I was recently interviewed by Dr. Chris Keefer on Decouple Podcast. In my forthcoming book, Shorting the Grid,
I present the situation and the choices as they currently exist on the
grid. I avoid doing too much speculation. Dr. Keefer had read the book
carefully before interviewing me.
In the book, I describe the "two grids."
One is the Power Grid: it moves power (electricity). The other is the
Policy Grid, which supplies money. My interview with Keefer was mostly
about the Power Grid. We had fun with my automotive comparisons. Who
knew I had so many automotive comparisons in Shorting the Grid?
I didn't realize this until the podcast. In one example, I described
big trucks as baseload plants (steady performers, not much acceleration)
versus quick flexible sports cars. “We don’t need baseload” is the
equivalent of “goods can be carried cross country in sports cars.”
Keefer had read an early copy of my book, and asked excellent questions
on the podcast.
The Could Grid
When I wrote about the podcast on my blog, I began to think about the decisions that I made as I wrote the Shorting the Grid.
My main decision was to be sure to describe the reality on the Power
and Policy grids. As I have often said, “Look out for the word could.” As soon as someone begins to talk about what we “could” do, I get suspicious. My blog post is "Could" versus Reality. A podcast with Chris Keefer.
In Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid,
I described issues on the grid and physical constraints on today's
grid. I avoided technologies that "could" be used. For example, many
articles about the grid assume that the spiky performance of renewables
can be backed up by grid-level storage.They can't be, at least right
now.
The articles rarely mention that batteries
simply are not up to the job of storing gigawatt hours of power. They
rarely mention that over 90% of the storage on the grid
right now is from pumped storage hydro plants. Since these plants
generally require building a reservoir on a hill, they are usually
placed in mountainous or hilly areas. There are many scenic and
ecological concerns with building more pumped storage to back up more
renewable energy.
Then there are the articles about backing
up the grid with hydrogen power plants, and the hydrogen comes from
hydrolysis of water, using renewable energy as the source of electricity
for the hydrolysis. Right now, there's a plan to add renewable-formed
hydrogen to the stream of natural gas going to a proposed power plant in
Texas. Sonal Patel has an excellent article in Power Magazine
about the Texas project and other Entergy-Mitsubishi projects. Although
Mitsubishi is planning to use "green" hydrogen at several sites, it has
to be noted that making green hydrogen is energy intensive, and so far,
these are all...plans. We are still in a state of "could."
When I began mentally classifying articles on the grid into Power, Policy and Could
articles, I was discouraged to see how little information is available
about the grid we have, and how much is written about the Could grid. I hope my book will help us understand the real grids, Power and Policy, that we have right now.
(I am now reviewing the printers versions of the book. I hope to have a release date soon.)
Praise for Shorting the Grid
The National Academy of Engineering
describes the U.S. power grid as the “supreme engineering achievement of
the 20th century.” Its user interface has customer-facing simplicity
that hides a system of massive complexity. The grid’s engineering
excellence has allowed almost all Americans to simply assume its future
existence.
But Meredith Angwin is an unusually
perceptive maven who digs deeply when initial answers don’t make sense.
She’s learned that the marvelous machine that is the foundation of
modern living is being threatened by political and financially motivated
maneuvers.
Shorting the Grid
reveals reasons why we must pay more attention to grid governance and
the potential of poor decisions to override technical successes.
— Rod Adams: Blogger at Atomic Insights, Managing Member at Nucleation Capital LP
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