Whodathunkit.......
HT & Stereo System Fuel Shortage Coming According to Grid Operators
US Faces Electricity Shortages Heading Into Summer, as Grid Operators Warn of Limits of Green Energy
With more than 25 years of executive experience in the utility industry, people tend to listen when MISO CEO John Bear talks about energy.
And the message he’s sending about electricity shortages as Americans head into summer is clear.
“I am concerned about it,” Bear told The Wall Street Journal in an article exploring why power-grid operators are worried that electricity supplies may struggle to keep up with rising energy demands.
Bear is not some lone prophet foretelling doom.
From California to Texas to the Midwest, the Journal spoke to grid operators warning that conditions are ripe for outages, as plants pivot to new renewable energy sources.
These concerns are not unfounded. Evidence shows America’s power grid is increasingly unreliable and struggling to keep up with demand, and operators are bracing for rolling blackouts that could be arriving as soon as this year during heat waves and cold snaps.
‘Quitting’ Fossil Fuels?
Politicians and policy wonks often speak of “quitting” fossil fuels, as if they are a filthy habit or a narcotic like crack. But the reality is humans could not survive without coal, natural gas, and oil.
Despite their impressive growth, renewable energy sources—solar, wind, hydro and biomass combined—account for just 20 percent of US utility-scale electricity generation.
Fossil fuels, on the other hand, provide 61 percent of utility-scale electricity generation in the country. They heat and cool our homes, run our appliances, and feed the Teslas we drive.
While there is a great deal of excitement around the potential of renewable energy, one cannot simply replace a coal plant with a wind or solar farm and expect things will go just fine. These are intermittent energy sources, for one, but their construction and expansion has also been hit with delays for a variety of reasons, including inflation and supply chain bottlenecks.
“Every market around the world is trying to deal with the same issue,” Brad Jones, interim chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, told the Journal. “We’re all trying to find ways to utilize as much of our renewable resources as possible…and at the same time make sure that we have enough dispatchable generation to manage reliability.”
The shift from filthy coal to clean energy has not always been smooth.
Last year, for example, Hawaiian officials were stunned to learn the coal plant they had killed had been replaced with a massive battery powered by oil, which one public official described as “going from cigarettes to crack.”
Green Energies Have Costs, Too
It’s true that fossil fuels come with tradeoffs. They can be messy and they emit greenhouse gasses. But the idea that “green” energies do not come with similar environmental tradeoffs is simply not true.
That electric car your neighbor just bought probably isn’t as green as he thinks. It takes tens of thousands of pounds of CO2 emissions to produce those fancy Tesla batteries, research shows.
Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist, argues that renewable energy has the potential to be just as destructive to the environment as fossil fuels. While the phrase “clean energy” might conjure up images of beaming sunshine, rainbows, and gales of wind, the reality is far different.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Hickel noted the transition to renewable energy sources exacts a serious toll on the environment; it requires massive amounts of energy, not to mention the extraction of minerals and metals at great environmental and social costs.
A little-noticed World Bank study examined just the amount of material it would take to get to a “zero emission” economy.
“[The] results are staggering,” Hicekl noted, extrapolating using some basic arithmetic, “34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.”
It’s easy, of course, not to think about such matters, just like it’s easy to not think about the fact that there’s a good chance the lithium-ion battery powering your EV was made with cobalt mined by a child in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the vast majority of the world’s cobalt is mined.
These are unpleasant realities, but they are realities nevertheless, and they remind us of an important economic adage popularized by economist Thomas Sowell: there are no solutions, there are only trade offs. (In economics, this idea is sometimes expressed as opportunity cost. It’s the idea that you must sacrifice something to obtain a product or service or experience, even if it’s simply your time or attention.)
When it comes to fossil fuels, many Americans tend to ignore their benefits and focus on their costs. When it comes to green energy, however, many of the same people do the opposite; they focus on the benefits and ignore the costs.
To be fair, in some ways it’s easy to forget just how fortunate we are to have fossil fuels. They are provided to us on a daily basis through the invisible miracle of the market, which sees them provided in seemingly infinite amounts, often (though not always) at relatively little cost.
If John Bear’s concerns prove founded, however, Americans may soon get a rather rude reminder this summer about the importance of fossil fuels.
“As we move forward, we need to know that when you put a solar panel or a wind turbine up, it’s not the same as a thermal resource,” Bear told the Journal.
This is good advice. Let’s hope the right people hear it.
