed cost” of idled/infrequently used warm and cold standby conventional is minimal.
They claim that with an optimized mix of single shaft and combined cycle gas turbines and depending on region (California mostly solar, Midwest US mostly wind) that W&S can provide a minimum of 80% (+18% hydro) electrical generation capacity cheaper than natural gas and or nuclear. For numerous reasons too detailed to post here my abbreviated position is:
RE (Ruinous Energy) wind and solar at five (5) percent grid penetration is harmless, 10% nuisance, 15% expensive waste, 20% grid destabilizing and economically destructive, 25% insane
Once an assembly line factory begins annually supply a few dozen small scale modular reactors mineral intensive, low energy density, intermittent, too much when it’s not needed, too little when it is W&S will then be as obsolete in The West as coal and mega scale nuclear.
Error, debate is September 10, 2024 not September 17, 2024
Nuclear may be making a comeback.
Two meltdown-proof nuclear reactors have just been announced.
Both use pebble fuel, one uses liquid salt for the coolant the other uses helium for the coolant.
China announced the helium cooled reactor and has built a pilot plant
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6241/china-pebblebed-reactor-passes-meltdown-test/
X-Energy website
https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100
A US company has just received government permission to build a salt cooled pilot plant.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/approval-of-nuclear-pilot-plant-that-uses-molten-salt-coolant-instead-of-water-a-step-towards-safer-reactors/4018890.article
Where is the PRC getting the helium? I am under the impression that most of the wrold’s helium comes from Texas and Oklahoma.
You right. IIRC, the US passed the “Helium Conservation Act in the late ’30s or early ’40s because the US military had proposals for using blimps for transporting supplies into remote areas.
Some convoys in the early days of WW2 were escorted by blimps. (I don’t think it was all the way across the Atlantic.)
If I’m not mistaken, no convoys while escorted by a blimp lost any ships to U-Boats.
Answer to the above article’s title question: No, only the bill . . . and it’s HUGE!
I’m sure grid operators have understood all of this for a long time now.
What those who aren’t vocal about it also understand is that this is exactly what the climate warriors want and this is exactly what elected officials want and it’s certainly what the UN wants.
It has never been about the climate. It is about political power (not electric power) and the benefits of deciding who has what he needs and who doesn’t.
Politicians need this, because the idea that they are public servants trying to make a better world for their constituents is laughably naive.
Public servants pretending to do good while only doing very well for themselves.
Remember Tom Lehrer singing about the old drug dealer –
“He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today’s young generation
Will be tomorrow’s clientele.”
You mean, you actually listened to the lyrics? 🙂
We had a couple of his LPs. I used to sing along. Hardest was the Table of the Elements, because it was very fast and you had to get them in the right order.
With regard to the reality check, I think we can sing
Hooray for New Math!
So very simple that only a child can do it.
As usual, tom Lehrer was very prscient
The cost is astronomical.
Bloomberg’s Green Energy Research Team estimates $US200 trillion to stop warming by 2050.
There are about 2 billion households and at least 90 percent of them can’t afford anything additional.
That means the 200 million who can pay will have to pay $1 million per household to keep the temperature from rising 1 or 2 degrees.
That means the 200 million who can pay will have to pay $1 million per household
to keep the temperature from rising 1 or 2 degreeson a non-issue.“Bloomberg’s Green Energy Research Team estimates $US200 trillion to stop warming by 2050.”
That’s under the galaxy-sized assumption that any of the proposed plans will actually control the weather.
It’s much cheaper to beat drums, dance, throw virgins into volcanoes and burn witches to control the weather.
And equally effective.
AGW hysteria is running as planned.
All hysteria is running as planned as always has. Except people no longer dig nuclear fallout shelters in their backyards.
but you still can Remember the Maine!
“but you still can Remember the Maine!”
Only if you studied the Spanish-American War, and Hearst’s desire for us to go to war.
Getting high renewable resource penetration is beneficial for Big Oil which also produces nat gas.
Yet ecoloons see Big Oil as a natural enemy.
…it is a long-awaited recognition of the reality of grid operations combined with the acknowledgment (albeit grudgingly in some circles) that dispatchable resources, like natural gas, will need to be retained and operated for a longer time horizon than many were willing to admit.
