Prepare For Grid Down / Disruption Events

Make sure you have standby power, even if it is “minimal”. It looks like those in the know are predicting more power outages / grid down events. Cause? Decreasing nuclear, coal and gas generation intersecting higher demand spikes.

Regulars here have known this for a long time: Nuclear, Gas, and Coal generation are reliable and can be made available any time. Solar & Wind are not. They come and go on a semi-random basis. At anything over about 20% solar and wind, you have random spikes of unreliable power, and random dropouts. As the percentage of nuclear, gas, and coal power drops; it becomes impossible to stabilize the power grid against those spikes and dropouts. The EU, UK, & USA have been busy destroying their Nuclear, Coal, and Gas generation capabilities.

Well, looks like it is now being recognized that during cold excursions, we can no longer avoid blackouts (and during hot excursions in California…)

At the same time, the foolish push to “electrification” of just about everything is adding more demand spikes. We now have a lot of people who get home from work and plug in their electric car to charge it, just as demand for home heat, cooking, A/C, laundry, lighting, etc. etc. is peaking. So while the ability to meet “peak demand” is dropping, the height of that peak is rising.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/north-america-faces-elevated-blackout-risk-NERC-reliability-natural-gas/699275/

Has the obligatory genuflect to muh-“Climate Change”… and in some places disses “gas” when the real issue is pushing coal and nuclear out of the picture and shoving that demand onto rapid growth of gas generation in excess of natural gas supply; but it still makes some good points (bolding by me):

Much of North America faces ‘elevated risk’ of blackouts in extreme winter conditions: NERC
Climate change, rising energy demand and natural gas dependence mean “a massive grid disruption is inevitable,” said Mark Spurr, legislative director at the International District Energy Association.

Published Nov. 9, 2023

Note that the “rising energy demand” is the huge push to electrify everything, including cars. Then “natural gas dependence” really means “killing coal and nuclear pushes demand for RELIABLE power onto gas” when adding more production of natural gas, and pipelines to deliver it, are being blocked.

Much of the U.S. bulk power system faces an elevated risk of blackouts in extreme winter weather, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned in its 2023–2024 Winter Reliability Assessment, published Wednesday.

A key issue is the availability of natural gas supplies for generation and the operation of gas-fired power plants, NERC said. During extreme weather, generators can face operating difficulties in frigid temperatures, supplies may be diverted for home heating, and gas production may slow due to wellhead and pipeline issues.

“Diverted to home heating”? Don’t you mean “we overbuilt our gas generation capacity compared to the gas supply”? Home heaters have been in place for decades, they didn’t get suddenly installed in the GW range in the last few years…

They have a map of risk further down the article. It shows the major risk areas to be the North East and Midwest, plus Saskatchewan in Canada. As they are focused mostly on cold demand issues, California escapes their map; but note that California is at high risk of outages in hot weather when A/C demand and E-Cars are the issue.

IMHO, the major problem is that Coal Generation is being removed from the grid. Utilities can pile up huge mountains of coal next to a power plant, and then they don’t depend on various pipeline / pumping limitations and variations in gas demand. Coal plants also can be turned up and down faster and easier than baseload nuclear (though not as fast as gas plants). What ought to be done is to use Nuclear for the steady baseload demand, coal for the predictable “Duck Curve” variations, and natural gas for the peak fluctuations (as it was in the ’90s). Adding huge amounts of wind & solar just causes an exaggeration of the Duck Curve variations (since solar has a daily cycle) AND it adds a lot of “surprise spikes” of both up and down supply that must be met by something as rapid as gas turbines.

Then add in that a cold winter day / night with still air has a sudden outage of ALL of that solar and wind generation and throws all of that capacity demand along with the heating demand increase from the cold onto the now limited gas turbine capacity. Worse, the move to “full electrification” means that at the same time, the mandated “heat pumps” will be moving out of their most efficient range and into their use of “resistance heating” to make up for their problems at low temperatures, AND the e-Car fleet will be suffering huge losses of efficiency at low temperature so suddenly demanding up to 2 times as much electricity per mile.

Simply put: Electrification of everything makes the power demand swings much more extreme at the same time that removing Nuclear, Coal, and Gasoline/Diesel cars makes the resilience to such swings far worse. Eventually those two cross and we have failure of the grid. We are now at the point where that will happen when we have a Very Cold Day (or worse, night…).

