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Electricity Market Manipulation – Higher Costs, More Emergencies
East of the Mississippi, we haven’t had a heat-induced stress test of the electric grid for a long time. I don’t remember names, but I remember weather events, places, and numbers well. The hottest summer of my life was 1988, with many days over 100F throughout the summer (every month). Many records fell, and several times on consecutive days. It was relentless. The next steamiest summer was 1995, while I was in graduate school in Madison. The temperature peaked at around 117F with a staggering dewpoint over 80F. It's bad when sunglasses and bicycles fog over when you take them…
Jeff IhnenJune 6, 2023
Energy Transition – Four Factors to Watch
We open this week’s Energy Rant with a called shot. Michael and Chantell Sackett are enjoying fresh mulch provided by the SCOTUS as they sent the EPA’s interpretation of “navigable waterways” to the woodchipper as predicted here last October. The energy transition is having problems, as this blog has often predicted. The message is hitting the mainstream. For example, last Friday, The Wall Street Journal featured three articles on the sputtering and wheezing transition in one edition. The first was global with the headline, Your Coming Summer of Blackouts. Faulty Power Markets Some things are working in reliability’s favor. The…
Jeff IhnenMay 30, 2023
Four Steps for Energy Transition
I spent last week in California, where the energy transition is being jammed at a breakneck pace like a square peg in a round hole. I’ll set the stage with just a few things. First, the duck curve, a feature of excessive solar generation that began overgenerating a year or two ago, is now the “canyon” curve. Overgeneration occurs around 10 GW of net load – the amount needed to keep hot resources spinning in case of a fault in the system. The image below shows the current and forecast net loads on CAISO as of Saturday, May 20, 2023.…
Jeff IhnenMay 24, 2023
