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Pakistan Hit With Power Blackouts As It Struggles With Fuel Shortages And Technical Problems

April 19, 2022

Pakistan Hit With Power Blackouts As It Struggles With Fuel Shortages And Technical Problems

A once-in-a-generation inflation shock is rippling worldwide and has become a significant source of social and political instability in the weakest countries. Pakistan is the latest country to experience paralyzing inflation.

Bloomberg reports almost a fifth of electricity generation capacity is offline in the South Asian country because some power plants struggle to purchase liquefied natural gas and coal due to record high prices.

Pakistan’s energy costs have doubled to $15 billion in the last nine months ended February from a year earlier. The country has struggled with purchasing energy products to fuel its power plants since the conflict in Ukraine exacerbated commodity shortages, sending prices to record highs.

Miftah Ismail, appointed as finance minister by new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, tweeted that 3,500 megawatts worth of power capacity are offline due to fuel shortages, and a similar amount is due to technical faults. The total capacity offline is 7,000 megawatts or about a fifth of the country’s total generation capacity.

The poor South Asian country is heavily dependent on imported energy, making it highly sensitive to price swings.

“Pakistan’s situation will not change in the near term since global dynamics are still the same.

“There have been forced outages to deal with the energy shortages,” said Samiullah Tariq, head of research at Pakistan Kuwait Investment Co.

High inflation has already led to a recent government change (so far peaceful). Still, it raises near-term policy turmoil even as the country faces fiscal challenges from soaring commodity prices.

It could only be a matter of time before rolling power blackouts, soaring food and fuel prices incite unrest. This is already happening around the world in the weakest of countries.

The tiny island nation of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean and Peru have already experienced unrest because of rapid inflation. It appears the dominos are already falling.

India Facing Widespread Blackouts This Summer

April 14, 2022

India Facing Widespread Blackouts This Summer

India faces a persistent shortage of electricity over the next four months as rapid demand growth from air conditioners overwhelms the available generation on the network.

India’s grid reported a record load of 200,570 megawatts on July 7, 2021, at the height of last summer, according to the National Load Despatch Centre of the Power System Operation Corporation (POSOCO).

But since the middle of March, the grid has routinely reported maximum loads above 195,000 MW, including a peak of 199,584 MW on April 8 – less than 0.5% below the record.

In the evening, when there is no solar generation available and supplies are even more stretched, peak loads have hit a new record in recent days.

Exceptionally high loads have arrived far earlier this year, well before the most intense period of summer heat, implying the grid is in trouble.

In a symptom of the struggle to meet demand, the grid’s frequency has faltered since mid-March, dropping persistently below target, with longer and more severe excursions below the safe operating range.

Chronic under-frequency is a sign the grid cannot meet the full demand from customers and makes planned load-shedding or unplanned blackouts much more likely.

India has a frequency target of 50.00 cycles per second (Hertz), with grid controllers tasked with keeping it steady between 49.90 Hz and 50.05 Hz to maintain the network in a safe and reliable condition. Since the middle of March, frequency has averaged just 49.95 Hz and has been below the lower operating threshold more than 23% of the time.

On April 7, the average frequency fell as low as 49.84 Hz and frequency was below the lower threshold for 63% of the day, according to POSOCO data.

Frequency has been below target so often for so long in recent weeks it has sometimes appeared the system is operating according to a much lower informal target.

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

The Texas Electric Grid Failure Was a Warm-up

February 2, 2022

The Texas Electric Grid Failure Was a Warm-up

One year after the deadly blackout, officials have done little to prevent the next one—which could be far worse.

Anthony Mecke had drifted to sleep in the break room when a loud knock roused him at 1:23 a.m. “We just got the call,” a coworker said.

