Thank you for an excellent article. Yes, absolutely, the EPA is and has been harming electricity reliability for many years but now it has gone way too far. Somehow, we need to get Congress to over ride the EPA rules. In my view, the simplest approach for Congress is to role back all EPA rules that were implemented since 2012 when Obama first Weaponized the EPA against the best interests of America.
I have come to the conclusion that blackouts are the point of all this, or at least one of the points. The pot will be brought to a boil slowly, so that by 2035 or so then-adults will have accepted as BAU showering weekly, using public transport when it runs on Tuesdays, sticking to the clean water ration, and so on.
I fear that your second supposition is correct, they know exactly what they are doing and are seeking to destroy grid reliability. as with everything else this administration has done, it only makes sense if you view it through a lens of incapacitating the ordinary citizens ability to live their life as they choose and instead be required to accept everything the government says as an imperative. totalitarian compliance is made so much easier if people are suffering without power. they will accept any other idiotic rules to get that power, as per Maslow.
thank you for an extremely informative, and frightening, article. more proof that literally every agency in the government right now is staffed by incompetence and evil
Nuclear has been burdened by needless regulations that drive up costs such as ALARA. James Conca labeled those regulations as a Trillion dollar waste in a 2012 article. The purchase of Russian nuclear fuel was an unintended consequence of "Megatons to Megawatts." I appreciate that the U.S. is now developing additional uranium enrichment capability via such firms as Urenco.
It is just unbelievable how useless these people are and for such critical piece of infrastructure. I know a lot of people ascribe this to bad intentions, but I'm more leaning to utter incompetence.
I work in the computer science field and a lot of these type of modelling translates to things that need to be done in my field. An analysis like this would be expected from a really junior person and would definitely not pass an interview. But these level of incompetence is not uncommon at all.
You would be surprised with how much incompetence I've seen and this in the private market where incentives are aligned and people go out of business for making mistakes.
In the public sector (or this gray area which imo is even worse) where the incentives are not even aligned, there's a lot more.
Most people lack the underlying knowledge of complex system dynamics and statistics to properly model this. And the good ones generally get better paying jobs in the private market. So, you are left with mediocre level workforce without the right incentives; what do you expect the quality of the output to be?
They run a model, it looks fine to them and even validates their preconceptions; most people don't question their work at all.
May 25·edited May 25Liked by Isaac Orr, Mitch Rolling
Superb, Isaac and Mitch. Stay on this type of analysis, which you guys just crush. It will either force change or leave no room for “who were we to know!” when the electorate finally wakes up and puts an end to this.
The SPP charts are fascinating. Looking at the slope the PV ones imply that the *marginal* ELCC value additional solar added between 10 GW and 20 GW is ~19% in the summer and 3% in the winter. This of course keeps dropping as more is added, and will be lower than that at 20GW.
Similarly for wind the *marginal* ELCC in the winter is ~9% between 27 GW and 40GW and 4.4% in the summer.
This is the diminishing returns of increased penetration.
Here's anouther interesting question. Is *averaging* individual season ELCC the appropriate way to do it, or should they be making sure all those seasons are analyzed together?
As in if the average winter ELCC from W + S (analyzed seperately, it's probably a bit less when actually combined!) is 6951MW, but in 2015 they were 4700 MW combined. (So would be short 2251MW from needed if they went on average), would they end out having *more* loss of load in that 1 year, than they should have in 10? Effects are very non-linear near the threshold...
We tend to prefer one capacity value all year but the RTOs have been moving toward seasonal. At least they increase the reserve margin to make things more financially attractive for thermal plants.
May 25·edited May 25Liked by Isaac Orr, Mitch Rolling
What would the American utility consumers do without the good work of the Bad Boys and other EPA watchdogs? What about the watchdog oversight needed for all the new energy rules and regulations proposed by the current administration and all of its 14 regulatory agencies?
Incompetence is surely as bad as government overreach and those two combined factors are nightmarish for US economy.