Whilst cutting out coal leaves global demand for gas rocketting with higher gas prices and higher electricity bills. The alternative with disperse low density fickles and battery storage to make them dispatchable plus their distribution costs offers no relief so the climate changers in denial have to point the finger at gas. Nuclear is their kryptonite.
Two meltdown-proof nuclear reactors have just been announced. Both use pebble fuel, one uses liquid salt for the coolant the other uses helium for the coolant.
China announced the helium cooled reactor and has built a pilot plant
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6241/china-pebblebed-reactor-passes-meltdown-test/
X-Energy website
https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100
A US company has just received government permission to build a salt cooled pilot plant.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/approval-of-nuclear-pilot-plant-that-uses-molten-salt-coolant-instead-of-water-a-step-towards-safer-reactors/4018890.article
Very nice Todd. I agree with everything you said but the number one issue is are our policies and goals based on proper science and well thought out arguments. Any policy based on the CAGW idea is not backed up with proper science and has not been thoroughly thought through. Achieving bad policy is a really bad idea. Therefore the only consideration must be can our energy be produced economically, can it be generated when we need it in the amounts we need, is it being generated as cleanly and safely as is reasonable, does the system have a long life span, does the process harm flora and fauna, is the process a danger to the grid, does it perform in good weather and bad and finally will it be there for us down the road? Wind, solar and storage don’t meet any of these vital requirements therefore they should not be considered.
Consistent with the COVID debacle, we can be certain there is no real science behind any political energy policy.
There is no reality check.
Just talk
No data here
No Nut Zero plans
The NY Governor is now starting to TALK about nuclear power for 70% green electricity (2019 law) by 2030. There is no plan and no money, just talk
New York is probably already five years too late.
If they ever start nuclear reactor construction, there will be leftist lawfare to stop or delay it
They will never get (at least) $5 billion of private money to finance even one new reactor at an existing nuclear power plant.
Nut Zero is a fake engineering project used as a Trojan Horse to implement leftist fascism, and it is working.
Kamaliar Harris has two positions on nuclear power: For and against, depending on the audience
Two meltdown-proof nuclear reactors have just been announced. Both use pebble fuel, one uses liquid salt for the coolant the other uses helium for the coolant.
China announced the helium cooled reactor and has built a pilot plant
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6241/china-pebblebed-reactor-passes-meltdown-test/
X-Energy website
https://x-energy.com/reactors/xe-100
A US company has just received government permission to build a salt cooled pilot plant.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/approval-of-nuclear-pilot-plant-that-uses-molten-salt-coolant-instead-of-water-a-step-towards-safer-reactors/4018890.article
“They will never get (at least) $5 billion of private money to finance even one new reactor at an existing nuclear power plant.”
Musk might.
Only after Jane Fonda dies.
Wishful thinking.
Should do, would do, could do, but won’t. Not unless there’s a huge blackout.
I would forward this to Ed Miliband the current UK Energy Destruction minister, he is also Minister for Net Zero economic activity, if I thought it would make a blind bit of difference to what he has planned.
His chief advisors – he himself is simply a Marxist with a PPE – are Greenpeace, who were long ago bought by the renewable interest groups.
From various articles being generated by the UK press, one suspects that the National Grid has told him ‘you can build the wind farms, but we cant connect them. No budget. And we don’t have enough gas backup either.’
The quiet internal struggle inside the Ministry to get nuclear going continues.
And elsewhere. There is a quiet revolution goin on…
From World Nuclear News
In the end I don’t give a rat’s arse whether people believe in climate change or not. What I care is that as the inevitable decline of fossil fuels dawns, we pick the right alternative to keep industrial civilisation going.
There is a Regime, West wide that rules us.
Their dream of data centers and their dream of “green” energy are heading for a head on collision. They will have to chose one or another. Me thinks they will chose data centers because they allow for more control, while the wind and solar just serve to make people poor.
So I predict that the unreliables will be forced on us much slower and will be replaced with nuclear or outright collapse.
This is why you see the resurgence in nuclear, because the elitists in power DO know that their precious data centers matter more, and they cannot just stick a nuclear plant near them,and have blackouts everywhere because that’s asking for trouble.