Mecke, a moonfaced 45-year-old, is the manager of systems operation training at CPS Energy, the city-owned electricity provider that serves San Antonio. He started at the company not long after high school, working at one point as a cable splicer, a job he performed in hot tunnels beneath the sidewalks of San Antonio. He thought he’d seen it all. But when he hustled from the break room, where he’d sneaked in a power nap after an all-day shift, into the company’s cavernous control room, housed in a tornado-proof building on the city’s East Side, what he witnessed unsettled him.

This was Monday, February 15, 2021. A winter storm had brought unusually frigid temperatures to the entire middle swath of the United States, from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande. In San Antonio, it dropped to 9 degrees. In Fort Worth, the storm’s icy arrival a few days earlier had led to a 133-vehicle pileup that left 6 dead. Abilene and Pflugerville had advised residents to boil their water, the first of thousands of such warnings that would eventually affect 17 million Texans. Across the state, families hunkered down and did anything they could to stay warm. The overwhelming majority of Texas homes are outfitted with electric heaters that are the technological equivalent of a toaster oven. During the most severe cold fronts, residents crank up those inefficient units, and some even turn on and open electric ovens and use hair dryers.

The control room at CPS Energy, in San Antonio.
The control room at CPS Energy, in San Antonio.Photograph by Jeff Wilson

Millions Without Power After Blackouts Hit Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan

January 26, 2022

Millions Without Power After Blackouts Hit Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan

A massive power outage was reported on Tuesday across several Eurasia countries that left millions in the dark.

Reuters reports Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan found themselves without power today. All three ex-Soviet republics have interconnected power grids connected to Russia.

The source of the disruption could be due to Kazakhstan’s North-South power line, which links its two neighbors to power stations in northern Kazakhstan and the Russian power grid. On Tuesday morning, Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC) said “emergency imbalances” resulted in disruptions.

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

Deja Vu? Texas NatGas Output Plunges Amid Cold Snap

January 4, 2022

Deja Vu? Texas NatGas Output Plunges Amid Cold Snap

U.S. natural gas futures rose late in the session on new data that showed a plunge in pipeline gas flows in Texas, which indicates the state’s power grid could be susceptible to failures amid a cold snap.

Front-month gas futures are up more than 3% to $3.84 around 1445 ET as commodity traders assess the situation in Texas.

“Production of the heating and power generation fuel in Texas fell on Sunday to the lowest since February’s freeze — when millions were sent into the dark for days — after temperatures plunged,” BloombergNEF pipeline data showed. Flows are expected to rebound when temperatures rebound. 

Temperatures in The Lone Star State are expected to rebound in the coming days.

However, warmer weather might not return to much of the U.S. until next Tuesday. Mean temperatures will oscillate around a 30-year average for the next eight days, occasionally dipping to below-average levels. The coldest point is between Jan. 8-11.

Heating degree days for the U.S. show cold weather will increase the demand for energy to heat building structures.

A plunge in gas supplies comes right after the Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT) of Texas said the power grid is “winterized and ready to provide power.”

Last February, a cold snap froze wellhead across the state that parazyled gas flows. Power plants couldn’t get enough fuel to spin turbines, and combine that with extraordinarily high power demand from customers to stay warm, the grid was minutes from collapse — forcing ERCOT, the grid operator — to implement rolling blackouts.

Despite ERCOT’s confidence that grid stability can be achieved this winter, keep an eye on Texas and pray for warmer weather; if not, another energy crisis could be nearing.

Germany “Imperils” Power Grid By Pulling Plug On 3 Nuclear Plants

January 3, 2022

Germany “Imperils” Power Grid By Pulling Plug On 3 Nuclear Plants

As nat gas prices surge in Europe, Germany is kicking off the new year by moving ahead with plans to shutter three of its six remaining nuclear power plants, making good on a commitment made in the aftermath of Japan’s disastrous meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The decision was championed especially vigorously by the Greens, who are now helping to rule as part of Germany’s new “stop sign” ruling coalition. But soaring natural gas prices across Europe mean this concession to the environmental lobby couldn’t come at a worse time.

