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Watchdog Has Grim Winter Warning: There May Be Blackouts

November 14, 2023

Watchdog Has Grim Winter Warning: There May Be Blackouts

  • North American Reliability Corp: As much as two-thirds of the United States could experience blackouts in peak winter weather.
  • Earlier this year, NERC issued a blackout warning for some parts of the U.S. over the summer, citing extreme temperatures.
  • The regulator points to the lack of gas transport infrastructure as one of the main challenges for the U.S. grid this winter.
Electricity

As much as two-thirds of the United States could experience blackouts in peak winter weather this and next year, the North American Reliability Corp has warned.

These warnings have become something of a routine for the regulatory agency lately. Earlier this year, NERC issued a blackout warning for some parts of the U.S. over the summer, citing extreme temperatures.

This latest warning also has to do with extreme temperatures. Yet it’s not just the temperatures themselves that are the problem. It’s the power generation mix that is making the grid more vulnerable.

In its latest assessment, NERC cited recent data showing that up to a fifth of generating capacity could be forced offline in case of a cold snap over areas that do not normally get this kind of weather.

The regulator points to the lack of gas transport infrastructure as one of the main challenges for the U.S. grid this winter as it compromises the security of generating fuel supply. The report also notes historical evidence that extreme winter weather can also affect the production of natural gas and, as a result, reinforce the effect of weather on power supply security.

It is not just natural gas that is problematic, however. The massive buildout of wind and solar capacity has also had an impact on electricity supply reliability and could turn into a problem during the winter.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia doubles second-quarter Russian fuel oil imports for power generation

July 21, 2022

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia doubles second-quarter Russian fuel oil imports for power generation

RUSSIA-SAUDI/OIL (EXCLUSIVE, PIX)

People walk near power plant number 10 at Saudi Electricity Company’s Central Operation Area, south of Riyadh, April 27, 2012./File Photo

  • This includes content produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine.
  • Kingdom burns Russian fuel to free up crude for exports
  • Biden travels to ask Riyadh for more oil
  • Russia raises supply to Asia, Africa amid Western sanctions

MOSCOW/LONDON/DUBAI, July 15 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, more than doubled the amount of Russian fuel oil it imported in the second quarter to feed power stations to meet summer cooling demand and free up the kingdom’s own crude for export, data showed and traders said.

Russia has been selling fuel at discounted prices after international sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine left it with fewer buyers. Moscow calls the war in Ukraine a “special military operation”.

The increased sales of fuel oil, used in power generation, to Saudi Arabia show the challenge that U.S. President Joe Biden faces as his administration seeks to isolate Russia and cut its energy export revenues.

While many countries have banned or discouraged purchases from Russia, China, India and several African and Middle Eastern nations have increased imports.

Biden was on Friday visiting Saudi Arabia and was expected to seek an increase in oil supply to global markets from the kingdom to help to lower oil prices that have aggravated inflation worldwide. read more

There is little spare capacity for Saudi and others to increase production in the short term. Saudi Arabia has also maintained its cooperation with Russia in the alliance of global producers known as OPEC+. The two are the de facto leaders of respectively OPEC and non-OPEC producers in that group.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Calculation of the Extra Capacity Required of Non-Fossil Fuel Power Generation Systems to Completely Phase Out Fossil Fuels

April 12, 2022

Calculation of the Extra Capacity Required of Non-Fossil Fuel Power Generation Systems to Completely Phase Out Fossil Fuels

Abstract

The task to phase out fossil fuels is now at hand. Most studies and publications to date focus on why fossil fuels should be phased out. This paper presents the physical requirements in terms of required non-fossil fuel industrial capacity, to completely phase out fossil fuels, and maintain the existing industrial ecosystem. The existing industrial ecosystem dependency on fossil fuels was mapped by fuel (oil, gas, and coal) and by industrial application. Data was collected globally for fossil fuel consumption, physical activity, and industrial actions for the year 2018. The number of vehicles in the global transport fleet was collected by class (passenger cars, buses, commercial vans, HCV Class 8 trucks, delivery trucks, etc.). The rail transport network, the international maritime shipping fleet, and the aviation transport fleet were mapped, in terms of activity and vehicle class. For each type of vehicle class, the distance travelled was estimated. Non-fossil fuel technology units that are commercially available on the market now were assembled to substitute fossil fuel supported technology. An example was selected to represent each vehicle class, for Electrical Vehicle and Hydrogen fuel cell systems. The requirements to substitute the ICE rail network and the maritime fleet with EV and hydrogen fuel cell systems were presented. The quantity of electrical power required to charge the batteries of a complete EV system was estimated. The quantity of electrical power to manufacture the required hydrogen for a complete H-cell system was estimated. An examination and comparison between EV and H-cell systems was conducted. Other fossil fuel industrial tasks like electrical power generation, building heating with gas and steel manufacture with coal were mapped and requirements for non-fossil fuel substitution were out estimated…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Coal Generation In UK Jumps As Wind Speed Drops

October 17, 2021

Coal Generation In UK Jumps As Wind Speed Drops

Coal met some 3 percent of the UK’s electricity demand on Friday morning, reaching its highest level of Britain’s power generation in one month, amid lower wind speeds this week and an outage at a gas-powered plant, Bloomberg reports.