52 responses Add your response
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Friend of mine who is a PHD/Professor of Electrical Engineering at prestigious university in the Midwest, where all their electric is provided via coal fired steam turbines, was in the market for a new car. He researched and found that buying an electric car will produce a larger carbon footprint than if he purchased a MB SUV with a V8. As he stated we are 30-40 years from weening our country off of fossil fuels. No matter what the government does. He is also a card carrying AOC liberal. |
EV Tesla adds to electric bill at least $200/monthly. charging this beast is also not cheap if charged outside home. My FJ-cruiser uses a lot less dollars per mile at the very end. Math is the method to check and test dafuk out of any bs science in a very simple and determinable way anyone can manage as long as they know about math. |
FEE dot org is rated as a right leaning organization with low confidence in their reporting so, of course, they'd say this. All one needs to do is google their bias ratings. As for the costs of charging an EV outside the home, North Carolina is trying to pass a law so that free EV charging is a thing of the past. It's free at various locations and rest stops so they want the state to pay for gas and diesel fill ups at state run locations to make it fair. Sounds stupid? Well, it is, but they're run by a party that hates the idea that alternative fuels have a future in this country. All the best, |
The planet is saying it does not care. If human’s don’t stop it immediately and reverse what we are doing the Earth will stop providing a livable planet. The planet is moving rapidly to provide that hostile environment. For over thirty years this has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt and we have ignored it. Coming up with reasons we cannot change will be met with additional evidence. We have already baked in catastrophic changes, even if dialed back immediately. |
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@Nonsense. I expected the lefties to disparage the writer rather than the argument. Its what Marxists / Progressives always do because they have no reasonable argument. to refute the facts put forth
Electricity Shortage Warnings Grow Across U.S.Katherine Blunt - May 8
From California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, a gap that could lead to rolling blackouts during heat waves or other peak periods as soon as this year.
California’s grid operator said Friday that it anticipates a shortfall in supplies this summer, especially if extreme heat, wildfires or delays in bringing new power sources online exacerbate the constraints. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which oversees a large regional grid spanning much of the Midwest, said late last month that capacity shortages may force it to take emergency measures to meet summer demand and flagged the risk of outages. In Texas, where a number of power plants lately went offline for maintenance, the grid operator warned of tight conditions during a heat wave expected to last into the next week. The risk of electricity shortages is rising throughout the U.S. as traditional power plants are being retired more quickly than they can be replaced by renewable energy and battery storage. Power grids are feeling the strain as the U.S. makes a historic transition from conventional power plants fueled by coal and natural gas to cleaner forms of energy such as wind and solar power, and aging nuclear plants are slated for retirement in many parts of the country. The challenge is that wind and solar farms—which are among the cheapest forms of power generation—don’t produce electricity at all times and need large batteries to store their output for later use. While a large amount of battery storage is under development, regional grid operators have lately warned that the pace may not be fast enough to offset the closures of traditional power plants that can work around the clock..... |
The weatherman gets the daily weather right 50% of the time yet you think he is spot on about catastrophic climate change. Yet in the 70's the Time magazine headlined the COMING ICE AGE . I moved south in 1978 after the Chesapeake bay froze over solid and the mail was driven over to Tangier and Smith Island by car.. That was late 70's Yet the little ice age started in the 1300's wasn't over til about 1815. Crops can't grow when the temps are low . BTW It snowed on July 4th in New England. So of course there is climate change,. It changes 4 times a year. We've always had extreme weather at time. Quit living in fear |
Extreme heat could cause U.S. power shortages this summer -NERCMay 14 (Reuters) - The organization responsible for North American electric reliability warned energy shortfalls were possible this summer in California, Texas, New England and the Central United States based on above-normal temperature forecasts for much of the region. "Of greatest concern (during extreme heat) is California, where up to 11 gigawatts (GW) of additional transfers are expected to be needed in late afternoon to offset reduced solar output" versus just one GW on a normal day, the North American Electric Reliability Corp (NERC) said late Thursday following a board meeting....