Above: One of the shuttered plants, located in Gundremmingen. Source: Reuters

It’s a decision that could have consequences for the US. As we have complained before, the AOC-backed “Green New Deal” mostly excluded nuclear, by far the most efficient and useful alternative to fossil fuels, instead choosing to rely solely on inadequate “renewables”. And as Reuters adds in its report, Germany’s decision to pull the plug represent an “irreversible” pivot away from an energy source deemed “clean and cheap by some.”

Here’s more from Reuters:

Germany has pulled the plug on three of its last six nuclear power stations as it moves towards completing its withdrawal from nuclear power as it turns its focus to renewables.

The government decided to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power following Japan’s Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the coastal plant in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

The reactors of Brokdorf, Grohnde and Gundremmingen C, run by utilities E.ON and RWE shut down late on Friday after three and half decades in operation.

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

France Faces Power Blackouts In Next Cold Snap, Grid Operator Warns

December 31, 2021

France Faces Power Blackouts In Next Cold Snap, Grid Operator Warns

France’s electricity grid is coming under strain, and the next cold snap could be devastating for the country as energy-intensive manufacturers would experience reduced power, according to a new report published by French power grid operator Reseau de Transport d’Electricite (RTE).

RTE said due to the lack of wind and nuclear power generation. The next cold snap would force it to cut electricity to energy-intensive companies to stabilize the grid. There’s even the possibility widespread rolling blackouts could be implemented for two hours to mitigate grid collapse during peak energy demand.

The good news is that weather forecasting models provided by Bloomberg don’t show an imminent cold blast for the first half of January.

“Based on the latest forecast for January, such meteorological events — including a severe cold snap — seem very unlikely for the start of the month, and less likely for the rest of the month,” RTE said. “Hence, the risk of power cuts is essentially ruled out at least for the start of January.”

Mild temperatures and a flotilla of liquefied natural gas tankers have been a temporary relief for Europe, sending Dutch TTF natural gas and power prices lower in the last week.

France’s grid remains under pressure but not as bad as last week when day-ahead power prices rose to the highest level since 2009 and have since halved. Prices remain at extremely high levels.

Energy inflation is a politically sensitive issue for President Emmanuel Macron ahead of April’s presidential elections. If renewable power generation lags, nuclear reactors remain halted for maintenance, and natural gas prices remain elevated, then higher power bills into January and February could create more unpopularity for Macron.

Rolling Blackouts Spread Across Europe Amid Energy Crisis

December 24, 2021

Rolling Blackouts Spread Across Europe Amid Energy Crisis

Europe’s energy crisis worsened this week when Kosovo introduced rolling blackouts to most of its two million citizens, according to Bloomberg.

On Thursday, the Kosovo Energy Distribution Services (KEDS) announced rolling two-hour power blackouts for 2 million people due to an “overload” of its electrical grid.

KEDS asked customers to reduce power given “insufficient internal generation to cover consumption and the global energy crisis.”

Simultaneously, Serbia was forced to cut electricity to customers, Britain’s network operator issued a power supply warning, and France’s nuclear plant outage, all culminated into a perfect storm of straining the continent’s grid, resulting in reduced power supplies and exorbitantly high prices.

Last week, Kosovo’s economy minister, Artane Rizvanolli, said the shuttering of the nation’s main coal-fired power plant had worsened the energy crisis. He said power imports were “extremely costly.”

Grid data from Entso-E shows electricity imports from Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia plunged from 750 megawatts on Wednesday to about 469 megawatts on Thursday.

Jeremy Weir, CEO of commodities trader Trafigura Group, warned that more European countries could face rolling blackouts in the event of a severe winter.

Eleven European associations (from steel to fertilizers to cement to paper mills) published a memo Thursday indicating energy-intensive companies are paying “unbearably high energy prices” that may force them to shutter operations.

However, there is good news for the continent as benchmark Dutch front-month gas plunged as much as 43% from a peak of 180 euros per megawatt-hour to around 102 euros in the last several days as a flotilla of US liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers is headed to the fuel-starved continent.

