Having MISO attach a proper economic value to reliable electricity would be a good start in reforming this situation. MISO's power system planning should be based on the laws of physics and engineering, not on wishful thinking regarding solar, wind, and batteries.
If one has ever testified on matters “electric power” and or “energy matters” before a legislative committee such as those in New England and New York, it becomes clear that the representatives were left a few bricks shy of a load generally and the subject matter so arcane to them that their eyes glaze over when the discussions becomes detailed. Well details matter. During the past weeks when the Premier of Ontario threatened to cease shipment of electrons to Minnesota, Michigan and NY, this writer silently cheered him on. First he had no idea of what to with the power he would have potentially and not generate ergo losing revenue, and importantly as curtailment and perhaps random brown and blackouts occurred in those states while the light might be out in the legislatures, the voters would now know as they sat in the cold and dark that something was amiss. This writer has said for a while nothing will change until the public is left with the literal carnage from blackouts of an extended nature. These states in particular are the drug addicted child that parents keep hoping will wake one day to become clean and sober. The legislatures are metaphorically alcoholics who keep taking out home equity lines and heading down to their favorite watering hole to buy the crowd a couple of free rounds of drinks. They are supported by their family in the sense that PJM can be called upon, or Canadian assets spun up to support the renewable habit. Hopefully they come to their senses, but that seems unlikely. For New England, the shortage of natural gas infrastructure is critical, yet the only thing one hears at the state legislatures level is that the Gulf of Maine is the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind. You can’t make this drivel up. Having run off two major pipeline builders whiles watching in a heroin like injected gaze as the natural gas fired projects age and slowly shutter, the time line for rebuilding the infrastructure gets longer and longer. It is telling that perhaps the only hope is that the nuclear power Small Modular Reactors coming into the fore can be sited, approved, permitted and constructed fast enough to make up the difference. The tsunami warning horns are blaring. It’s coming and it wont be pretty. Surf’s up.
Here's a warning from 2019 from Newport, Rhode Island which was severely chilled when a compressor on an Enbridge natural gas line feeding the city failed..... "Newport, R.I., suffers through days-long natural gas outage," By Michael Levenson and Matt Rocheleau, Boston Globe, January 25, 2019,
Dr. Nelson, just did a little follow research and found a recent (January 2025) article in the Newport Buzz which appears to be a local publication. A local attorney secured a $2M dollar settlement with National Grid regarding the outage. It underscores the failure of the regulated utilities to manage their infrastructure. The failure of the investor owned utilities has been legion for decades or least since deregulation in 1998 in the 6 New England States. The Aquidneck Island failure followed closely on the heels of the Columbia Gas of Massachusetts natural gas explosions in September of 2018. In summary, 40 homes were basically blown up, 80 more set on fire across a couple towns. One 18 old male was killed. While the Rhode Island failure was due to under pressure, the Lawrence debacle was due to overpressure. Like electricity in the lines overhead which must operate at 60Hz in unity, the natural gas lines need to have a constant and consistent pressures maintained. If you work in a guilded office, and report to share holders, and your bonus depends on profits, your willingness to really dig in and do your rather mundane job is pretty limited. Of course these two examples here in New England pale into relative insignificance compared to PG&E’s San Bruno, California rupture of a natural gas pipeline. That left 8 dead and many homes destroyed and or damaged severely. The senior management had gotten an additional $30M from the regulator for pipeline maintenance, the senior management in its infinite wisdom choose to lavish themselves with bonus’ with the $30M instead of applying it to the pipelines. The rest is tragic history and ultimately led to PG&E filing for bankruptcy. Pay me now or pay me later. Sadly no one went to jail. Sempera Energy and Kinder Morgan had pipeline expansions planned for New England. The current governor of Massachusetts, in her capacity as the attorney general of the Commonwealth sued to stop them and succeeded. They won’t be back anytime soon. Why bother? It will come to a head, and when faced with the cold and dark of a January polar vortex of a weeks duration, pitch forks and lanterns may will become the currency of the day.
Those rules on new gas plants are still in effect until there is a long process to formally rescind them. Then they will be litigated in the courts, combine that with gas turbine shortages and there is only so much gas that can come online
My thoughts are that dteam turbines are just as hard to get as gas turbines. Especially since there is at least one steam turbine in every combined cycle plant.
