"Renewable energy
can’t consistently
balance power supply
with demand. "
By Robert Blohm,
Wall Street Journal,
February 20, 2019
“Mr. Blohm is
an elected member
of the Operating
Committee and the
Standards Committee
of the North American
Electric Reliability Corp.,
the continental
bulk electric system’s
reliability regulator
designated by
the U.S. Energy Policy
Act of 2005
and by all the
Canadian provinces’
energy regulators.”
In expressing
a critical concern
Mr Blohm writes:
“The Democrats’
Green New Deal
calls for a fully renewable
electric power grid.
Regardless of the economic
or political challenges
of bringing this about,
it is likely technologically
impossible.
“An electric power grid
involves second-by-second
balancing between
generated supply
and consumer demand.
In the case of
a sudden imbalance
—such as from the loss
of a generator’s output
—all the
remaining generators
on the grid
instantaneously
pool together.
Each one pitches
in a small part
of the required power
to make up
for the lost generator
fast enough
to keep supply
and demand
balanced.
“This doesn’t work
for wind and solar
because you
can’t spontaneously
increase wind or sunshine.
Hydro power is limited
and unevenly distributed
around the country.
And for safety reasons,
nuclear power
—even if the Green
New Dealers accepted it
—can’t be cranked up
to neutralize imbalances.
Nor can consumer demand
be suddenly reduced enough.
“Fossil-fuel turbines,
by contrast,
very naturally compensate
for sudden supply outages.
The inertia of
the spinning mass
of rotors provides
the extra energy
needed to compensate
for the loss
for the first
few seconds.
(Wind-rotor inertia
is too short-lived.)
Meanwhile the
generators’ on- line
reserve capacity
kicks in,
giving a rapid boost
in power output
to prevent the turbines
from slowing down.
That substitute power,
called “governor response,”
lasts as long as 15 minutes.
During that time a single
replacement generator
ramps up to compensate
entirely for the loss.
All the turbines on the grid
are thereby restored to their
original speed, and the
governor response
is rearmed for the
next disturbance.
An all-renewables grid
would require prohibitively
expensive battery storage
to compensate for
sudden power losses.
Even with batteries,
the lost power would
have to be fed through
“inverters”
—a technology
that converts
variable-wind-speed
alternating current,
solar-power
direct current,
and battery-power
direct-current into
alternating current
—to allow for
synthetic inertia and
governor response
in the case of
a disruption.
“But according to
a 2017 report from the
Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers,
if a large enough share
of the power grid
flows through inverters,
the grid itself may collapse.
Existing inverter
technologies
have faced serious
software problems
and prompted outages
where they
have been deployed.
The IEEE is
trying to create
a global standard
for inverter design
— though heavy input
by Chinese suppliers
bent on commandeering
the technology may pose
a national-security risk
if the U.S. were to
incorporate the standard.
“How could the market price
in the cost of providing
rapid replacement energy
that renewable sources
can’t provide reliably?
The entity that
caused the outage
should need to pay.
Yet the power industry
—to say nothing of the
Green New Dealers
—hasn’t given this
much thought.
An all-renewables
power grid
power grid
is destined to collapse.”