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

Power Grid Failure Remains A Game-Changer

October 17, 2021

Power Grid Failure Remains A Game-Changer

When the power grid fails, modern life rapidly grinds to a halt. This game-changer is an issue we must seriously recognize. Whether we are talking about the grid or soaring electricity cost one thing is very clear, we are very dependent on electricity. This article should be considered a reminder of the fragility of our codependent modern society and how the things we have come to depend on could vanish in a heartbeat. By highlighting some of the vulnerabilities we face, even if they have been voiced by others in the past, at least we raise awareness of some of the dangers we face.News of blackout and energy shortages also raises the question of what is going on and whether we are being “toyed with” by those pushing us towards what they see as a greener future. It could be argued these “outages” are why we need to rapidly, “build back better” the whole grid. Of course, the flip side of that argument is that overzealous environmentalists are causing most of the problems that have resulted in outages. Electricity remains the lubricant of modern life, without it society cannot function. A great deal of damage occurs to the economy when a  power outage takes place. People can’t work, food supplies are damaged, and in times of inclement weather, people suffer greatly. Most Americans remember the power outage that gripped much of Texas in February of 2021. It resulted in pipes freezing and bursting and a great deal of suffering.

Blackouts have long been a thing of the past in most major cities but that has started to change. According to Bloomberg, the energy crisis that is rippling through Asia and Europe could unleash similar electricity shortages and blackouts in the United States. Soaring natural gas prices are forcing U.S. utilities to quickly turn to more coal…

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

 A publicly owned energy industry could help tackle energy poverty and increase renewables

October 16, 2021

 A publicly owned energy industry could help tackle energy poverty and increase renewables

Recent queues at petrol stations across the UK point to significant issues with fuel supply chains in the wake of Brexit. But a lack of fuel where it is needed has been causing problems in the UK for years.Before the pandemic, an estimated 13.4% of households – that’s 3.18 million people – lived in fuel poverty in England. According to research by fuel poverty charity National Energy Action, insufficiently heated homes kill nearly 10,000 people every year in the UK.

Now, we’re also facing the problem of sharp rises in gas prices. This hits especially hard in countries such as the UK, where gas is the major fuel used to heat households.

These problems reflect the ongoing “energy trilemma”: how to provide households and businesses with stable, low-carbon and affordable energy. By itself, nationalising energy systems wouldn’t solve all these problems.

Increasing public ownership of energy systems is one, more reasonable option. The growing threat of climate change, outside influences such as Brexit, and market pressures driving price increases would still exist. But publicly owned systems do have key advantages over their private counterparts.

Evidence suggests public ownership of gas and electricity grids alone would deliver huge savings to UK consumers compared with the current system. Instead of paying out rewards to private company shareholders, publicly owned and controlled transmission systems would ensure any financial surplus is either reinvested to improve the service or used to reduce energy prices.

Electricity pylons at sunset

The UK’s energy system is largely privatised. AshrafChemban/Pixabay

Private UK grid companies make good money supplying our energy needs. National Grid shareholders earned £1.4bn from the company’s profits in both 2020 and 2021 and a record £3.2bn in 2017, thanks to the National Grid’s decision to sell stakes in its grid to new private owners.

