High Summer Temperatures Send CAISO and ERCOT Scrambling to Maintain Grid Reliability

[NNadir]

California and Texas—two regions where summer reliability concerns were forecast earlier this year—are suffering extreme temperatures and are scrambling to relieve stress on the grid.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO)—the grid operator that serves about 80% of California—on July 24 and 25 issued statewide Flex Alerts, calling for voluntary electricity conservation during peak afternoon and evening hours.

The Flex Alerts stem from high temperatures across the western U.S., reduced electricity imports, tight natural gas supplies in the Southern California area, and a high wildfire risk. “Consumers can help avoid power interruptions by turning off all unnecessary lights, using major appliances before 5 p.m. and after 9 p.m., and setting air conditioners to 78 degrees or higher,” the grid operator urged. “The ISO has called on all available resources to serve demand, however, conservation is needed to reduce the risk of further emergency measures, including rotating power outages.”

At the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the entity that manages the flow of power for 90% of Texas’s electric load, a new record for all-time system-wide peak demand was set during two hours in the afternoon on July 19. The demand record topped out at 73,259 MW. It was the first time peak demand exceeded 73,000 MW in the region, ERCOT noted...

...Concerns are rooted in sizable retirements of baseload generation, especially in ERCOT. ERCOT retired 4.5 GW of coal capacity in January and February 2018 alone. In late 2017, it also retired 806 MW of gas-fired capacity and suffered a delay in construction of new resources totaling about 2.1 GW.

CAISO, meanwhile, warned in its 2018 Summer Loads and Resources Assessment that it could experience tighter supply conditions if high-load and below-average hydroelectricity production conditions occur. For now, CAISO is banking on demand response and consumer conservation to alleviate possible tight supply conditions...

High Summer Temperatures Send CAISO and ERCOT Scrambling

People should sleep at night in their swell Tesla cars with the air conditioner turned on, I guess.

Batteries, that's the answer. Don't worry, be happy. Up in Aliso Viejo, Calif. eVolta has announced plans to built a 75MW/350MWh energy storage plant.

It's surprising that the hours during which demand is highest is between 5 pm and 9 pm in ERCOT, I guess all that "green" solar energy isn't available then but that 75MW should help in California's case..

And of course, California and Texas are the states with the largest installed wind capacity in the nation, and I can't, therefore, understand why under these nirvana conditions they're still talking so much about gas.

Well, I understand, but few people believe me.

It also seems that "green" hydroelectricity is a problem in California right now, not comparable to the larger problem of climate change driven fires, but again don't worry, be happy.

We'll all go "green" someday.

[progree]

1. Interesting U.S. wind and solar map by state

From:

Another Nuclear Power Plant to Retire Early -- This Time in Iowa, Bloomberg, 7/27/18
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/another-nuclear-power-plant-retire-183607230.html

NextEra Energy Inc. plans to halt commercial operations at the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in late 2020

(in case you were wondering about the "Abundant wind and open space help give Iowa the cleanest energy mix."
caption in the map).

[NNadir]

2. The "retirement" of nuclear plants is a crime against all future generations.

I'm not particularly interested in this bullshit "percent talk" about so called "renewable energy" which is called, with tremendous ignorance, "green energy."

It's not "green," nor is it really "renewable."

It's 2018. We are half a century into cheering for so called "renewable energy." We nearly hit 412 ppm of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere in 2018.

The fact is that in Iowa, 60% of the energy doesn't come from so called renewable energy.

The fact is that wind and solar are completely and totally dependent on access to dangerous fossil fuels, the waste of which is dumped directly into the planetary atmosphere.

The cloture of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant, Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek, etc, etc, etc will replace energy that was produced with less than 25 grams of CO2/kwh with energy that is produced with 500 grams of CO2/kwh, dangerous natural gas.

Moreover, it will raise the cost of energy by requiring redundant systems, screwing poor people, not that we give any more of a crap about poor people than we do about future generations.

The problem is that people can't think. The Duane Arnold Nuclear plant came on line in 1975. When it closes - prematurely because we don't include external costs in the cost of energy and thus are perfectly OK with killing people - it will have operated 45 years. It was built using technology developed in the 1950's. If it were allowed to operate throughout it's full licence - which would only happen if the dangerous natural gas industry were required to pay to store its wastes for eternity to be publicly accepted - it would have been saving lives until 2032.

The wind crap in Iowa will be land fill in 25 years, if it's lucky. Future generations will need to trash that crap, this in an atmosphere greatly degraded, and then find energy to replace that junked crap as well.

Clearly we hate them, particularly if we're so myopic and so out of our minds and so ignorant as to look at the map you've provided and think it's some kind of victory.

The only people profiting at all from that disgusting map is the gas industry.

It's horrible, but only if you know what you're talking about. What I've come to understand is that the ability to lie to oneself is hardly limited to Trumpsters. Self declared "environmentalists" - despite not knowing shit from shinola about what environmental technology actually involves - are pretty damned good at lying to themselves too.

I see it all the time, and since I value young people, and since I value my planet, seeing such ignorance breaks my heart.