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NERC report outlines potential electricity disruptions in the United States this summer
Parts of the United States are at elevated or high risk for potential electricity emergencies this summer, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation's (NERC) 2021 Summer Reliability Assessment. Summer peak electricity demand in the United States is strongly influenced by temperature. NERC’s report notes that above-normal temperatures are expected for much of North America this summer and several regions are at risk of electricity shortfalls during above-normal peak temperatures. NERC is a nonprofit international regulatory organization that oversees regional electric reliability entities in the Lower 48 states, Canada, and parts of Mexico. At the beginning of each summer, NERC publishes a reliability assessment that tabulates anticipated electricity demand and supply changes and highlights any regional challenges or expected conditions that may affect the bulk power system. Above-normal summer heat increases electricity demand from temperature-dependent loads, such as air conditioning, and can reduce electricity supplies if power plant outages or reduced output stem from heat-related issues. Wide-area heat waves can challenge grid operators and may limit electricity transfers because the electricity is needed to meet local electricity demand. According to NERC’s assessment, electric supply shortages may occur in the western United States, Texas, New England, and parts of the Midwest. In the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), which includes the western half of the United States, resource and energy adequacy is a significant concern this summer. Generating capacity and projected electricity demand are at similar levels as they were in 2020, when an August wide-area heat wave caused rolling blackouts. NERC found that WECC subregions in the Southwest and Northwest have enough resources to meet electricity demand under normal peak summer demand conditions, but they are at elevated risk of electricity shortfalls if demand is higher. The highest risk of electricity emergency is in California, a WECC subregion, which relies heavily on energy imports during normal peak summer demand and when solar generation declines in the late afternoon. Although California has gained new flexible resources to help meet demand when solar energy is unavailable, it is at high risk of an electricity emergency when above-normal demand is widespread in the west because the amount of resources available for electricity transfer to California may be limited. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) typically has one of the smallest anticipated reserve margins in the country, meaning it has relatively little unused electric generating capacity during times of peak electric load. ERCOT’s anticipated reserve margin increased from 12.9% last summer to 15.3% for this summer as a result of adding new wind, solar, and battery resources. Although ERCOT’s anticipated reserve margin is higher this summer, extreme summer heat could result in supply shortages that lead to an electricity emergency. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and ISO-New England have sufficient resources to meet projected peak demand. However, if above-normal levels of electricity demand (which NERC calculates based on historical demand) occur in these regions, demand is likely to exceed capacity resources. In that case, additional transfers of electricity from surrounding areas will be needed to meet demand. You can find additional information on these regional challenges and other expected conditions that may affect the bulk power system this summer in NERC’s 2021 Summer Reliability Assessment. Principal contributor: O. Nilay Manzagol
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Taxpayers should NOT have to pay for your fuel? If you want an elec car then get one and pay for the fuel just like others do for theirs. Quit being a freeloader. And you are right that "alternative fuels have a future in this country." yes... The FUTURE, NOT today except in the minds of those who WON"T face the truth And you are right, I TORE UP your flimsy excuse of an argument. It wasn’t hard. |
Keep dreaming, dude. It’s all you have. That, and using large fonts to scream at us with. Here’s a hint: it doesn’t help your cause any when you do that. By the way, that report was from last year and we all got through it just fine, except Texas, who runs their own grid and rips off their citizens. All that's needed is a little moderation and increased use of alternative energy sources and, most importantly, combining all the grids into one big one that can draw off each other when needed. All the best, |
Perhaps it would also make sense to google Google's bias rating. Because Google has biases all its own, don't you know. In Western Massachusetts, where I live, and where most everyone is greener than a Saint Patrick's Day parade, if you ask most folks where electricity comes from, they'll look at you like you were a complete idiot before telling you that it comes from wall outlets, stupid!
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@buellrider97 just need all those blowhard liberals to send that hot air towards those wind farms to make more power. |
Swing and a miss noise https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ ercot was established in Texas in 1970 under Democrat leadership and Texas Governor Preston Smith (D). And it was established in the wake of the Great Blackout in the NE in 1965. Texas energy costs are actually below the national average. |
Also another interesting fact Texas electric grid has never been the cause of wildfires causing BILLIONS of dollars in damage and both public and private property loss. I think this has happened several times in the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia, Fires, Pestilence, Criminals running the streets. Why stay? Oh sane people are leaving for TX, NC, SC, SD, FL……. |
Good old jerry with his made up "facts" again. He'll never change no matter how upset he gets. As for the actual costs of Texas energy, here's an excerpt on the linked article:
And this is from the Texas Monthly, which goes into great detail on the rip off scam that has been Ercot. And don't forget that back in the '70s the roles of Dems and Reps were largely reversed and it took awhile for the conservative Dems to turn color and become Republicans after LBJ enacted the Civil Rights Act. Preston Smith never supported a Democratic president after that. He just used the party position to further himself. You see, back then, Ercot was just starting out and as with all things Texas, they want no Federal oversight over anything they do, which is why they won't join their electrical grid to the rest of the nation. I mean, how else can they rape their own citizens and get away with it? All the best, |
Oh madam @nonoise just put your lips together and blow all your hot air at those California Wind Turbines. You will solve the energy crisis and raise California’s use of wind energy to over the dismal 7% that it is. Oh did you step in any fecal matter getting your mail today, did you carjacked on the way to the market that the homeless pillaged? Or dip Paul Pelosi driving drunk run a stop sign and hit your Rambler. Facts are facts and ercot is Democrat brain fart just like Biden is. Man it is nice convalescing at my sons home in South Texas by the ocean.