I am a licensed engineer, so I’m doing my best to ascribe good intentions first with the regulator before ascribing what my gut is telling me.
Regarding the assumed capacity factor for solar- what are their assumptions? That there will be enough grid scale storage such that it would capture all generation during the day? Is it even simpler in that they assume that “because it’s sunny somewhere” that solar imports would offset cloudy days? It’s very puzzling and obviously disturbing to me.
It's interesting, because they build very little storage in SPP, despite it being the RTO most dependant on wind and solar to meet peak demand. They assume wind and solar gen will magically match demand, and use annual generation as a way of determining whether their modeled system will keep the lights on without bothering with what happens hour by hour/second by second
Yeah, then that is terrifying- no basis other than “trust me, bro”. Here in California, we’re seeing headlines remarking how well the battery storage deployment is working. But as far as I can tell, it is only a matter of time before enough solar penetration and decommissioning of the natural gas support in favor of “superior grid storage” makes our grid as fragile as ever.
I’d love to hear about yours and Isaac’s take on the state of CA’s grid as a system - never mind the crazy energy market structure.
100% capacity for new solar. We must then assume Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are working on a plan to stop the earth from rotating. All those outages? Not necessary! SPP can just import power from the neighbors like California does. Problem solved.
It’s wild because EPA gives solar very little capacity accreditation in California regions. It’s like they have no idea what they are doing because there’s no reason to treat these resources so differently based on operational characteristics.
The whole thing has the feel of a not very astute student trying to work a problem, where he's already looked up the correct answer in the back of the book, but has no idea how to get there from the problem statement starting point.
In other words, the bozos (apologies to Bozo) at EPA know what result they want for each region and probably have a different mook doing the work for each region, and they're flailing their way through the data to get the "accepted" result consistent with the narrative.
Of course, since half of them are NRDC infiltrators, this is not surprising.
May 25·edited May 25Liked by Isaac Orr, Mitch Rolling
How can the EPA live up to the regulatory standards expected of them? Well, they can’t. It is likely the EPA will include computational work-ups that would make Enron’s work look good and well-planned.
One can’t help but wonder how can the EPA possibly live up to its overall regulatory requirements, much less the requirements created by the newly expanded “Clean Power Plan 2?”
How can North Dakota plan for its future economic development and electricity reliability with such inexactitude and incompetence build into the federal government’s plan?
To think solar can meet demand with a 100% capacity factor implies the power analysis was written by a high schooler. Imagine modeling this power system with solar as your source and assuming an "infinite bus." You'd be laughed out the building and have your license revoked. But if you work for the EPA, you will get an award and more grant money. We live in clown world.
Another good one 👍 Since they claim this is about emmisions here are some numbers to run. Conservatively 20% of those customers will have a backup source of power, diesel, propane, or natural gas fueled, plus a fair number of gasoline portables. Based on that 20%, how many tons of CO2 will be generated?
They won’t run those generators much if the SPP utilities acquire the resources needed to assure a reliable system without the retired coal-fired plants.
Robert not really sure what you are driving at. Where is this mystery capacity coming from? It's not gas, EPA effectively killed new gas plants. If you're piping in with some delusion that SPP going to do it with solar, wind and batteries, share some of that stuff your smoking, must be some good stuff.
Robert you need to read the new rule, new gas plants are given a limited run time, after which they must use the yet to be invented CO2 sequestration equipment. The hour run limit and the estimate cost of CO2 control equipment make it too costly to build.
Thank you for an excellent article. Yes, absolutely, the EPA is and has been harming electricity reliability for many years but now it has gone way too far. Somehow, we need to get Congress to over ride the EPA rules. In my view, the simplest approach for Congress is to role back all EPA rules that were implemented since 2012 when Obama first Weaponized the EPA against the best interests of America.
I have come to the conclusion that blackouts are the point of all this, or at least one of the points. The pot will be brought to a boil slowly, so that by 2035 or so then-adults will have accepted as BAU showering weekly, using public transport when it runs on Tuesdays, sticking to the clean water ration, and so on.
