The problems facing our nation’s power grid are real and it’s not about the weather as much as it is how we produce our energy for the electrical grid. Many are blaming it on extreme temperatures and “climate change” but renewable energy is playing a huge role in the recent stresses on meeting our energy demands. A fossil fuel or nuclear-based energy grid is reliable and steady, the kind of energy where when you hit the “on”button you have immediate energy that is controlled by a utility on a known basis. Wind and solar energy provide only intermittent electricity with vicissitude and are subject the variability of weather and sunlight.
As we move farther away, gas and coal energy production in our energy grid is more vulnerable in meeting peak-load demands.
PJM is the largest electrical operator in the U.S. and is warning that it may have to resort to emergency procedures to keep things going. PJM accounts for 22% of U.S. electricity and serves 13 states including Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. It is one of eight electrical grid operators nationwide.
Dave Walsh is the former President at Mitsubishi Power Systems and is an expert on the grid. I spoke with him several times over the past few weeks regarding meeting our electric demand. He stated, “July, 2006 was the highest ever peak demand for PJM, not this week.” and they remained operational at that time. He explained that a “reserve margin” is needed and is the headroom between how much generation PJM has at peak energy generation and a buffer or a safety zone to ensure operation. “In the summer, you need to make about 20% more energy than what is needed to meet peak demand to avoid blackouts. The reserve margins have been far lower over the last seven years,” stated Dave Walsh. This is due to the shift from continuous baseload natural gas combustion and coal plants to renewable energy like solar and wind which only produce power about 20% of a given day. This has led to a gigantic deficit when there is peak-load demand.
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Battery storage backups for wind and solar production costs about five times what conventional energy production does and only works to store about four hours a day of electricity. Battery storage sites only back-up renewable energy sources as combined cycle combustion energy plants like nuclear or fossil fuel plants provide continuous energy 24/7 for the power grid. In addition, the battery storage industry relies on China for rare earth minerals and most of those are being used for EV car batteries.
Then there is the cost of renewables. According to Walsh, solar costs 4.5 times more to build and offshore wind is 9.5 times more costly. In Europe they are spending about $.35 per kilowatt where we only spend about $12.5 cents per kilowatt to produce electricity and the dirty little secret is that you have to have a fully functional conventional fossil fuel or nuclear energy supply underlying renewable energy as we must account for all of the downtime that solar and wind don’t produce energy. Offshore wind only produces energy about 42% of the time and solar about 23%. At about $36 bucks a kilowatt hour to build, a combined cycle gas-fired power plant is the most efficient energy source. Variable renewables are about 13% of the U.S. power production and only three percent of that is backed up by battery storage.
The end result is that there will be more exposure to brownouts and service curtailments when it is extremely hot or cold and where we reach peak power demand. We need to stall the shutdown of base-load fossil fuel plants or increase our nuclear energy output until they figure out how to address these issues and the limitations and expense of renewable energy.