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HT & Stereo System Fuel Shortage Coming According to Grid Operators

US Faces Electricity Shortages Heading Into Summer, as Grid Operators Warn of Limits of Green Energy

With more than 25 years of executive experience in the utility industry, people tend to listen when MISO CEO John Bear talks about energy.

And the message he’s sending about electricity shortages as Americans head into summer is clear.

“I am concerned about it,” Bear told The Wall Street Journal in an article exploring why power-grid operators are worried that electricity supplies may struggle to keep up with rising energy demands.

Bear is not some lone prophet foretelling doom.

From California to Texas to the Midwest, the Journal spoke to grid operators warning that conditions are ripe for outages, as plants pivot to new renewable energy sources.

These concerns are not unfounded. Evidence shows America’s power grid is increasingly unreliable and struggling to keep up with demand, and operators are bracing for rolling blackouts that could be arriving as soon as this year during heat waves and cold snaps.

Politicians and policy wonks often speak of “quitting” fossil fuels, as if they are a filthy habit or a narcotic like crack. But the reality is humans could not survive without coal, natural gas, and oil.

Despite their impressive growth, renewable energy sources—solar, wind, hydro and biomass combined—account for just 20 percent of US utility-scale electricity generation.

Fossil fuels, on the other hand, provide 61 percent of utility-scale electricity generation in the country. They heat and cool our homes, run our appliances, and feed the Teslas we drive.

While there is a great deal of excitement around the potential of renewable energy, one cannot simply replace a coal plant with a wind or solar farm and expect things will go just fine. These are intermittent energy sources, for one, but their construction and expansion has also been hit with delays for a variety of reasons, including inflation and supply chain bottlenecks.

“Every market around the world is trying to deal with the same issue,” Brad Jones, interim chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told the Journal. “We’re all trying to find ways to utilize as much of our renewable resources as possible…and at the same time make sure that we have enough dispatchable generation to manage reliability.”

The shift from filthy coal to clean energy has not always been smooth.

Last year, for example, Hawaiian officials were stunned to learn the coal plant they had killed had been replaced with a massive battery powered by oil, which one public official described as “going from cigarettes to crack.”

 
 

It’s true that fossil fuels come with tradeoffs. They can be messy and they emit greenhouse gasses. But the idea that “green” energies do not come with similar environmental tradeoffs is simply not true.

That electric car your neighbor just bought probably isn’t as green as he thinks. It takes tens of thousands of pounds of CO2 emissions to produce those fancy Tesla batteries, research shows.

Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist, argues that renewable energy has the potential to be just as destructive to the environment as fossil fuels. While the phrase “clean energy” might conjure up images of beaming sunshine, rainbows, and gales of wind, the reality is far different.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Hickel noted the transition to renewable energy sources exacts a serious toll on the environment; it requires massive amounts of energy, not to mention the extraction of minerals and metals at great environmental and social costs.

A little-noticed World Bank study examined just the amount of material it would take to get to a “zero emission” economy.

“[The] results are staggering,” Hicekl noted, extrapolating using some basic arithmetic, “34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.”

It’s easy, of course, not to think about such matters, just like it’s easy to not think about the fact that there’s a good chance the lithium-ion battery powering your EV was made with cobalt mined by a child in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the vast majority of the world’s cobalt is mined.

These are unpleasant realities, but they are realities nevertheless, and they remind us of an important economic adage popularized by economist Thomas Sowell: there are no solutions, there are only trade offs. (In economics, this idea is sometimes expressed as opportunity cost. It’s the idea that you must sacrifice something to obtain a product or service or experience, even if it’s simply your time or attention.)

When it comes to fossil fuels, many Americans tend to ignore their benefits and focus on their costs. When it comes to green energy, however, many of the same people do the opposite; they focus on the benefits and ignore the costs.

To be fair, in some ways it’s easy to forget just how fortunate we are to have fossil fuels. They are provided to us on a daily basis through the invisible miracle of the market, which sees them provided in seemingly infinite amounts, often (though not always) at relatively little cost.

If John Bear’s concerns prove founded, however, Americans may soon get a rather rude reminder this summer about the importance of fossil fuels.

“As we move forward, we need to know that when you put a solar panel or a wind turbine up, it’s not the same as a thermal resource,” Bear told the Journal.

This is good advice. Let’s hope the right people hear it.