I fear that your second supposition is correct, they know exactly what they are doing and are seeking to destroy grid reliability. as with everything else this administration has done, it only makes sense if you view it through a lens of incapacitating the ordinary citizens ability to live their life as they choose and instead be required to accept everything the government says as an imperative. totalitarian compliance is made so much easier if people are suffering without power. they will accept any other idiotic rules to get that power, as per Maslow.
thank you for an extremely informative, and frightening, article. more proof that literally every agency in the government right now is staffed by incompetence and evil
This is agenda-driven policy. The EPA projections show a nonsensical decline in the use of safe, emission-free 24-7 reliable nuclear power.
It's cost that inhibits nuclear! And, why did the US send $1B to Russia for fuel?
Nuclear has been burdened by needless regulations that drive up costs such as ALARA. James Conca labeled those regulations as a Trillion dollar waste in a 2012 article. The purchase of Russian nuclear fuel was an unintended consequence of "Megatons to Megawatts." I appreciate that the U.S. is now developing additional uranium enrichment capability via such firms as Urenco.
Nuclear has been hand tied by the physics community that refused to use chemical operation engineering
Great article.
It is just unbelievable how useless these people are and for such critical piece of infrastructure. I know a lot of people ascribe this to bad intentions, but I'm more leaning to utter incompetence.
I work in the computer science field and a lot of these type of modelling translates to things that need to be done in my field. An analysis like this would be expected from a really junior person and would definitely not pass an interview. But these level of incompetence is not uncommon at all.
Nobody is this incompetent. This is evil. They know. So much money in play here that no one can be trusted to act in the interest of the consumer.
> Nobody is this incompetent.
You would be surprised with how much incompetence I've seen and this in the private market where incentives are aligned and people go out of business for making mistakes.
In the public sector (or this gray area which imo is even worse) where the incentives are not even aligned, there's a lot more.
Most people lack the underlying knowledge of complex system dynamics and statistics to properly model this. And the good ones generally get better paying jobs in the private market. So, you are left with mediocre level workforce without the right incentives; what do you expect the quality of the output to be?
They run a model, it looks fine to them and even validates their preconceptions; most people don't question their work at all.
The iutility industry has not moved off it's azz for 50 years!
Superb, Isaac and Mitch. Stay on this type of analysis, which you guys just crush. It will either force change or leave no room for “who were we to know!” when the electorate finally wakes up and puts an end to this.
It’s funny because our reliability posts get less attention than our cost articles but they are more important long term haha
They are.
The SPP charts are fascinating. Looking at the slope the PV ones imply that the *marginal* ELCC value additional solar added between 10 GW and 20 GW is ~19% in the summer and 3% in the winter. This of course keeps dropping as more is added, and will be lower than that at 20GW.
Similarly for wind the *marginal* ELCC in the winter is ~9% between 27 GW and 40GW and 4.4% in the summer.
This is the diminishing returns of increased penetration.
With wind and solar, more is less.
Here's anouther interesting question. Is *averaging* individual season ELCC the appropriate way to do it, or should they be making sure all those seasons are analyzed together?
As in if the average winter ELCC from W + S (analyzed seperately, it's probably a bit less when actually combined!) is 6951MW, but in 2015 they were 4700 MW combined. (So would be short 2251MW from needed if they went on average), would they end out having *more* loss of load in that 1 year, than they should have in 10? Effects are very non-linear near the threshold...
We tend to prefer one capacity value all year but the RTOs have been moving toward seasonal. At least they increase the reserve margin to make things more financially attractive for thermal plants.
What would the American utility consumers do without the good work of the Bad Boys and other EPA watchdogs? What about the watchdog oversight needed for all the new energy rules and regulations proposed by the current administration and all of its 14 regulatory agencies?
Incompetence is surely as bad as government overreach and those two combined factors are nightmarish for US economy.
P.S. Thanks also the “electric grandma.”
Thank you, Stephen!
We’re doing what we can 😃
Why shouldn't utilities be state/community/fed owned?