The last time the UK generated 3 percent of its electricity from coal was in early September when low wind generation reduced renewable power supply and triggered the massive spikes in UK wholesale electricity prices.

Utility Uniper fired up its coal-powered plant in Ratcliffe early on Friday, while the gas-fired plant in Pembroke, Wales, operated by RWE, suffered an unplanned outage.

Over the past week, gas has consistently accounted for the largest share of the UK’s electricity generation, according to data from National Grid ESO. For example, on Wednesday, gas produced 44.8 percent of Britain’s electricity, more than wind with 19.2 percent and nuclear with 12.6 percent.

Surging natural gas prices and warm and still weather in September forced the UK to fire up an old coal plant that was on standby in order to meet its electricity demand.

The UK has pledged to phase out coal-fired power generation by October 2024.

UK power company Drax could have its last two coal-fired plants in the country operating beyond the 2022 deadline it had set for closure if the UK government asks it to keep them operational amid the energy crisis in the country and the whole of Europe.

“If the government wants us to rethink our plans, we need to talk to them in the next few months,” Drax’s chief executive Will Gardiner told the Financial Times at the end of September.

Last week, the UK government committed to decarbonizing the country’s electricity system by 2035.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sydney go on your rooftops and save power for 3 million new immigrants

July 21, 2018

Sydney go on your rooftops and save power for 3 million new immigrants

The latest report “Integrated System Plan” of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) assumes that power consumption on Australia’s East Coast will stay rather flat despite government engineered immigration resulting in a population growth of 1.5% pa. This implies a call on all existing electricity consumers to save and provide power for all newcomers.

Let’s first have a look at what is happening with power supplies.

On Monday 16th July 2018, at 18:30, in the middle of winter with a temperature of 12.6 ֯C, total NSW power demand reached almost 12 GW, 300 GW short of 12.3 MW experienced in summer on 7/1/2018 at 16:30.

NSW-power-demand-price_16Jul2018Fig 1: NSW power demand vs wholesale electricity prices

Before and during peak demands we see the spiking of electricity prices The average prices including peaks are 30% higher than the average price without the peaks.

Components_power-bill_ACCC
Fig 2: Composition of residential electricity bills
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-18/components-of-average-power-bill/10010484

The peak demand drives up the wholesale electricity component of bills for residential customers. What do Federal and State government do about it? The Feds are running an ambitious immigration program and the States are approving massive, energy consuming apartment projects.

PolyhorizonFig 3: Polyhorizon, “First highrise opens” Northern District Times 13 June 2018

These structures push up peak demand as shown in this graph of the Parramatta Council:

Parramatta_CBD_peak_electricity_demand_existing_proposedFig 4: Peak demand of skyscrapers

Now back to the data for the 16th July 2018. NSW black coal power generation was around 7.6 GW and power imports from Queensland and Victoria 1.9 GW. In the previous week, on Thursday 12 July 2018, imports reached a whopping 2.2 GW. It is crystal clear that NSW is the Premier energy guzzler State in Australia and utterly dependent on power (and also gas) from neighbouring States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome to renewables world: Australia plans for blackouts, throws billions of dollars, but ABC says it will get “cheaper”

December 21, 2017

Welcome to renewables world: Australia plans for blackouts, throws billions of dollars, but ABC says it will get “cheaper”

The fear is palpable

How much fun can you have living in a global experiment?  In Australia, peak summer is about to hit in a post-Hazelwood-electricity-grid.  We’re drowning in electricity news as summer ramps up. Everyday there’s another Grid story in the press, and a major effort going on to avoid a meltdown.  Minister Josh Frydenberg announced today that “we’ve done everything possible to prevent mass blackouts”. Or as he calls it, a repeat of the South Australian Horror Show.   Politicians are so afraid of another SA-style-system-black that they are throwing money: The “Snowy Hydro Battery” will be another $2 billion. Whatever. It’s other people’s money.

This is what they are afraid of:

The red bars mean “Reserve Shortfall”. The dark blue matter is “Generation”. The graph covers two years (sorry about the quality) so the two red bursts are summer 2018 and summer 2019.

SA MEdium Term Forecast, Outlook, AEMO, Mt PASA. Australian national electricity market, 2017, South Australia, Graph.

SA Medium Term Forecast, Outlook, AEMO, Nov 16th 2017, South Australia.

