Motionless windmills, solar plant glitches, shuttered coal plants and hydroelectric power stations stymied by low water levels — that’s the recipe cooking up for widespread power outages this summer, warns the country’s leading watchdog on power grid reliability.
A new assessment from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found the electrical grids powering two-thirds of the U.S. are “at risk of energy shortfalls” during summer heat waves.
Officials at NERC warned Congress the threat is likely to worsen unless the U.S. “recalibrates” its effort to transform the nation’s power grid to renewable energy by focusing on reliability.
“Our assessments demonstrate that the electric grid is operating ever closer to the edge, where more frequent and more serious disruptions are increasingly likely,” James B. Robb, NERC’s president and chief executive officer, told the Senate recently.
Much of the threat of summer outages lies in the West, where intermittent solar and wind have been increasingly incorporated into the energy grid.
The renewable power scheme is forcing states including California to rely on energy transfers from other regions, which may not be available, to meet demand during periods of high usage.
New environmental rules put in place under President Biden also increase the threat of power outages, NERC is reporting.
New pollution caps from the Environmental Protection Agency require power plants fired by coal and natural gas to reduce emissions impacting downwind states. According to NERC, the plants, located in 23 states, will likely limit hours of operation this year as they work to implement new equipment to control emissions, which could lead to supply shortages during extreme heat.
Nevada, Utah and several states in the Gulf Coast, mid-Atlantic and Midwest are impacted by the new EPA rule.
The NERC assessment found no areas of the U.S. at risk of energy shortages during normal summer peak demand, but it determined that if temperatures spike beyond the normal range, the number of states at elevated risk has increased.
Mr. Robb told Senators of “the prospect of more frequent and serious disruptions that threaten human wellbeing and economic productivity.”
He called for expanding infrastructure for reliable energy, particularly natural gas.
The report follows two consecutive summers in which Texas and California, which have significantly increased renewable energy sources in their power grids, have asked consumers to cut their power usage and in some cases have implemented rolling blackouts.
In Texas, where nearly a quarter of electricity generation is supplied by wind, consumers last summer were asked to reduce power usage to avert blackouts when the wind stopped blowing during a blistering heat wave. Households were asked to pause electric vehicle charging and turn up their thermostats and take other steps to cut power usage.
About half of all of California’s energy grid is supplied by renewables, including hydropower. California is also the nation’s largest importer of electricity, relying on other states for up to a third of its supply.
The reliance on renewables and out-of-state energy transfers, which can be hindered by summer wildfires and the needs of other states, has left California vulnerable to blackouts.
During a 2022 summer heat wave, the state’s power grid operator asked consumers to crank up thermostats to 78 degrees and avoid using large appliances in the afternoon and evening to avert power outages.
Sen. Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the creeping instability of the grid has been caused by retiring critical power plants too soon to meet the demands of the left’s anti-fossil fuel agenda.
Coal, gas, nuclear and even hydropower, which some green energy advocates oppose, are being cut from the grid without reliable replacements, he said.
Mr. Manchin said coal plants proved to be critical in reducing power outages during Winter Storm Elliott, a massive blizzard that impacted the central and eastern portion of the U.S. in December 2022.
“But this EPA won’t let electric reliability inconvenience their anti-fossil agenda,” Mr. Manchin said. “Within 6 months of Winter Storm Elliott, EPA’s response was to roll out four new regulations poised to shut down 50,000 megawatts or more of coal power over the next decade, whether the grid is ready for it or not. EPA is not hiding their strategy. It’s death by a thousand unreasonable cuts.”
The EPA announced new power plant rules last month that would require the nation’s 3,400 coal and natural gas plants to reduce nearly all carbon emissions by 2038 or shut down.
Romany Webb, deputy director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said reliability is an important goal for the power grid but addressing climate change is critical because it is causing extreme weather events that undermine stability.
“We know that if we don’t undertake the transition to renewables to decarbonize our power sector, then we are going to continue to see these intensifying climate impacts that are themselves a threat to electric system reliability,” Ms. Webb told The Washington Times.
Mr. Webb said he believes the nation has the resources and technical ability to “achieve a clean energy future,” but he said the transformation must be paced to ensure the electricity grid’s reliability, under all weather conditions, isn’t threatened in the process.
“As it exists today, this balance is out of calibration and must be corrected,” he said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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