My concern is that state legislators are even more ignorant of science and reality than federal legislators, and so smaller, vocal groups pushing their net-zero ideas have captured them. quite frankly, until the blackouts start happening, I fear there will be no understanding of the problem. and at that point, the blame game will start. I wonder if those impacted by the blackouts, say companies whose businesses were negatively impacted, can sue the legislators who enacted these idiotic laws
The same problem has occurred with nuclear power in 1. Germany and 2. the northeast United States. In both locations, a large icy polar blast now risks killing or injuring large numbers of people during a grid collapse. Winter storm Uri in mid-February, 2021 in Texas was a warning that has not been heeded. The death toll was about 1,000 according to some estimates.
Not simply unheeded. Buried by propaganda. Within moments of the deaths, articles were published blaming natural gas and claiming that wind was blameless, even though it did not deliver even 10% of capacity during the crisis.
True, articles can be written quickly, but these came out so fast one must wonder if they weren't already written by NGOs ready to supply them to the usual suspects.
I've criticized similar actions by NGOs opposed to nuclear power after the Napa Earthquake in California. One filed a massive legal complaint against Diablo Canyon the next day. Pure propaganda.
I think you’re right, it’s going to take pain to restore common sense. And that rebuild will be tenuous because as they shut down reliable coal they are also tearing the plants down. Absolutely stupid.
As a Louisiana resident, I think it’s worth noting the massive difference in MISO north versus MISO south as far as grid reliability and generating resources. Louisiana’s grid is very natural gas-heavy with a few large dual-fuel (coal and gas) plants in the area as well. Luckily for us being in hurricane alley, wind is non existent and the solar footprint is incredibly small in comparison to other states that have gone whole-hog on them.
The vast majority of generation and energy in general is between Baton Rouge and New Orleans along the Mississippi River. “Cancer alley” as it has been referred is a dense area of industry with cheap energy, plentiful pipeline access, and a large water source. These facilities know their company livelihoods depend on robust, reliable generation and many of them have their own power plants inside their facilities. There are also some large interconnects between our neighboring states that help keep our grid going.
Anyway, just wanted to make that distinction. I think the majority of the MISO issues you are describing are in the northern region. Louisiana’s grid isn’t perfect but it’s sitting pretty compared to many others.
As always an excellent piece. It is interesting that China is expanding both coal and renewable. Restarting coal now is critical if the USA is to avoid the energy morass that is consuming Germany.
For German energy policy failures, see also : "Protesting California's Ongoing Nuclear to Coal Transition - Part 2 - German deindustrialization follows slashing safe, reliable, cost-effective and zero-pollution nuclear power generation," Gene Nelson, Ph.D., November 12, 2024, GreenNUKE. https://greennuke.substack.com/p/protesting-californias-ongoing-nuclear-4fa
The crash has been coming for years, ever since subsidised and mandated wind and solar started to drive conventional power, especially coal, out of business. The tendency was particularly easy to see in Australia because we have no nuclear, little hydro and next to no gas, so the model looks like the supply and demand curve in economics.
In this piece we describe the tipping point which occurs when the supply of coal falls below the horizontal line which is the base load.
At that point the grid enters a red zone and it is vulnerable on windless nights in extreme weather conditions, especially if there is any unscheduled outage of conventional power. RE enthusiasts think that the increasing penetration of wind and solar into the grid will replace conventional power but they overlook the simple fact that on windless nights there is no wind or solar regardless of the installed capacity and the average penetration.
That has apparently eluded the comprehension of the governments in Britain and Germany so they think they can dig themselves out of the hole by installing more windmills.
The discovery of wind droughts by Australian investigators could have been the most important discovery in the 20th century if it had happened before the suicidal quest for net zero on the back of wind and solar power.
Actually the discovery of wind droughts in Australia was not enough because the authorities in Australia took no notice.
Consequently, as The Energy Realists of Australia have been saying for some time, trillions of dollars have been spent to get more expensive and less reliable power with massive damage to the environment.
Before the ascent of President Trump, the United States was possibly only one Democrat administration away from really serious power crises and there is still a job of work to be done to build up the coal supply in the face of the regulations that were put in place to get coal and gas out of the system.
For some reason the grid manages have not been able to convey the urgency of the situation to the people so that pressure can be put on lawmakers to change the rules. We suggest that a massive lift in “wind literacy” is required so people can understand the menace of the ”wind drought trap.”
The belated discovery of wind droughts is an indictment of the official meteorologists who never issued wind drought warnings. This is quite likely part of the game plan that includes falsifying temperature records and ascribing all extreme weather events to climate change. The World Meteorological Organisation was a founding member of the climate alarm club in the United Nations and they must have known about wind droughts because the first assessment report of the IPCC in 1990 recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world to assess the prospects for large-scale wind power generation.
