“Stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe." — Thomas Sowell
On February 1st, members of the Ohio and Pennsylvania legislatures held a joint hearing to discuss grid reliability (shoutout to Isaac Orr for speaking and bringing awareness to the session here). We highly recommend watching — the eight experts across two panels were well-spoken and the Q&A was engaging. Fit it in between episodes of the mindless streaming show you’re currently binging. ;)
The conversation was focused on the PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization (“RTO”) responsible for overseeing grid operations covering 13 states, DC, and over 65 million customers. Similar to PJM’s report last year, the hearing highlighted four major trends threatening grid reliability:
After a period of limited growth, electricity demand is expected to increase substantially given electrification goals and the anticipated proliferation of power hungry infrastructure like data centers.
Thermal generators are retiring due to state and federal energy policies. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, a thermal generator is a facility that uses heat energy to spin a turbine (via steam) to create electrical power. The heat is created by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) or from nuclear chain reactions.
New construction is not keeping pace with growing demand and the retirement of thermal generators.
Almost all new construction that is happening is unreliable like intermittent solar/wind and limited-duration storage.
As the hearing made clear, these four trends all point to a clear solution: we need to save existing and build new thermal power plants. If we don’t, the grid will become increasingly fragile and susceptible to blackouts. To that end, PJM filed market reform proposals that were recently approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to better compensate thermal generators for the reliability services they provide to the grid. The reforms amount to a Band-Aid fix — they might temporarily stop the bleeding, but they don’t address what caused the issue in the first place.
The root cause of the growing grid reliability concerns, the elephant in the room, is the core assumption that we must transition to “green” energy. It’s gospel that almost everyone is afraid to question. Instead of struggling to solve the issues created by renewables, we should be questioning the viability of renewables themselves. It’s akin to taking high blood pressure medication when your diet is filled with cookies. Just stop eating cookies.
Call us crazy, but we don’t accept the premise that we can and should transition to a grid dominated by wind, solar, and batteries.
Think about it. Nearly every new reliability problem facing the grid today is caused by energy policies that support renewables and punish thermal generators. We need to zoom out and see the big picture. It’s not like the grid became more difficult to run, we made it more difficult. It’s self-sabotage.
In his testimony during the hearing, the CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Council gave a big picture perspective. He outlined a three-legged stool to energy policy: affordability, reliability, and environmental impact. In describing this stool, he made the common sense point that we get ourselves into trouble when we over emphasize one leg. He didn’t explicitly say it, but we’ll say the quiet part for him: the irrational obsession with environmental impact is leading to energy policies that destroy grid reliability.
To be clear, we’re not saying we shouldn’t consider our environmental impact. We’re saying we need to realize that it’s only one leg of the stool. If the climate is getting drastically more dangerous (even though we don’t think this is the case), we need a more reliable grid to protect us against the whims of Mother Nature. We shouldn’t rely on weather-dependent resources to protect ourselves from the weather. Besides, renewables haven’t proven an ability to decarbonize power grids without sacrificing reliability and affordability. We’re not saying there’s no role for renewables on the grid, but the obsession doesn’t make sense for either climate mitigation (reducing emissions) or adaption (increasing reliability) purposes.
In the second major trend listed above, notice how its policies that are causing thermal plants to retire — not economics. These energy policies include state level renewable mandates, federal tax subsidies, and overly burdensome EPA regulations. More than 20% of PJM’s generators (~40 GW) are expected to retire by 2030, over half of which is driven by energy policies.
What happens when we force thermal generators out of the electricity market?
Here’s a quick list of the reliability consequences associated with a grid characterized primarily by renewables and not enough thermal generation:
Reduced ability to dispatch power on demand to maintain essential supply/demand balance
Increased reliance on China to support our critical energy infrastructure
Increased vulnerability to extreme weather
Increased probability of common-mode failures that impact large portions of the grid (eg large, extended periods of limited sunlight or wind — what the Germans call dunkelfaute)
Reduced grid inertia that plays a critical role in maintaining operating stability
Increased susceptibility to transmission outages due to infrastructure needed to transmit power from rural to urban areas
Increased risk of generation growth not keeping up with demand growth due the inherent qualities of renewables - low capacity factors, low energy density, locations far from demand centers
Increased reliance on non-existing technologies like commercially viable long-duration storage
Increased reliance on importing power from neighboring grids
When a blackout occurs, fewer “black start” resources able to kick-start the grid
We’re digging our own grave and, as Isaac Orr said during his testimony, the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. Instead of trying to solve each one of these bullets, maybe we should question whether or not we should be so myopically focused on “green” energy?
Unfortunately, the organizations tasked with ensuring grid reliability are followers, not leaders. The leaders are consumers.
Here’s how it works. Consumers are convinced that green energy is our inevitable and necessary future. Politicians, who are emboldened by their energy illiterate electorate, pass bandwagon energy policies with no real consideration of consequences. Then, RTOs like PJM are forced to operate the grid under the weight of renewable energy mandates and subsidies.
If we want to improve grid reliability in a durable way, we need to do a better job of educating consumers. This is one major reason why we write this Substack.
We need to change consumer awareness of and perspective on important energy issues like grid reliability. We need to make it so people think critically instead of blindly following mainstream narratives. We need brilliant people to ask stupid questions because no one benefits from a discussion in which everyone is afraid to point out the elephant in the room.
This is a very important topic. I've been working in the energy policy/research space for a while and I've come to many of the same conclusions. The overtly political and scientifically shoddy analyses presented to state and utility lawmakers to support "green" agendas are unserious and frankly embarrassing.
I have recently posted an article on the issue of grid reliability and the California duck curve:
https://thejoulethief.substack.com/p/duck-and-cover
As someone who works in electric power, I very much enjoyed this article. Thank you for boldly speaking what is willfully ignored.
I am a proud resident of West Virginia, a state rich in natural resources, and seated within the PJM footprint. I will never forget viewing the transmission line loading in real time while I was working on Christmas Eve of 2022, during the bomb cyclone that swept across our area. Without rambling on for hours, I’ll just get to it and say that it was thanks to coal generation plants that kept the lights on — and not only our lights, but the lights of surrounding states within the PJM footprint thanks to the 30,000+ MW that were produced and exported because of coal.
I’ll stop there. Thank you, and God’s blessings