Oddly we are headed for a critical time, but this’s the most recent graph I can find  — thanks to Wattclarity –  from November 16th, 2017. (Here’s an earlier version from March 2017. and from Dec 2016). Perhaps there is a newer kinder forecast, but curiously the AEMO Medium Term Outloook page isn’t working “til early 2018″. Hmm? Odd time to take it down.

The words in that top box (rewritten below*) indicate they do a new outlook every two weeks, but I can’t find one on the Wayback Machine, or Google Cache. Perhaps you can? Please let me know.

Australian electricity prices forecast to rise and fall at the same time

The ABC tells us prices look set to fall:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will EV’s Break The Grid?

August 17, 2017

Will EV’s Break The Grid?

EV

While the UK government has vowed to end the sale of all new conventional gasoline and diesel cars by 2040, as part of a wider plan to fight air pollution, there is talk that electricity demand will lead to a fast and dirty response to a strained power grid.

But here’s what everyone’s missing in that debate: While EV sales are going to rise and electricity demand to power them will strain the grid and lead to less-than-ideal power generation solutions, the whole plan will help clean power generation to increase its market share.

Nothing is black and white. And big transformations are never immediate. We’re not talking about an overnight elixir that will magically clean up the air; we’re talking about a step-by-step process that is gradually less dirty.

Overloading the Grid (Mind the Gap)

The UK’s National Grid anticipates peak demand from electric vehicles alone being around 5 GW, which represents an 8 percent increase from today’s peak demand.

This peak demand forecast assumes what the National Grid calls the “Two Degrees” scenario, in which most cars would be EVS, with only 6 percent of them hybrids. But by 2045, only pure EVs would be on sale.

According to Wood Mackenzie, the UK plan to ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars by 2040 “will have a massive impact on the refining sector and the oil markets.”

To handle the extra peak demand, the most flexible way is to build open-cycle gas power plants.

One of the options for a “rapid response” plug-in capacity to make up for shortfalls could come from certain open-cycle gas-fired plants that are more polluting and less efficient.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The sustainable energy transition: a “back of the envelope” calculation

May 7, 2016

The sustainable energy transition: a “back of the envelope” calculation

Image source. “Back of the Envelope” calculations are a tradition in science and often turn out to be able to provide plenty of useful information, at the same time avoiding the common pitfall of complex models, that of being able to fit anything provided that one has enough adjustable parameters.

The world’s economy can be seen as a giant heat engine. It consumes energy, mainly in the form of fossil fuels, and uses it to produce services and goods. No matter how fine-tuned and efficient the engine is, it still needs energy to run. So, if we want to do the big switch that we call the “energy transition” from fossil fuels to renewables, we can’t rely just on efficiency and on energy saving. We need to feed the big beast with something it can run on, energy produced by renewable sources such as photovoltaics (PV) and wind in the form of electric power.

Here are a few notes on the kind of effort we need in order to move to a completely renewable energy infrastructure before it is too late to avoid the double threat of climate disruption and resource depletion. It is a tall order: we need to do it, basically, in some 50 years from now, possibly less, otherwise it will be too late to avoid a climate disaster. So, let’s try a “back of the envelope” calculation that should provide an order of magnitude estimate. For a complete treatment, see this article by Sgouridis et al.

Let’s start: first of all, the average power generation worldwide is estimated as around 18 TW in terms of primary energy. Of these, about 81% is the fraction generated by fossil fuels, that is 14.5 TW. This can be taken as the power that we need to replace using renewable sources, assuming to leave everything else as it is.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nebraska’s Community-Owned Electricity System

January 15, 2015

Nebraska’s Community-Owned Electricity System

In Nebraska, 121 publicly-owned utilities, 10 cooperatives, and 30 public power districts provide electricity to a population of around 1.8 million people.

In the United States, there is one state, and only one state, where every single resident and business receives electricity from a community-owned institution rather than a for-profit corporation. It is not a famously liberal state like Vermont or Massachusetts. Rather, it is conservative Nebraska, with its two Republican Senators and two (out of three) Republican members of Congress, that has embraced the complete socialization of energy distribution.

In Nebraska, 121 publicly-owned utilities, 10 cooperatives, and 30 public power districts provide electricity to a population of around 1.8 million people. Public and cooperative ownership keeps costs low for the state’s consumers. Nebraskans pay one of the lowest rates for electricity in the nation and revenues are reinvested in infrastructure to ensure reliable and cheap service for years to come. “There are no stockholders, and thus no profit motive,” the Nebraska Power Association proudly proclaims. “Our electric prices do not include a profit. That means Nebraska’s utilities can focus exclusively on keeping electric rates low and customer service high. Our customers, not big investors in New York and Chicago, own Nebraska’s utilities.” Payments (in lieu of taxes) from the state’s publicly-owned utilities exceed $30 million a year and support a variety of social services throughout the state—including the public education system.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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