Similarly the original movers to promote wind and solar power are indicted for failure of due diligence to check the reliability of the wind supply.
I recall an Energy and Environment paper from 2012 by Miskelly documenting wind droughts caused by large high pressure areas that spanned most of Australia. He showed that because of this spatial correlation over large distances that wind could not be a base load energy source, even with a grid spanning most of the Australian continent. See: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1260/0958-305X.23.8.1233
The left and eco-psychotics are turning us into a third-world country — hoping upon hope, to create chaos and implant a new utopia — lead by the psychos. The mid-west is fortunate enough to have more than enough Democrats to do this. Go Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois! Take us down the hole.
Nice article. Looks like Trump really needs to stop the coal plant closing. It is amazing that politicians and their voters are in such a hurry to get rid of the functioning system and replace it with something that just won't work.
The concept of accredited capacity, I just don't get. The basic assumption is that it will be wrong a significant amount of time. We are 'reasonably" expecting solar to provide X% today. What if it snows? You cannot manage a grid on reasonable expectations. It is hard facts every minute of every day. You can't miss.
I appreciate the analytical talent here. I'm no analyst I just understand how this stuff works. It is obvious, even to a dumb old engineer, that we don't have much time to change course, and unless we do it is a disaster we can't really contemplate.
Having MISO attach a proper economic value to reliable electricity would be a good start in reforming this situation. MISO's power system planning should be based on the laws of physics and engineering, not on wishful thinking regarding solar, wind, and batteries.
If one has ever testified on matters “electric power” and or “energy matters” before a legislative committee such as those in New England and New York, it becomes clear that the representatives were left a few bricks shy of a load generally and the subject matter so arcane to them that their eyes glaze over when the discussions becomes detailed. Well details matter. During the past weeks when the Premier of Ontario threatened to cease shipment of electrons to Minnesota, Michigan and NY, this writer silently cheered him on. First he had no idea of what to with the power he would have potentially and not generate ergo losing revenue, and importantly as curtailment and perhaps random brown and blackouts occurred in those states while the light might be out in the legislatures, the voters would now know as they sat in the cold and dark that something was amiss. This writer has said for a while nothing will change until the public is left with the literal carnage from blackouts of an extended nature. These states in particular are the drug addicted child that parents keep hoping will wake one day to become clean and sober. The legislatures are metaphorically alcoholics who keep taking out home equity lines and heading down to their favorite watering hole to buy the crowd a couple of free rounds of drinks. They are supported by their family in the sense that PJM can be called upon, or Canadian assets spun up to support the renewable habit. Hopefully they come to their senses, but that seems unlikely. For New England, the shortage of natural gas infrastructure is critical, yet the only thing one hears at the state legislatures level is that the Gulf of Maine is the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind. You can’t make this drivel up. Having run off two major pipeline builders whiles watching in a heroin like injected gaze as the natural gas fired projects age and slowly shutter, the time line for rebuilding the infrastructure gets longer and longer. It is telling that perhaps the only hope is that the nuclear power Small Modular Reactors coming into the fore can be sited, approved, permitted and constructed fast enough to make up the difference. The tsunami warning horns are blaring. It’s coming and it wont be pretty. Surf’s up.
Here's a warning from 2019 from Newport, Rhode Island which was severely chilled when a compressor on an Enbridge natural gas line feeding the city failed..... "Newport, R.I., suffers through days-long natural gas outage," By Michael Levenson and Matt Rocheleau, Boston Globe, January 25, 2019,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/01/25/rhode-island-community-suffers-through-days-long-natural-gas-outage/LsRGhqefBH4vNlwQOUrWmJ/story.html
Dr. Nelson, just did a little follow research and found a recent (January 2025) article in the Newport Buzz which appears to be a local publication. A local attorney secured a $2M dollar settlement with National Grid regarding the outage. It underscores the failure of the regulated utilities to manage their infrastructure. The failure of the investor owned utilities has been legion for decades or least since deregulation in 1998 in the 6 New England States. The Aquidneck Island failure followed closely on the heels of the Columbia Gas of Massachusetts natural gas explosions in September of 2018. In summary, 40 homes were basically blown up, 80 more set on fire across a couple towns. One 18 old male was killed. While the Rhode Island failure was due to under pressure, the Lawrence debacle was due to overpressure. Like electricity in the lines overhead which must operate at 60Hz in unity, the natural gas lines need to have a constant and consistent pressures maintained. If you work in a guilded office, and report to share holders, and your bonus depends on profits, your willingness to really dig in and do your rather mundane job is pretty limited. Of course these two examples here in New England pale into relative insignificance compared to PG&E’s San Bruno, California rupture of a natural gas pipeline. That left 8 dead and many homes destroyed and or damaged severely. The senior management had gotten an additional $30M from the regulator for pipeline maintenance, the senior management in its infinite wisdom choose to lavish themselves with bonus’ with the $30M instead of applying it to the pipelines. The rest is tragic history and ultimately led to PG&E filing for bankruptcy. Pay me now or pay me later. Sadly no one went to jail. Sempera Energy and Kinder Morgan had pipeline expansions planned for New England. The current governor of Massachusetts, in her capacity as the attorney general of the Commonwealth sued to stop them and succeeded. They won’t be back anytime soon. Why bother? It will come to a head, and when faced with the cold and dark of a January polar vortex of a weeks duration, pitch forks and lanterns may will become the currency of the day.