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

A problem shared is a problem doubled

September 11, 2021

A problem shared is a problem doubled

At seven minutes to five on the afternoon of 9 August 2019, a lightening strike caused the loss of 150MW of distributed power (i.e., a large number of small wind, diesel and solar generators) from the National Grid.  This sudden loss triggered the safety system on the giant Hornsea wind farm in the North Sea, taking another 799MW of power from the system.  Fortunately, regulations at the time required that the Grid operator keep 1GW of back up capacity for precisely this kind of emergency.  And so standby turbines at the Little Barford gas power station were started.  However, the system failed, taking 244MW of Little Barford’s power offline too.  This loss of power tripped a further 350MW of distributed generation bringing the total loss of power to 1,481MW.  Within the next minute, 900MW of National Grid’s 1GW of backup capacity was brought online, stabilising the frequency at 49.2Hz.  Seconds later, however, the gas turbine at Little Barford failed; bringing the loss of power to 1,691MW.  At this point, National Grid had consumed all of its 1GW backup capacity and had no resource to cope with further power losses or frequency fluctuations.  Then, half a minute later (16:53:50) the frequency fell to 48.8Hz; triggering the Low Frequency Demand Disconnection scheme and automatically disconnecting 1.1 million business and household consumers.  In response, and for yet to be discovered reasons, (16:53:58) a third turbine at Little Barford went offline bringing the total loss of power to 1,878MW – nearly double Ofgem’s stipulated backup capacity.

Network Rail was among the large industrial users in the Low Frequency Demand Disconnection scheme, so that at the peak of the Friday evening rush hour, a large part of the UK’s rail network was brought to a halt…

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

The Electrical Grid Is Becoming Increasingly Vulnerable To Catastrophic Failure

September 3, 2021

The Electrical Grid Is Becoming Increasingly Vulnerable To Catastrophic Failure

Future electricity systems must be made more resilient

Prolonged blackouts in Louisiana following Hurricane Ida are a reminder the power grid needs to become more resilient as well as reliable if even more services such as electric vehicles are going to depend on it in future.

The electricity system is already directly responsible for providing a wide range of energy services in homes, offices and factories, including space heating, air-conditioning, cooking, refrigeration and power. The grid is also at the heart of a collection of other critical systems, including oil and gas supply, water and sewerage, transport, communications, public safety and healthcare, which cannot function properly without it.

In future, the grid is likely to be responsible for the provision of even more energy services as policymakers push to electrify many remaining services as part of the strategy for achieving net zero emissions.

But in the rush to electrify the entire energy system, policymakers may be inadvertently increasing the vulnerability of the economy and society in the event of a large-area, long-duration power failure.

Rather than several closely connected but separate systems for electricity, gas, oil, and transport, in future there will increasingly be only one very tightly integrated system, increasing its vulnerability to catastrophic failure.

The risk created by linking formerly separate systems into a central system prone to a single point of failure has been understood for decades (“Brittle power: energy strategy for national security“, Lovins, 1982). In particular, the more tightly coupled systems become, the greater the risk an unanticipated problem in one part could cascade through the whole (“Normal accidents: living with high-risk technologies“, Perrow, 1999).

At present, blackouts render some services unavailable (lighting, power), but households and businesses may be able to use others (gas heating, gasoline vehicles). In future, blackouts could disrupt substantially all energy services.

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

Hurricane Ida Exposes Grid Weaknesses As 2,000 Miles of High-Voltage Lines Damaged 

August 31, 2021

Hurricane Ida Exposes Grid Weaknesses As 2,000 Miles of High-Voltage Lines Damaged 

More than a million customers across Louisiana are without power on Tuesday morning. Some reports indicate it could take weeks for the lights to come back on as thousands of miles of transmission lines were damaged after Hurricane Ida rolled through on Sunday.

The Category 4 hurricane raises fresh questions about how well New Orleans and other coastal areas across Lousiana are prepared for natural disasters. As of 0630 ET, PowerOutage.US reports a little more than one million customers are without power across the state’s coastal plain.

Energy provider Entergy Corp has been surveying the damage since Monday and has found 207 transmission lines spanning more than 2,000 miles have been knocked out by the storm, according to WSJ.

Rod West, Entergy’s group president of utility operations, said drones, helicopters, and land-based vehicles are surveying the damage and estimate it could take at least three weeks to restore power.

“The hard part is that the geography is a rather wide swath,” West said. “That three weeks is not going to apply to everybody the same way.” He added some transmission towers need to be replaced entirely due to “significant wind” damage. 

