This summer, we are expecting electrical issues, so get your generator tuned up and your fuel tank filled. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the group which monitors our electricity grid, says get ready for blackouts and brownouts all across America.
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The weather forecast for the summer is hot. That means dry, too. This is going to be an “El Nino” year, meaning hotter than average temperatures across the country. Air conditioners and fans are going to get a big workout this year.
NERC says America has built too much of its electrical generation capacity with unreliable wind and solar harvesting technologies. This, NERC expects, will lead to rolling blackouts all across America, most especially during times of peak use.
NERC warned previously that America is building far too many intermittent service power plants, a.k.a. solar and wind farms while tearing down and retiring reliable and still serviceable coal and natural gas generation facilities. Intermittent energy harvests energy from the sky. No sun, no solar. No wind, no electricity. You get the idea; intermittent energy sources work fine … when the conditions are right.
Energy sources that harvest electricity are fine… if you have enough capacity. Since electricity is perishable, you have to use the output when the devices can harvest it. That means during the day when the sun is out… or when the wind is blowing. But those things aren’t available 24/7/365.
Bottom line: An electrical distribution system dependent on the harvesting sources might not always have the amount of electricity we want when we want it. This is what NERC is warning about. It is the situation our government has intentionally placed us in.
NERC’s assessment of the situation is that the nation’s entire electric grid is at “elevated risk of insufficient operating reserves in above normal conditions.” When we get a heat wave in the summer, there won’t be sufficient electricity on the grid to supply the things you may want to run, like air conditioners and fans. This is especially true in the evening hours when the sun sets, and the solar panels don’t generate any electricity.
In the Midwest and Northeast, in periods of high heat, the wind tends to go away. Here, a growing percentage of our energy is coming from wind farms. NERC is anticipating these blackouts will occur in the high-heat events of the summer. Normal temperatures at this point probably don’t yet cause problems.
The issue is becoming the combination of El Nino temperatures and the reduction of reliable generation capacity in favor of the intermittent harvest sources. This is becoming more serious with the passage of time. Not only are we transitioning to unreliable, intermittent energy sources, but we are also adding the need to charge electric vehicles (EVs) from this already overtaxed distribution system, our electric grid.
We could have left well enough alone and added new capacity to the existing coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric generation sources already in place. That course of action was available. But no… we have to get rid of fossil fuels. Don’t ask what the replacement capacity is… Don’t ask if it will be available in the quantities we need… Don’t ask if it will be available when we need it. That wouldn’t be politically correct. Just shut up and go along. No sweat, right?
We knew this situation was coming. The warnings were there. The analysis was done. The questions were asked. We knew or should have known a bad situation was in the making. We could have done things differently.
Further compounding the shortage of electric generation capacity is the fact that our greatest adversary, China, has a lock on the supply chain of this unreliable, intermittent dirty green energy generation. Still, States and utilities keep shutting down reliable power plants and building out more of this intermittent power supply.
The power grid in the United States could fail because state governments and federal authorities are forcing us to switch to these new solar and wind facilities, which do not provide the power we need 24/7/365. These government policies just might break people, businesses, and communities. That’s what they are intended to do.
We are intentionally setting ourselves up with an electrical power distribution system that only works and only has enough electricity some of the time. This is a recipe for disaster, and the people at NERC are telling us this path is dangerous for America and for you and me personally.
Maybe we will have to take matters into our own hands. It could be time for change at the ballot box.