Thanks Gentlemen, things are looking dark indeed. I do want to ask about the increasing headwinds to natural gas plants, can you explain?
My take on what I an seeing with natural gas is we are maxing out our gas pipeline capacity and moving gas is getting more difficult.
On Trump repeals, is the EPA greenhouse gas ruling still in effect?
Those rules on new gas plants are still in effect until there is a long process to formally rescind them. Then they will be litigated in the courts, combine that with gas turbine shortages and there is only so much gas that can come online
Are not those exact same rules going to force off coal?
Yes but there may be legal avenues to keep the rules from going into effect.
My thoughts are that dteam turbines are just as hard to get as gas turbines. Especially since there is at least one steam turbine in every combined cycle plant.
Yeah exactly. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to keep the existing ones running
Bummer! I was hoping President Trump would be able to turn that around quicker.
My concern is that state legislators are even more ignorant of science and reality than federal legislators, and so smaller, vocal groups pushing their net-zero ideas have captured them. quite frankly, until the blackouts start happening, I fear there will be no understanding of the problem. and at that point, the blame game will start. I wonder if those impacted by the blackouts, say companies whose businesses were negatively impacted, can sue the legislators who enacted these idiotic laws
The same problem has occurred with nuclear power in 1. Germany and 2. the northeast United States. In both locations, a large icy polar blast now risks killing or injuring large numbers of people during a grid collapse. Winter storm Uri in mid-February, 2021 in Texas was a warning that has not been heeded. The death toll was about 1,000 according to some estimates.
Not simply unheeded. Buried by propaganda. Within moments of the deaths, articles were published blaming natural gas and claiming that wind was blameless, even though it did not deliver even 10% of capacity during the crisis.
True, articles can be written quickly, but these came out so fast one must wonder if they weren't already written by NGOs ready to supply them to the usual suspects.
I've criticized similar actions by NGOs opposed to nuclear power after the Napa Earthquake in California. One filed a massive legal complaint against Diablo Canyon the next day. Pure propaganda.
I think you’re right, it’s going to take pain to restore common sense. And that rebuild will be tenuous because as they shut down reliable coal they are also tearing the plants down. Absolutely stupid.
The realistic accredited values for wind and solar in a pinch are ZERO.
Totally agree
How dramatic do the headlines need to get to cause the silent majority to step up and stop this train wreck. https://open.substack.com/pub/lessgoudarzi/p/the-fragility-of-reserve-margins?r=4qcon&utm_medium=ios
As a Louisiana resident, I think it’s worth noting the massive difference in MISO north versus MISO south as far as grid reliability and generating resources. Louisiana’s grid is very natural gas-heavy with a few large dual-fuel (coal and gas) plants in the area as well. Luckily for us being in hurricane alley, wind is non existent and the solar footprint is incredibly small in comparison to other states that have gone whole-hog on them.
The vast majority of generation and energy in general is between Baton Rouge and New Orleans along the Mississippi River. “Cancer alley” as it has been referred is a dense area of industry with cheap energy, plentiful pipeline access, and a large water source. These facilities know their company livelihoods depend on robust, reliable generation and many of them have their own power plants inside their facilities. There are also some large interconnects between our neighboring states that help keep our grid going.
Anyway, just wanted to make that distinction. I think the majority of the MISO issues you are describing are in the northern region. Louisiana’s grid isn’t perfect but it’s sitting pretty compared to many others.