West said the damage to the transmission system is more severe than Hurricane Katrina because Ida made landfall at 150 mph.

Besides transmission lines, some of Entergy’s powerplants have sustained damage. West said the damage at some plants would not hinder energy production. One of their nuclear power plants 25 miles west of New Orleans on the Mississippi River was shuttered ahead of the storm.

West said they’d rebuilt their transmission system over the years to withstand speeds of 150 miles an hour. Still, it appears some of those high-voltage cables that carry electricity from power plants to substations that connect to lower-voltage distribution lines, were no match for Ida.

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

Germany Schnitzels Itself After Ditching Nuclear, Coal Power For Green Pipe Dreams

August 24, 2021

Germany Schnitzels Itself After Ditching Nuclear, Coal Power For Green Pipe Dreams

As Germans continue to ‘enjoy’ the highest power bills in Europe, critics are warning that green energy solutions aren’t being deployed quickly enough amid the closure of its last nuclear reactor, and a sharp (and possibly early) reduction in coal electricity generation – putting the country’s ability to meet peak demand over the next two years in jeopardy.

This, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party slumping to an all-time low in popularity.

“There is no doubt that security of supply must be high on the priority list of the next government and political action is urgent,” said RWE energy’s chief economist, Alexander Nolden. “The new climate law is a real game changer for Germany. It means a much higher ambition and will demand much higher speed for the changes needed.”

Merkel admits her government got it wrong. Power demand will probably increase more than official forecasts by the end of the decade, she said in June. A month earlier she recognized that increasing local opposition and too much bureaucracy have curbed investments in green power.

For a long time, Germany showed the world how renewable energy could be added to make up a substantial share of the power mix. Now, the Norwegian utility Statkraft SF says it takes twice as long to build a wind park in Germany compared with the U.S. Complaints from locals, a lack of space, stricter environmental standards and a longer permitting process are just some of the reasons growth is slowing. -Bloomberg

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California Utility Cutting Power to 51,000 Customers Amid Dangerous Wildfire Conditions

August 18, 2021

In this image from a U.S. Forest Service wildfire monitoring camera, plumes of smoke rise from the Caldor Fire in El Dorado County, Calif., on Aug. 17, 2021. (U.S. Forest Service/ALERTWildfire Network via AP)
In this image from a U.S. Forest Service wildfire monitoring camera, plumes of smoke rise from the Caldor Fire in El Dorado County, Calif., on Aug. 17, 2021. (U.S. Forest Service/ALERTWildfire Network via AP)

California Utility Cutting Power to 51,000 Customers Amid Dangerous Wildfire Conditions

The nation’s largest utility announced on Tuesday evening that it has begun shutting off power to some 51,000 customers as a large wildfire, fueled by winds, raged through a small Northern California forest town.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in a press release said it made the decision to prevent winds from knocking down or fouling power lines and sparking new blazes, citing “dry offshore winds, extreme to exceptional drought conditions and extremely dry vegetation.”

Power will be shut off in small portions of 18 northern California counties, including the Sierra Nevada foothills, the North Coast, the North Valley and the North Bay mountains, the company said.

“With these high winds and extremely dry climate conditions, we are focused on customer and community safety. It’s never an easy decision to turn off the power for safety, but it is the right thing to do to keep everyone safe,” PG&E Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Marlene Santos said in a statement.

The release notes that the company expects “all clears” will occur around Wednesday afternoon.

“We understand how disruptive and inconvenient it is to lose power. The sole focus of a PSPS [Public Safety Power Shutoff] is to keep our customers safe. As soon as this extreme weather passes, our crews will be inspecting our equipment and the vegetation around it, making repairs and restoring power as soon as it’s safe to do so,” Santos added.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has proclaimed a state of emergency for El Dorado County because of the Caldor fire, which tripled in size between Monday and Tuesday afternoon to nearly 50 square miles (129 square kilometers).

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

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