Amid a heat wave in the West, California’s largest solar state, it is struggling with power problems and keeping its electricity grid stable as demand increases. And in the coming sustainable future, those power outages could just be a sign of things to come.
Energy consumers in California were warned of rolling outfalls because there is not enough energy to meet the high demand during the heat wave, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) said over the weekend.
The warning to Californians about the strikes and to punish grid should serve as a warning to policymakers and systems companies in the United States and elsewhere: an impetus to encourage energy generation from sustainable energy should be linked to – and even preceded by – careful planning on how to ensure the reliability and stability of the power grid.
The struggles of California with power reliability
In the case of California, where solar energy is supplied more than 20 percent of electricity according to the Association Solar Energy Industries (SEIA), the rolling outages this week were the worst such outages since the 2000-2001 energy crisis in the state.
Some blame the current power crisis on California’s aggressive start-up with renewable energy in California and retirement of plants using natural gas. Others say there is a way for the state to reconcile sustainably with reconciliation, although this would not come in the full term and certainly not soon enough to help with the current problems with power supply.
It seems that California has placed the sustainable choice for the proverbial horse.
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The debt game and the debate over how to properly deal with reliability in a highly sustainable power grid highlight the fact that meeting clean energy goals and reducing emissions should only be done after careful planning on how to ensure reliable energy supply to customers and how ‘. t you need to prepare the grid for an increased share of solar and wind energy.
Earlier this week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent a letter to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and the California Energy Commission (CEC), demanded an investigation into the disruptions to services that occurred over the weekend and the failure of energy agencies to to predict and reduce them. “
At the same time, Governor Newsom signed an emergency proclamation designed to free up energy capacity and limit the need for temporary disruptions to energy services.
“These blackouts, which occurred without prior warning or sufficient time for preparation, are unacceptable and unavoidable by the nation’s largest and most innovative state,” Governor Newsom wrote in the letter.
Are there renewable painters to blame for outages?
In a common answer to the letter, CAISO, CPUC, and CEC said that the plans for clean energy in California were not to blame for the erratic exit, although they need to do more to integrate sustainability into the net.
“Collectively, our organizations want to be clear about one factor that is not causing the current to flow: California’s commitment to clean energy. Sustainable energy does not cause the rotating failures, ”they said.
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“Our organizations understand the impact of wind and sun on the grid. We have already taken many steps to integrate these resources, but we clearly need to do more. Clean energy and reliable energy are not conflicting goals. ”
However, the current situation would suggest that this is currently the case.
CAISO President Stephen Berberich said at a meeting on Monday, as conducted by Greentech Media, “The situation we are in could have been avoided.”
The network operator has been warning regulators for years about the insufficient availability of power supply during the so-called net peak in the evenings when generation of solar energy is no longer available.
CAISO has warned that “there is not enough power available during the net peak, the hours like the sun [generation] has left the system, ”said Berberich.
“California is in many ways the canary in coal,” said Todd Snitchler, CEO of national trading group Electric Power Supply Association, told The Wall Street Journal.
“Many of the natural gas units that some in California would like to disappear have been just what is needed to make the system work,” Snitchler told the Journal.
What is the solution?
For California, the solution could include scaling up storage capacity, failing to shut down the Diablo Canyon – the state’s most recent nuclear power plant – as planned in 2024, and counting nuclear power as part of California’s 20 percent sustainable electricity target. by 2030, analysts said Los Angeles Times‘Sammy Roth.
According to CAISO’s Berberich, batteries alone will not be enough to solve problems with power outages in California, while the share of sustainable power is set to increase.
“Batteries do not only repair this. They will help, and they are an important part of a system with innovative-heavy. However, they do not generate power, and during extended periods of cloud cover over the solar field, there will be no energy to charge them, “Berberich told the ISO board this week, as conducted by the Financial Times.
Commentary on the outages of California, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a non-profit advocating for a transition to clean energy, sei that more batteries would contribute to meeting the demand of the evening.
The planned increase in battery capacity to 923 MW at the end of the year “could have played a major role in preventing these outages and are ready to play a growing role in the diverse portfolio of resources needed to maintain reliability, “said RMI, dismissing the idea that sustainability was to blame:
“Such speculations are premature, incomplete, and almost certainly incorrect.”
Problems with power supply in California during peak demand serve as a warning to jealous proponents of a rapid shift toward sustainable and complete decarbonization of the power grid. Such efforts require careful planning to ensure reliability and stability, preferably before utilities, network operators, and administrators realize that even in a heat wave the sun cannot help with demand from the evening peak.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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