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Some of these comments are purile and bilious. To approximate what Twain wrote “Get your facts straight and then distort as much as you please.”
For 250 miles+/- down the road it costs $25 to charge my EV and $70 to gas up. I don’t drive like I used to have to. Still that’s 1k vs 2.8k for 10k miles. That leaves more money for stereo equipment I don’t need. |
@ghdprenticeI'm embarrassed to live in the state of HI, with the power plant just recently converted to the crack-cocaine of energy sources - from coal to oil... Although, both have to be shipped in here, and I suspect easier to ship oil than coal... As both arrive here on boat after crossing an ocean, the total energy costs of energy here are truly explosive. During the past two decades, especially the last five, the weather has massively transformed here, and the heat waves and humidity are getting pretty brutal as the trade winds are failing. 20 years ago the trades (winds cooling the islands & protecting us from hurricanes) have stopped only for 2-3 days a year, and the past years we have several month stretches, entire summers and falls without them! I have had a keen interest in climatology and climate changes from early on, and have followed the peer-reviewed scientific literature from the 1990s. The geological records indicate that we are currently experiencing the most drastic temperature increase period the Earth ever went through. The closest we had was shortly after the extinction of dinosaurs, 64 million years ago when Earth turned into a hot sauna in the span of 4000 years. At that time the ocean temperature at the arctic warmed up to 20 degrees Celsius, and the equatorial ocean temperature was warm enough to prevent swimming. I guess the next century's Titanic story will be people perishing by heat stroke in the water, instead of freezing to death... as sadly, the current warming is an order of magnitude faster than that cataclysmic one. Research on the conveyor belts has very scary results. The Atlantic conveyor belt cools the equatorial region and warms colder regions. It makes both Central America and New York and Northern Europe habitable... It has already slowed remarkably to critical speeds. The models of the two leading expert research teams both show that with very high probability we are already past the point of no return. They do not dare to spell out the consequences, just state, loosely quoted: "we hope our models are wrong, but we checked each others data a dozen times, tried a different model, and the prediction is the same". The Atlantic conveyor belt will shut down in the decades to come, and we can't do anything about it.. even stopping all emmissions to zero right now would not reverse the process.
As a scientist, I dearly hope that my fellow academia members are all DEAD WRONG, and we can keep on chanting "Atlantis is not sinking" and bumping up fuel and energy consumption......... at least for a few more decades at best before the planet starts shutting down the heritage of Homo sapiens for good. (Sad.) I was so much against energy and resource wasting, air conditioning my whole life - I could not justify using energy for such purpose: warm the planet to keep me cool... but I had to install AC three years ago, as the environment became unlivable without AC. Curiously though, the split AC uses less energy than the fans the AC replaced!!! I also added serious insulation to my home as well, and that drastically reduced the need for cooling. (So much, that I basically need the AC to dehumidify - as humidity gets to intolerable levels.) Yet, 99% of Hawaii homes have virtually non-existent heat insulation, and everyone is blowing their AC at 200% creating arctic cold instead of simply cool... If we had all acted sensibly, at least start making steps in the right direction... Human resourcefulness is surprising though,,, especially when it's about our survival. I suspect that the decades of 2030-2040 will see the vast majority of every nations GDP being used to save ourselves from extinction. I believe we can do it. Actually, our children and grandchildren will do it! And curse our generation in their every waking hour.
