Rush to Renewables May Destabilize Grid as Electricity Dependence Soars
Government policies are pushing ever more Americans on to the U.S. electric grid even as the climate change alarmism experiment makes the grid increasingly unstable.
In August, Massachusetts joined California, New York, and Washington in passing laws to restrict the use of oil and gas in new home construction. Several states have also set dates for banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars.
At the federal level, the electrification effort has included heavy subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs) and charging stations, even a contemplated ban on gas stoves. On top of government efforts comes the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, which has succeeded in arm-twisting corporations and public utilities into compliance with its net-zero emissions agenda.
All of this makes Americans more dependent on the electric grid at a time when utilities are accelerating the closure of coal and gas-fired plants, leaving the grid increasingly reliant on intermittent wind and solar power. This has sparked warnings from utility infrastructure experts that America's dash toward renewables could be driving our electric grid toward instability.
"Running while we're tying our shoes is the analogy I would give," John Moura, director of reliability assessment at the North American Electricity Reliability Corp. (NERC), told The Epoch Times. The NERC is charged with regulating electric utilities to ensure that they can deliver electricity whenever it is needed.
The NERC produces an annual long-term reliability assessment (LTRA). According to the 2022 LTRA, while many areas of the grid are expected to meet demand, several areas are at "high risk" of falling short. Two high-risk areas are California and a mid-continent zone running from Ontario down through the Great Lakes region to Louisiana.
"The projected shortfall continues an accelerating trend ... as older coal, nuclear, and natural gas generation exit the system faster than replacement resources are connecting," the LTRA states. In addition to the high-risk areas, areas of "elevated risk" included New England and the entire western United States outside of California.
A report by industry experts Paul Bonifas and Tim Considine titled, "The Limits to Green Energy," puts it more bluntly: "It is unknown what level of VRE [variable renewable energy] can be added to the grid before it breaks or becomes unaffordable. However, it is all but certain that at some unknown point the grid will become unreliable and costs will skyrocket. And yet, more VREs are built every year."
"Is a 100 percent renewable grid technology possible, is it reliable, and is it economical? No, no, and no," Bonifas and Considine write. The report states that the incessant shutting down of reliable power sources—gas, coal, and nuclear—will be destabilizing, and the costs to conform the grid to weather-dependent renewable power generation are "significant and unknown."
Many of the issues stem from the physics of electricity and the architecture of our power grid, which Moura calls "the largest machine in the world." America's electric grid features hundreds of power plants situated throughout the United States that connect into transformers that convert that power so it can be transmitted throughout the approximately 700,000-mile network of high-voltage transmission lines. The electricity then makes its way to neighborhood transformers that progressively step down the voltage so that it can be safely used in homes.
Because the electricity on the grid cannot sit idle or be stored for long periods, it must be consumed as it is created. Conversely, at the moment that people turn on the heat, charge a car, or flip a light switch in their homes, that electricity must be generated in the moment at some point along the grid.
"Electricity consumption and generation must always be balanced," Bonifas and Considine write. "If it isn't, the power grid could collapse. Thankfully, the immense size and interconnectedness of electricity grids make the balance issue easier to handle; billions of electrical loads across the country are constantly being added and removed, averaging out at any given moment."
Under normal conditions, the LTRA report states, the North American grid has performed reliably. Because of the grid's enormous size, a shortage of electricity in one area when demand is peaking can be covered by shifting excess supply from other areas; however, the grid has increasingly been struggling to do this in recent years, leading to outages on very hot or cold days, when people need electricity the most.
