WASHINGTON – A devastating winter storm that plunged Texas into an electricity crisis offers warning signs for the US as the Biden government wants to prepare for a future in which extreme weather is a greater risk and America is driven almost entirely by renewables energy.
Energy generation is a challenge. But an equally daunting task is saving energy from renewable energy for extreme events like the Texas hammering.
In Texas, the center of a wave of disruptions in the southern and central parts of the US, the primary electrical network got a one-two-stroke under the freeze: the demand for power off the charts while Texans tried to get their homes and power plants that simply could not produce power when humans needed it most.
Wind and solar power, still relatively small parts of the state’s energy mix, played only a minimal role in the sudden power shortage, utilities said – in contrast to a wave of conservative critics blaming the situation on renewable energy. wanted to pin.
Yet the crisis in Texas is a wake-up call that exposes how the U.S. electrical infrastructure is not fully prepared to absorb steep climate-related increases in power demand. The challenge is likely to deepen as the US relies more on wind and solar power, known as ‘alternating’ sources, because it is subject to the whims of the weather and does not provide electricity 24 hours a day.
Electricity network regulators have said the US needs to develop large supplies of power storage – such as giant batteries – that depend on emerging technologies that have only recently begun to become economically and practically feasible on a large scale.
“For batteries to play the best backup system, we’re so far away that it’s not funny,” Jim Robb, CEO of North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory body, said in an interview. “To make the vision we want to achieve, a highly carbon-free electrical system, you will have to deploy batteries in as many orders as we have now.”
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced Tuesday that they are launching a joint investigation into what went wrong in causing such widespread disruptions in the South and Middle East. At the end of Tuesday, more than 3.5 million customers were without power, the vast majority in Texas, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
The picture of what went wrong in Texas is incomplete. While some generators went offline when turbines went down, the state’s largest network, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said the shortage was driven by a failure of not renewable sources, but of traditional “thermal” sources. : coal, nuclear power and especially natural gas. Energy experts said gas lines supplying gas plants may have frozen or that supplies to the plants could have been limited as gas was prioritized for homes that rely on their heat.
Utility officers in Texas planned for what they would expect in the event of winter peaks, taking into account the possibility of interruptions and lower wind inputs. The increase in demand during the storm exceeded the highest estimate of just 67,000 megawatts, which is needed for an extreme peak charge. And 34,000 megawatts were kicked offline, reducing supply, the Texas Electric Reliability Council said.
Texas produces more electricity than any other state, but only a quarter of it comes from wind and solar power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In an executive order he signed in his second week in office, President Joe Biden has set a goal of zeroing carbon dioxide emissions by the U.S. power generation by 2035, a goal that is a rapid shift from the U.S. direction to renewables. energy sources and away from even the cleaner fossil fuels, such as natural gas.
Yet these fossil fuels tend to be the sources for surplus and backup production, in part because they can be increased fairly quickly. This includes ‘spin reserve capacity’, in which power stations are already online and can add power almost immediately as the tap increases as demand decreases and flows.
Proponents of fossil fuel conservation have used the flexibility to make a plausible argument, with a Wall Street Journal saying Monday on the situation in Texas: ‘Here’s the paradox of the left’s climate agenda: The less we use fossil fuels, more we need it. ‘
But another emerging option could ensure reliability without forcing the US to return to coal, gas and other carbon-intensive energy sources that contribute to climate change: energy storage, in which electricity can be stored from renewable sources and then released to the grid when needed later.
For years, excess electricity from power generation has been used to pump water behind dams, where it can be released at short notice and become hydropower, which can actually turn the system into a massive battery.
Recently, the technology to build real batteries that can store power to the extent needed to power a core network has progressed rapidly, both in capacity and affordability, with major projects starting in California and an ambitious plan in Saudi Arabia. -Arabia around an entire resort with what has been dubbed as “the world’s largest battery storage facility”.
But these solutions can still provide only a small fraction of the power consumption, and almost the entire supply chain for the manufacture of the storage rooms is overseas. What’s more, traditional lithium-ion batteries, which are also used in electric vehicles, can only pump electricity at their maximum output for a few hours at a time, much less than the long or even days needed to compensate for weather-related ones. nails in demand.
But the development of technologies, including hydrogen units and power batteries, could begin to address some of the shortcomings as the U.S. approaches 2035, the year in which the Biden government says carbon emissions should be removed from the power supply.
Omar AI-Juburi, a partner of Ernst & Young, consulting energy markets and grid technology, compares the rapid development of large-scale battery storage to that of solar panels, which were excessively expensive for years before costs dropped dramatically. The energy information administration declined by nearly 70 percent of battery storage from 2015 to 2018.
“Every indication is that it will continue to increase in capacity, decrease in cost, will be more commercially viable,” Al-Jaburi said. “Storage will not solve all your problems by 2035 or at any date, but it will be a major player.”
Biden, as a candidate, included investments in battery storage as part of his proposal to spend $ 2 trillion on a more modern and cleaner US infrastructure. Its administration is expected to turn to the ambitious agenda this year once its first spending priority, a Covid-19 relief package, is completed.
‘Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that is resistant to extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of well-paid unions, creating a clean energy economy and meeting the president’s goal to reach a net exemption future by 2050, “said Vedant Patel, White House spokesman.
While no single weather condition can be attributed solely to climate change, the deadly cold that plagued Texas was the last reminder of how the extremes of the weather can push the delicate web of generators and transmission lines that shape our electrical grid to its breaking point. In California, the heat waves of the summer trapped the system from the other side, necessitating power outages when the record demand for air conditioning overloaded the system, or the fear that wildfires would ignite in strong winds, leading to electricity networks crossing the lines. had to turn off.
Although it is extreme winter, and not warmer temperatures, that affect Texas, some climate analysts believe that climate change may also play a role in the intense cold and storms that are sweeping through the southern United States, a phenomenon that may continue or aggravate. . Rising temperatures in the Arctic can reduce the jet of air that acts as a kind of buffer for the polar vortex, which can not lower the icy air south.
But network operators can only plan for peaks and rises they see coming, a task to analyze past trends and extrapolate predictions that are only getting harder, Michael Craig said.
“We are in a non-silent world. Climate change means it is not stagnant,” Craig said. “The last forty years may not reflect the next 40 years on the pike.”