Re: load growth
I think this part is far from clear. EVs have not caught on; the load growth seen now is entirely a function of massive AI farms. The problem is: this energy consumption has yet to show actual profitability over utility.
How long will this lack of profitability be ignored? Impossible to say for sure, but financially – even the tech giants cannot continue to pour in tens to hundreds of billions each, each year for “AI” that doesn’t actually do anything well enough that people would pay the accompanying expense, much less tech giant profit margin on top of it.
And it is quite clear that, barring at least 3 major game changing breakthroughs, that orders of magnitude MORE power will be needed to even try to change the ruinous economics of AI.
To me – this looks more like the “10 years in the future” nature of fusion for the past 50 years, only with 100x more cost.
Australia has a government body named AEMO for Australian Energy Market Operator, tasked with evaluation and recommendation of the optimum mix of national energy production. Typically, AEMO reports note that they concern themselves only with matters within federal government policy, noting the existing policy of “net zero carbon by 2050”.
It follows that they are not a body willing or able to advise government of the downside of their recommended pathway, which currently strives for very high penetration of “renewables” and by default, has no economic analysis of hydrocarbon fuels.
More broadly, there is no body with any standing appointed to warn government of possible failure of the AEMO plans. A massive enrgy failure catasprophe can happen, but the functionaries who failed get away with no accountability because the obeyed government policy.
Maybe they need to read about the post WWII Nuremberg trials where the excuse of simply following orders did not prevent executions of the personally intrusive type.
Geoff S
“. . . post WWII Nuremberg trials . . . .”
And the UCMJ says you aren’t to obey illegal orders–but you will most likely be court-martialed for not obeying such orders. So you’re dead if you do, or you’re dead if you don’t–what a great choice! If you do disobey an illegal order, you’d better hope Perry Mason is defending you.
Meanwhile in the UK, from The Telegraph: ”.. senior government figures were questioning the 55 GW target.
It follows warnings from industry that the offshore wind target was unachievable because of insufficient supplies to build the required number of wind turbines and a shortage of ships and crews needed to install them, along with the associated infrastructure.”
And…
”Even if the UK did hit its target, Mr Smout said the UK’s power grids would not be able to carry all the electricity generated – meaning many wind farms would get paid for switching off.”
Fancy that. Who could have foreseen that Net Zero by 2050 needs resources – and more resources than would be available?
The Global Wind Energy Council in it’s ‘Global Wind Energy 2024’ also says it
“Expects bottlenecks in the supply chain from mid decade for multiple key components, in particular gearboxes, generators, blades, offshore wind compatible castings, towers and foundations”
“Ports and installation vessels with sufficiently large crane capacity are also needed to scale offshore wind”
“In all regions except China and India nacelle assembly capacity will be insufficient”
Meanwhile Wind Europe had warned back in June 2022 that there would be a worldwide shortage of the three types of vessels needed to build offshore wind farms from 2024/25
Miliband is not going to reach anywhere near his offshore target for 2030 but is too stupid to recognise that fact.
Is a battery and a solar panel the same thing? Why do we pretend they are?
Fossil fuels are stored energy. They are single use batteries.
Solar panels and windmills have zero stored energy. As such they are not physical replacements for fossil fuels.
Gas turbines are 35% efficient when load following. They are 65% efficient providing baseline power, due to steam cogeneration.
It is MUCH cheaper to simply replace solar and wind with natural gas cogeneration.
As well, solar and wind provide very little CO2 savings, due to the fossil fuel energy required to mine, build, install, backup, and maintain a separate green grid infrastructure.
If you plaster over a bad solution with lots of money it hides the flaws.
Somebody has to make the wheels spin around.
In California, Governor Newsom cancelled the closing of Diablo Canyon Nuclear plant.
He remembered what happened to Gray Davis when the lights went out.
All the energy supply problems stem from the political attempts to instil fear in the population for the non-existent problem of ‘Climate Change’ (or whatever) caused by CO2. Gradually, under increasing financial stress, the population will begin to notice that CO2 promotes life and does not ruin weather or climate and that they are paying for no value.