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Even though I disagree, Thank you for a reasonable response. I hope you understand that there are thousands of scientists who disagree with your assertions. The ones that do disagree get little or no press nor any grant $$$. Its funny how we ask questions about the $$$ that an audio seller make on a product that he recommends but we never ask the same from scientists though most of them cound not have a job without grant $$$ from the Bid Corps and Govt which also gets $$$ from these big corps Oh yeah, and Brandon is totally responsible for expensive gas in the US and around the world. How stupid to think he has any control over gas prices,
I see why you have that name. Your statement shows your lack of understanding of govt itself. Exec orders, EPA rules, legislation & tax rules all have an effect Brandon campaigned on closing down fossil fuels. The first thing he did was shut down oil pipelines. Gas prices increased by over $1 within 9 months That was before Ukraine.. He stopped drilling on fed lands. He has proposed 12-134 power plants per month to be closed. If he has no effect why even propose? You are just plainly wrong. |
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Casting aspersions on the author, the article’s source and the poster along with Reporting the thread to the Mods as spam is NOT debunking the subject. Those are things you do when you cannot defend your position. I’d love to be wrong about an electricity shortage.But the grid operators know more about the grid than I and they say its in peril. Ya can’t wish it away. You go ahead and have the last word. 24/7 rent free 😀 |
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Quite right! All the figures for emissions of electric cars are false. By far the largest emission cost of a car is from building it and disposing of it. Batteries last around 8 years and cannot easily be replaced as stupid design has integrated them in the frame, rather than making them easily detachable and replaceable. So a battery car will be scrapped (and replaced) after 8 years instead of more than double that for a fossil fuel car. Duurrrrrr. I am really sick of scientists spouting all this crap. Can we make them liable for the damage they cause by their negligence, like lawyers and doctors. |
You are the one who made it political in your first rant. The article mentioned no politicians, etc. It addressed green energy and if we are rushing into it before the grid is ready? Every post you have made is meant to insult and or inflame passions rather than to seek to try to fix the problem that we all may very well face sooner rather than later. Then after the insults you finally say, Well, this grid problem has been going on a long time. So which is it? That is a direct contradiction to your other posts wherein you claimed the article to be false. Why not add something credible and germane to the conversation and quit the insults and attempted rabble rousing ?
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So much for oil is the answer to everything. |
I live in Texas now, after NY metro for more than 35 years. The infrastructure where I am-- very proximate to downtown Austin, is new. But we lost power during Uri for 4.5 days, it was like 6 degrees, something I’m used to from the NE, but not in Texas. Nothing is winterized here. Thus, the gas lines froze, and lost power- adding generator power actually caused more cascading failures. ERCOT was badly managed- the fall back here isn’t wind or solar, it is gas. And the roads were treacherous for a couple days- black ice- something that Texas simply isn't prepared for. There are a couple promising developments-- the Southern Transmission Line, which will give additional capacity without subjecting Texas to federal regulation. The biggest unanswered question is the impact of growth- you have no idea unless you are down here how much major construction there is-- whether in town or out of town -- Potemkin villages owned by the usual suspects - Cisco, Amazon, Microsoft, Amazon, other non-identifiable server farms and bit-coin mining facilities, etc. (Lots of 21st Century Military forward looking stuff). But, if you look at the miles of housing developments outside of Austin, leaving aside industrial parks or other cities, it is crazy big and expanding. That’s a drain on the power system too. Let’s hope the powers that be are up for the challenge. I’m not a native. I know that part of Texas is mythology. But, I find the independent streak endearing. Texans are great people, by and large. And get short shrift, as gun toting Neanderthals. Bill Hart- A Yankee in Texas. |
I don’t think anyone wants to destroy the planet. Do you think that killing of a few hundred million people would help alleviate the stress? Are you volunteering to give your life? Are you in favor of such an act? How many here will voluntarily quit using electricity to power their stereo & HT systems? They are completely frivolous by nature and add noting back except your pleasure. is your pleasure more necessary than saving the planet? IMO these are things that you must answer if you hold to the view that the planet is dying
Do you think we are up to the task right now with renewable energy? From my understanding the windmills froze and wouldn’t turn. I don’t know the full story but there have been many coal fired power plants taken offline since about 2014-15 . . I’m all for renewable energy. But closing down all coal fired plants won’t make the renewable any more efficient. And closing them before having a ready system to take its place is a key to disaster IMO. Then too, there is the pollution problem of the renewables which were put forth in the article |
And there you have it, ladies and germs. The whole energy system wasn’t winterized, knowing it would break down, so they could use their surge pricing. It’s a feature in the system and not a bug. Remember that with surge pricing, the costs go up from around $25.70/megawatt hour to over $9,000/megawatt hour. The greatest transfer of wealth in Texas history happened during the freeze, at the cost of people freezing to death. Even Texas energy officials admitted that the oil and gas lines freezing was the reason it all came down and not because of the limited amount of windmills they use. And yet, we have someone here not dealing in good faith. Even now with the intense heat of summer upon us, they have solar power generating twice as much power as their system can handle. It could be 14% instead of 7% but their lines can’t handle the input from solar. Again, a feature and not a bug. All the best,
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