Frozen Supply: Unreliable Wind & Solar Means US Faces More Winter Blackouts

Northern hemisphere winters are particularly brutal on wind turbines and solar panels, the former frozen solid and the latter blanketed in snow and ice. The result being no power from either.

Peak winter conditions are perfect for revealing the peak stupidity of attempting to power first world economies with generation systems that deliver nothing but chaos and, during blizzards, deliver nothing at all.

Back in February 2021, hundreds of Americans died in freezing homes left without electricity thanks to hundreds of wind turbines that were frozen solid and breathless frigid conditions that meant the remainder delivered no power, in any event; and thousands of solar panels plastered in snow and ice that, likewise, delivered nothing but a pointless sense of virtue. It took days to restore power to Texans and thousands of others across the Midwest.

As winter starts to bite across the US, it appears that nothing has changed. If anything, things have deteriorated as described in the first report from CFACT and by Ed Ireland in the second piece below.

PJM fiddles while grid sickens
CFACT
14 November 2023

America’s biggest grid operator, named simply PJM, has proposed some serious revisions to how much it will pay power generators to be there when needed. The good news is that renewables will be downgraded. The bad news is that what PJM proposes is nowhere near what we need to prevent catastrophic blackouts.

We are talking about what is called PJM’s “capacity market”. Basically, it means that power producers first offer to guarantee to make their generating capacity available when needed. Then prices are somehow agreed to, and capacity contracts are made between PJM and the willing producers.

The whole process is extremely complex, and I do not pretend to understand the inner workings. The proposed reforms alone take about two thousand pages, all written in the abstruse jargon of guaranteed power at a future time. But the gist is clear enough.

Before looking at the reforms, it is important to know what is driving them, which is the so-called energy transition. Bear in mind that power generation is regulated by the States, not the Feds, and a PJM is sort of a Fed. Their reforms have to be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Reliable generators are being shut down at a rapid rate, especially the coal-fired ones, often due to state policy or mandate. Even when the shutdown is a utility decision, it still must be approved by the state regulatory authority as in the public interest.

It has become clear that shutting down all this reliable generation and trying to replace it with renewables leads to severe reliability problems. Numerous warnings have been issued by FERC and the grid operators, including PJM. The catastrophic Texas blackouts, followed by a reliability emergency at PJM at Christmas 2023, led to the present rushed reforms.

The core of the reforms is about an extremely technical computation called the “Effective Load-Carrying Capability”, or simply ELCC.

Here is a simple explanation of ELCC: “Adding up the capacity available to meet resource adequacy needs is significantly more complex for a power system with a high proportion of non-firm resources. Planners must have a thorough understanding of the system conditions that can lead to loss of load, and the statistically-likely performance of variable resources such as wind and solar during those events. Characterizing the severity and frequency of events that may occur only once every several years requires tremendous amounts of data and computing power. This complexity is compounded by the fact that non-firm resources have interactive effects — solar, wind and storage resources often complement each other, meaning that a system with all three resources present will be more reliable than a system with just one or two.”

“To make sense of these dynamics, the industry is increasingly turning to Effective Load-Carrying Capability (“ELCC”) as the preferred method of measuring the capacity contribution of non-firm resources. Born out of the tradition of “loss-of-load-probability” modeling that system planners have long utilized to determine the planning reserve margin needed to ensure reliable electric service, ELCC is a natural extension of those methods to the problem of non-firm resources.”

See more here.

In the PJM capacity market, ELCC is used to decide how much capacity is needed overall and then to assign a reliability value to every proposed capacity. It also helps determine the price PJM will pay for that capacity. Roughly half of the two thousand pages of proposed reforms have to do with ELCC. PJM wants to switch from “Average ELCC” to “Marginal ELCC”, but I am not going to try to explain the difference.

The good news is that Marginal ELCC values increasing renewables a lot less than Average ELCC. This makes sense as adding more solar does not increase reliability at night, and adding wind does not increase reliability when it is calm.

The bad news is that the PJM capacity market is unlikely to prevent catastrophic blackouts. There are several reasons for this.

To begin with, ELCC depends on accurately estimating the probability of failure to perform for every generator in the system. This is simply impossible. We are not dealing with a long history of stable technologies that can be assessed statistically. We are dealing with rapidly changing technologies, the performance characteristics of which are unknown.

Nor is the failure to perform a random variable for each generator. Failure is often due to extreme weather occurring on a scare far greater than the PJM territory, so generator unreliability is highly correlated across all of a given type. Note this is true for supposedly reliable generators as well. Both Texas and PJM saw widespread failure of gas-fired generation due to rapidly occurring extreme cold messing up the gas supply system.

Moreover, PJM is just buying capacity for a short period of a few years out. This kind of passing payment cannot bring forth what is really needed, which is a bunch of new, reliable power plants. We are rapidly approaching the point where there will be no reliable capacity for PJM to buy.

