Electric reliability means being able to keep the lights on 24/7 and the air conditioner running. However, two-thirds of the country faces the prospect of temporary blackouts this summer when electricity demand intensifies. Prematurely retiring coal-fired power plants and replacing them with less dependable wind and solar power is one of the reasons for this crisis. This is a sampling of comments about the crisis.
🙁 “We’re heading for a reliability crisis.”
FERC Commissioner Mark Christie (May 19, 2022)
🙁 “We’ve been warning for years that climate policies would make the grid more vulnerable to vacillations in supply and demand. And here we are. Some of the mainstream press are belatedly catching on that blackouts are coming, but they still don’t grasp the real problem: The forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid.”
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board (May 27, 2022)
🙁 “We’ve been doing this [referring to reliability assessments] for close to 30 years. This is probably one of the grimmest pictures we’ve painted in a while.”
John Moura, North American Electric Reliability Corporation Director of Reliability Assessment and Performance Analysis (May 20, 2022)
🙁 “The nation’s power grid is becoming increasingly unreliable.”
Wall Street Journal article (February 18, 2022)
🙁 “Utility regulators, believe me, they know this [reliability crisis] is coming. It’s the state policymakers and legislators that are driving a lot of this. [You] need to really start paying attention to the resources in each state, what you’re building and what you’re forcing to retire, and start listening to experts like NERC.”
FERC Commissioner Mark Christie (May 19, 2022)
🙁 “As we move forward, we need to know that when you put a solar panel or a wind turbine up, it’s not the same as a thermal [coal, gas or nuclear]resource.”
John Bear, MISO CEO (May 8, 2022)
🙁 “The rapid expansion of renewable power is also increasing the cost of maintaining a reliable electricity grid, which will raise costs for U.S. manufacturers, rendering them less globally competitive.”
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board (May 22, 2022)
🙁 “Everybody has a good sense of where we want to go in terms of decarbonizing the fleet. We are moving in that direction. Unfortunately, we are moving in that direction quite quickly and I am worried about the transition.”
John Baer, MISO CEO (May 20)
🙁 “The last time I was told to turn my thermostat up to 78 degrees it was by Jimmy Carter.”
Ed Hirs, University of Houston energy economist, when Texas officials urged consumers to reduce their electricity use. (June 3)