I am a licensed engineer, so I’m doing my best to ascribe good intentions first with the regulator before ascribing what my gut is telling me.
Regarding the assumed capacity factor for solar- what are their assumptions? That there will be enough grid scale storage such that it would capture all generation during the day? Is it even simpler in that they assume that “because it’s sunny somewhere” that solar imports would offset cloudy days? It’s very puzzling and obviously disturbing to me.
It's interesting, because they build very little storage in SPP, despite it being the RTO most dependant on wind and solar to meet peak demand. They assume wind and solar gen will magically match demand, and use annual generation as a way of determining whether their modeled system will keep the lights on without bothering with what happens hour by hour/second by second
Yeah, then that is terrifying- no basis other than “trust me, bro”. Here in California, we’re seeing headlines remarking how well the battery storage deployment is working. But as far as I can tell, it is only a matter of time before enough solar penetration and decommissioning of the natural gas support in favor of “superior grid storage” makes our grid as fragile as ever.
I’d love to hear about yours and Isaac’s take on the state of CA’s grid as a system - never mind the crazy energy market structure.
100% capacity for new solar. We must then assume Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are working on a plan to stop the earth from rotating. All those outages? Not necessary! SPP can just import power from the neighbors like California does. Problem solved.
It’s wild because EPA gives solar very little capacity accreditation in California regions. It’s like they have no idea what they are doing because there’s no reason to treat these resources so differently based on operational characteristics.
The whole thing has the feel of a not very astute student trying to work a problem, where he's already looked up the correct answer in the back of the book, but has no idea how to get there from the problem statement starting point.
In other words, the bozos (apologies to Bozo) at EPA know what result they want for each region and probably have a different mook doing the work for each region, and they're flailing their way through the data to get the "accepted" result consistent with the narrative.
Of course, since half of them are NRDC infiltrators, this is not surprising.
This is exactly right.
Which should say a lot, Redding California is officially the second sunniest city in the USA
Is RPA to blame for this? Or their consultant, ICF?
Who can out-do the Electric Grandma and Bad Boys? Certainly, not bureaucrats
How can the EPA live up to the regulatory standards expected of them? Well, they can’t. It is likely the EPA will include computational work-ups that would make Enron’s work look good and well-planned.
One can’t help but wonder how can the EPA possibly live up to its overall regulatory requirements, much less the requirements created by the newly expanded “Clean Power Plan 2?”
How can North Dakota plan for its future economic development and electricity reliability with such inexactitude and incompetence build into the federal government’s plan?
How on earth did they get away with a 82-100% credit for solar?
They probably didn’t think anyone would call them out on it
Same way for nuclear
To think solar can meet demand with a 100% capacity factor implies the power analysis was written by a high schooler. Imagine modeling this power system with solar as your source and assuming an "infinite bus." You'd be laughed out the building and have your license revoked. But if you work for the EPA, you will get an award and more grant money. We live in clown world.
Another good one 👍 Since they claim this is about emmisions here are some numbers to run. Conservatively 20% of those customers will have a backup source of power, diesel, propane, or natural gas fueled, plus a fair number of gasoline portables. Based on that 20%, how many tons of CO2 will be generated?
They won’t run those generators much if the SPP utilities acquire the resources needed to assure a reliable system without the retired coal-fired plants.
Robert not really sure what you are driving at. Where is this mystery capacity coming from? It's not gas, EPA effectively killed new gas plants. If you're piping in with some delusion that SPP going to do it with solar, wind and batteries, share some of that stuff your smoking, must be some good stuff.
They did not kill new gas plants! Read the section on combined cycle NG - high efficiency means lower CO2.
“Effectively killed new gas plants?” How so? Are you suggesting it is physically infeasible or just too expensive?
Also, by the end of the decade we are likely to see the modular nuclear reactor available as a source of emissions-free generation.
Robert you need to read the new rule, new gas plants are given a limited run time, after which they must use the yet to be invented CO2 sequestration equipment. The hour run limit and the estimate cost of CO2 control equipment make it too costly to build.
Great work, TY