Yes that’s a very good point. Thanks for adding it!
Definitely - keep the coal and gas plants running!
I like the graphics - especially the first one - a 'risk' of blackouts map.
Great info and analysis, team. Forward this to stalwart republicans like State Senator Mark Koran.
As always an excellent piece. It is interesting that China is expanding both coal and renewable. Restarting coal now is critical if the USA is to avoid the energy morass that is consuming Germany.
For German energy policy failures, see also : "Protesting California's Ongoing Nuclear to Coal Transition - Part 2 - German deindustrialization follows slashing safe, reliable, cost-effective and zero-pollution nuclear power generation," Gene Nelson, Ph.D., November 12, 2024, GreenNUKE. https://greennuke.substack.com/p/protesting-californias-ongoing-nuclear-4fa
I completely agree. The movement from stable nuclear has led to new coal mining in Germany.
....With the attendant increases in air and water pollution. :-(
The crash has been coming for years, ever since subsidised and mandated wind and solar started to drive conventional power, especially coal, out of business. The tendency was particularly easy to see in Australia because we have no nuclear, little hydro and next to no gas, so the model looks like the supply and demand curve in economics.
In this piece we describe the tipping point which occurs when the supply of coal falls below the horizontal line which is the base load.
https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/07/11/approaching-the-tipping-point/
At that point the grid enters a red zone and it is vulnerable on windless nights in extreme weather conditions, especially if there is any unscheduled outage of conventional power. RE enthusiasts think that the increasing penetration of wind and solar into the grid will replace conventional power but they overlook the simple fact that on windless nights there is no wind or solar regardless of the installed capacity and the average penetration.
That has apparently eluded the comprehension of the governments in Britain and Germany so they think they can dig themselves out of the hole by installing more windmills.
The discovery of wind droughts by Australian investigators could have been the most important discovery in the 20th century if it had happened before the suicidal quest for net zero on the back of wind and solar power.
Actually the discovery of wind droughts in Australia was not enough because the authorities in Australia took no notice.
Consequently, as The Energy Realists of Australia have been saying for some time, trillions of dollars have been spent to get more expensive and less reliable power with massive damage to the environment.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/the-late-discovery-of-wind-droughts
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts
Before the ascent of President Trump, the United States was possibly only one Democrat administration away from really serious power crises and there is still a job of work to be done to build up the coal supply in the face of the regulations that were put in place to get coal and gas out of the system.
For some reason the grid manages have not been able to convey the urgency of the situation to the people so that pressure can be put on lawmakers to change the rules. We suggest that a massive lift in “wind literacy” is required so people can understand the menace of the ”wind drought trap.”
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/escaping-the-wind-drought-trap
The belated discovery of wind droughts is an indictment of the official meteorologists who never issued wind drought warnings. This is quite likely part of the game plan that includes falsifying temperature records and ascribing all extreme weather events to climate change. The World Meteorological Organisation was a founding member of the climate alarm club in the United Nations and they must have known about wind droughts because the first assessment report of the IPCC in 1990 recommended a survey of the wind resources of the world to assess the prospects for large-scale wind power generation.
Similarly the original movers to promote wind and solar power are indicted for failure of due diligence to check the reliability of the wind supply.
I recall an Energy and Environment paper from 2012 by Miskelly documenting wind droughts caused by large high pressure areas that spanned most of Australia. He showed that because of this spatial correlation over large distances that wind could not be a base load energy source, even with a grid spanning most of the Australian continent. See: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1260/0958-305X.23.8.1233
The left and eco-psychotics are turning us into a third-world country — hoping upon hope, to create chaos and implant a new utopia — lead by the psychos. The mid-west is fortunate enough to have more than enough Democrats to do this. Go Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois! Take us down the hole.
Maybe this will help: https://www.americanexperiment.org/epas-house-cleaning-scraps-unworkable-ghg-emissions-standards/
Nice article. Looks like Trump really needs to stop the coal plant closing. It is amazing that politicians and their voters are in such a hurry to get rid of the functioning system and replace it with something that just won't work.
The concept of accredited capacity, I just don't get. The basic assumption is that it will be wrong a significant amount of time. We are 'reasonably" expecting solar to provide X% today. What if it snows? You cannot manage a grid on reasonable expectations. It is hard facts every minute of every day. You can't miss.
I appreciate the analytical talent here. I'm no analyst I just understand how this stuff works. It is obvious, even to a dumb old engineer, that we don't have much time to change course, and unless we do it is a disaster we can't really contemplate.