As we move further down this path, it will happen on modestly cold days (and modestly hot days in California / Arizona / West Texas); and then eventually it will arrive at “just about every day at peak demand”.

So my recommendation is to plan your standby home power generation now, because this is going to get a whole lot worse before the entrenched Powers That Be decide to admit that it was a Very Bad Idea and they made a mistake.

I’ll likely get a standby whole house Diesel Generator sometime in the coming year; though I note that Florida is not at high risk per their map. ;-)

Bolding done by me:

In the southern areas of the Midcontinent ISO market, NERC’s winter reliability report warned extreme cold-weather “can cause high generator outages from inadequate weatherization or insufficient natural gas fuel supplies.” In New England, gas transportation infrastructure could be constrained if fuel is diverted for consumer heating needs.

Across the PJM Interconnection territory and in some portions of the U.S. Southeast, severe cold can cause a spike in forced outages. “Forecasted peak demand has risen while resources have changed little in these areas since Winter Storm Elliot caused energy emergencies across the area in 2022,” NERC said. “Generators are vulnerable to derates and outages in extreme conditions.”

So lack of adding gas capacity while shifting demand to gas generators. Something about blocking the exploration for gas and oil coupled with blocking new pipelines? Eh? Thanks “greens”… Then, you can heat your home, or have the lights on, but not both… OK… Then we’ve moved to more electric demand with forced electrification of things like home heating and cars; but not added reliable power generation. Got it.

Here’s an example of “Why”:

[…]
Saskatchewan Power, in Canada, could face insufficient operating reserves in normal peak conditions due to falling reserve margins, planned generator maintenance and the retirement of a 95 MW gas-fired unit.

So in “normal peak conditions”, they will be out of power. Shutting down reliable generation. Expect “load shedding” (i.e. the lights go out…)

Again we have the genuflect to muh”Climate Change”. But I thought it was supposed to be getting warmer, not colder /snark;:

‘Massive grid disruption is inevitable’

It is only a matter of time before a widespread grid disruption occurs, according to Mark Spurr, legislative director at the International District Energy Association and president of engineering and consulting firm FVB Energy.

Spurr pointed to a confluence of three trends: an increase in severe weather events due to climate change, rising peak electricity demand and a growing dependence on natural gas. “A massive grid disruption is inevitable,” he said, because those factors are “getting worse, not better.”

I note that the “rising demand” is due in large part to shifting energy demand from fossil fuels to The Grid via electrification and the increasing dependence on natural gas comes from shutting down Nuclear and Coal while adding unreliable and spike prone Solar & Wind. Entirely predictable (and predicted) result is an unreliable electric grid that will crash regularly. Interestingly, the article then goes on to blame this on “failure of fossil fueled power plants”… One supposes he means due to not having enough of them using big piles of coal… but skipping that nonsense; we get back to reality at:

[…]
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association warned the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-, gas- and oil-fired power plants could worsen the grid’s precarious situation.

NERC’s reliability assessment “shows that our nation faces looming grid reliability challenges while demand for electricity continues to soar,” NRECA CEO Jim Matheson said in a statement. EPA’s “unlawful, unrealistic and unachievable proposal will result in less electricity, more power outages and higher costs for American families and businesses.”

Uh, yeah.

JUST to replace the gasoline & Diesel vehicles with electric ones would require a COMPLETE doubling of the total Grid. From generation, to wires, substations, transformers, fuel supplies. The Works! It just can not be done in less than about 40 years IF we were trying, and we are not. Instead we are shutting down the Nuclear and Coal components. This is doomed to fail and crash, hard.

So plan on lots of power outages, right when you need that electricity the most, and an entirely unreliable Electric Grid supply system. Not really something I wanted to spend money on; but it is looking a lot like the best solution is a DIY home power generation system. Store enough fuel yourself to power your home when, inevitably, that cold night comes. IFF you are foolish enough to buy an e-car or e-truck: Make sure you have a gasoline or Diesel 2nd vehicle that you keep full of fuel for those cold days of Grid Down without any working chargers.

Here’s another view of it all, including J.P. Morgan warnings:

Humorous note: At about 3 minutes, he talks about the GW growth to power all the coming AI Chips demand; and that we won’t have it. So “Good News”: We have dodged “singularity” where AI takes over the world as, as soon as it tries, the grid will go down and crash it! Nice that! ;-)