128x128artemus_5
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5 OP
1,925 posts
 

Official Govt Report

NERC report outlines potential electricity disruptions in the United States this summer

U.S. energy emergency risk areas, summer June-September 2021)

 

 

Parts of the United States are at elevated or high risk for potential electricity emergencies this summer, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's (NERC) 2021 Summer Reliability Assessment. Summer peak electricity demand in the United States is strongly influenced by temperature. NERC’s report notes that above-normal temperatures are expected for much of North America this summer and several regions are at risk of electricity shortfalls during above-normal peak temperatures.

NERC is a nonprofit international regulatory organization that oversees regional electric reliability entities in the Lower 48 states, Canada, and parts of Mexico. At the beginning of each summer, NERC publishes a reliability assessment that tabulates anticipated electricity demand and supply changes and highlights any regional challenges or expected conditions that may affect the bulk power system.

Above-normal summer heat increases electricity demand from temperature-dependent loads, such as air conditioning, and can reduce electricity supplies if power plant outages or reduced output stem from heat-related issues. Wide-area heat waves can challenge grid operators and may limit electricity transfers because the electricity is needed to meet local electricity demand.

According to NERC’s assessment, electric supply shortages may occur in the western United States, Texas, New England, and parts of the Midwest.

In the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which includes the western half of the United States, resource and energy adequacy is a significant concern this summer. Generating capacity and projected electricity demand are at similar levels as they were in 2020, when an August wide-area heat wave caused rolling blackouts. NERC found that WECC subregions in the Southwest and Northwest have enough resources to meet electricity demand under normal peak summer demand conditions, but they are at elevated risk of electricity shortfalls if demand is higher.

The highest risk of electricity emergency is in California, a WECC subregion, which relies heavily on energy imports during normal peak summer demand and when solar generation declines in the late afternoon. Although California has gained new flexible resources to help meet demand when solar energy is unavailable, it is at high risk of an electricity emergency when above-normal demand is widespread in the west because the amount of resources available for electricity transfer to California may be limited.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) typically has one of the smallest anticipated reserve margins in the country, meaning it has relatively little unused electric generating capacity during times of peak electric load. ERCOT’s anticipated reserve margin increased from 12.9% last summer to 15.3% for this summer as a result of adding new wind, solar, and battery resources. Although ERCOT’s anticipated reserve margin is higher this summer, extreme summer heat could result in supply shortages that lead to an electricity emergency.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and ISO-New England have sufficient resources to meet projected peak demand. However, if above-normal levels of electricity demand (which NERC calculates based on historical demand) occur in these regions, demand is likely to exceed capacity resources. In that case, additional transfers of electricity from surrounding areas will be needed to meet demand.

You can find additional information on these regional challenges and other expected conditions that may affect the bulk power system this summer in NERC’s 2021 Summer Reliability Assessment.

Principal contributor: O. Nilay Manzagol

 

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,823 posts
 

Watch out folks, arty's on a tear today.

artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5 OP
1,925 posts
 

As for the costs of charging an EV outside the home, North Carolina is trying to pass a law so that free EV charging is a thing of the past. It’s free at various locations and rest stops so they want the state to pay for gas and diesel fill ups at state run locations to make it fair.

Sounds stupid? Well, it is, but they’re run by a party that hates the idea that alternative fuels have a future in this country.

Taxpayers should NOT have to pay for your fuel? If you want an elec car then get one and pay for the fuel just like others do for theirs. Quit being a freeloader. And you are right that "alternative fuels have a future in this country." yes... The FUTURE, NOT today except in the minds of those who WON"T face the truth

And you are right, I TORE UP your flimsy excuse of an argument. It wasn’t hard.

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,823 posts
 

Keep dreaming, dude. It’s all you have. That, and using large fonts to scream at us with. Here’s a hint: it doesn’t help your cause any when you do that.

By the way, that report was from last year and we all got through it just fine, except Texas, who runs their own grid and rips off their citizens. All that's needed is a little moderation and increased use of alternative energy sources and, most importantly, combining all the grids into one big one that can draw off each other when needed.

All the best,
Nonoise

hodu
316 posts
 

Perhaps it would also make sense to google Google's bias rating. Because Google has biases all its own, don't you know. In Western Massachusetts, where I live, and where most everyone is greener than a Saint Patrick's Day parade, if you ask most folks where electricity comes from, they'll look at you like you were a complete idiot before telling you that it comes from wall outlets, stupid!

 

 

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