It seemed to me that the only possible topic for this letter is the rolling blackouts that have been happening in California.
Unfortunately for Californians, the
California situation is very difficult to disentangle: California is
having two kinds of blackouts (public safety blackouts and rolling
blackouts), a heat wave, huge fires, and of course, the pandemic.
The entire situation in California is
terrible. Smoke filled-skies, darkness at midday, firefighters at risk,
the people I know who have been in danger of having to evacuate their
homes. Other people who have lost their homes. The pandemic. The
blackouts. My heart aches for everyone in California, and especially my
friends!
In this letter, without
underestimating everything that is going on in California, I will only
write about the rolling blackouts.
California is Not Unique
The problems that have caused the rolling
blackouts are not unique to California. One issue is that California is
moving aggressively toward more and more use of renewables, particularly
solar. However, when the sun goes down, solar can be a problem. As I
write in my forthcoming book, Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electricity Grid:
“People look at solar as a distributed
system: my rooftop, your rooftop, and a solar array down by the
Interstate. No huge power plants here! However, in fact, solar often
acts like a single megaplant, which switches off in the early evening.”
For grid stability, the size of the
power plant has to be sized to the grid. You don't build a 2000 MW power
station on a small island. Similarly, thousands of MW of solar sounds
wonderful, until sunset, when other plants have to ramp up very quickly.
Or, as the California ISO president said, quoted
in E&E News, "The situation we are in could have been avoided….For
many years we have pointed out to the procurement authorizing
authorities that there was inadequate power available" during the
evening hours after sunset when solar energy stops working.
RTOs and Drama
California is an RTO area and CAISO is the
grid operator. Electricity shortfalls and drama usually happen in the
RTO areas. Right now, the reliability problems are in California in
summer. In Shorting the Grid, I used the example of reliability problems in the New England states in winter.
A fatal trifecta can arise in RTO
areas. When an area depends on 1) intermittent renewables, 2)
just-in-time natural gas (no storage), and 3) the kindness of neighbors
(at times when the neighbors are also stressed), that area can expect
problems, including rolling blackouts. I explore this more in my newest
blog post, Hope, Panic and the Grid.
The trifecta is a formula for rolling
blackouts, so it should be no surprise when they happen. Why do such
things happen in RTO areas? Well, I wrote a full book about this. It’s
complicated!
One of my book endorsements includes a short form description of the problems of RTO areas.
"The electric power grid is the most
important machine in the modern world. It is poised to become even more
important as electricity is tapped to take over from fossil fuels in the
fight against climate change. The grid will soon be all that it is
today plus our gas station and home heating, not to mention a huge
source of revenue for city governments. So it is remarkable that, at
exactly this critical moment, grid management and planning have
descended into a morass of secret cross purposes with nobody in charge
and profiteers running rampant. How can we fix it? To fix the grid we
have to know it, and the very best way to know it is to read Meredith
Angwin’s timely and alarming new book Shorting the Grid. "
Golden Gate photo from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons License, photo by different2un. Click on photo for the link.
I chose this photo because it is the California I love: that beautiful sea fog and clean air.
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