The States and Utilities are creating this growing threat of catastrophic blackouts, so only they can solve it. PJM’s efforts are commendable, but they are really just fiddling with a sickening grid.
CFACT

U.S. power grid at risk for outages this winter, says NERC
Substack
Ed Ireland
21 November 2023

The recently released North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s annual assessment of the U.S. electricity grid was ominous: “A large portion of the North American BPS (bulk power system, referring to power generation only) is at risk of insufficient electricity supplies during peak winter conditions.” (emphasis added throughout)

NERC’s annual report, the Winter Reliability Assessment for the upcoming winter period (December 2023–February 2024), designated almost half the U.S. as having an “elevated risk” of insufficient operating reserves of power generation during extreme weather. Operating reserves are electricity supplies that are not being used but can quickly come online in the case of an unplanned event such as an equipment malfunction or fuel supply disruption. NERC also said that the risk of electricity shortages is even greater this year than last year.

Why has the U.S. electric grid, the world’s most technologically advanced nation, become so vulnerable to failure? NERC answers that question in the second paragraph of the press release: the increased use of heat pumps and electric heaters and the growth of intermittent electricity resources, like solar generation.

Here are the direct quotes from the “Announcement:”

As electric heat pumps and heating systems become more prevalent, their combined effect on system demand is even more pronounced, and

The growth of intermittent resources, like solar generation, on the distribution system significantly increases load forecasting complexity and uncertainty.

In other words, the “electrify everything” movement, including the war on natural gas, plus the over-building of wind turbines and solar panels due to massive federal subsidies, is destroying America’s power grid.

The next question is, why is this happening? The answer is simple: misguided federal energy policies. The U.S. power grid has been compromised by national governmental policies that “nudge” and mandate behavior through federal subsidies and regulations. These federal actions are destroying the integrity and ability of the U.S. power grid to perform reliably as it has for the last 150 years.

On the demand side, NERC sees the federal government policies to electrify everything as problematic, resulting in electricity demand faster than the infrastructure can be built to provide it. Changes are needed in national policies that will increase electricity demand faster than the power grid can handle it, including policies that encourage car buyers to buy electric vehicles, including:

• Inflation Reduction Act of 2022: This act adds and expands tax credits for purchases of E.V.s, provides incentives to electrify heavy-duty vehicles like school buses, and funds the installation of E.V. charging infrastructure.
• The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 2021 creates a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations.
• E.V. Acceleration Challenge, which provides funding to expand E.V. fleets
• Federal Sustainability Plan requires federal agencies to transition their fleets to all-electric by acquiring 100% light-duty zero-emission vehicles annually by 2027.

However, the market for cars and trucks is already solving the E.V. problem as the demand for E.V.s has cratered.

Regarding heat pumps, the replacement of existing and the installation of new residential and industrial heat pumps are being funded by many federal programs and agency loan/grant programs that include:

Inflation Reduction Act, 48C which provides $10 billion in manufacturing tax credits to install industrial heat pumps

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 2021 includes $400 million for small and medium-sized manufacturers to install heat pumps.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program offers various grants and loans for agricultural heat pump applications.

Federal laws, regulations, and government grants have distorted power grids by funding an over-supply of intermittent electricity generators, mainly wind turbines and solar panels.

Two of the worst federal programs responsible for the over-supply of wind and solar generation are the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). The Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides tax credits of $ 27.50 per megawatt-hour for electricity generated by wind and solar projects that begin construction before January 2, 2025.

(On his “Power Hungry Podcast,” Robert Bryce had a fantastic discussion with Travis Fisher on this topic).

By Federal law, financial-related measures passed through the reconciliation process, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, can only last ten years. But, Congress found a clever way to get around that statute, as explained on the EPA website:

Starting January 1, 2025, the Inflation Reduction Act replaces the traditional PTC with the Clean Energy Production Tax Credit and the traditional ITC with the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit.

Instead of expiring ten years from the date the IRA was passed through reconciliation, the IRA changed the PTC and ITC to the Clean Energy Production Tax Credit on January 1, 2025, which never expires. The EPA website explains:

Through at least 2025, the Inflation Reduction Act extends the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of 30% and Production Tax Credit (PTC) of $0.0275/kWh (2023 value), as long as projects meet prevailing wage & apprenticeship requirements for projects over 1 MW.

For systems placed in service on or after January 1, 2025, the Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit and the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit will replace the traditional PTC / ITC.

The IRA does not specify when this tax credit expires, meaning it exists in perpetuity. The IRA’s framers may have thought they were clever, but the Supreme Court will likely weigh in on this sleight-of-hand name change.

My take: The U.S. economy’s most essential and fundamental component is its power grid. Without a stable power grid, the economy cannot function, and civil society will cease to exist. If the power grid fails, GDP will decline, and unemployment will skyrocket. This dangerous situation was not a natural occurrence and not an accident. Federal policies created it.

The potentially deadly combination of EPA policies that drive coal- and natural-gas-fired electric generation from the nation’s power grids, the “Electrify Everything” movement, the war on natural gas, and never-ending wind and solar subsidies are now undermining the U.S. economy.

Radical changes are needed throughout the federal government to get U.S. energy policies back to reality.
Substack