The New Normal?
Let's hope not.
Ed Reid
Feb 28
The US electric utility industry has historically sought to achieve “four nines” (99.99%) reliability of service. One key to achieving very high system reliability has been maintaining an approximate 20% capacity reserve margin compared to peak system demand, which typically allowed peak demand to be met even in the event of failure of the utility’s largest single generator.
Achieving this goal is being complicated by the addition of intermittent renewable, non-dispatchable wind and solar generation capacity. Federal and state incentives and the lack of a requirement for dispatchability make the output of these generation sources the lowest cost alternative when available. Federal and state regulation require that their output be used when available. Their output displaces the output of conventional generation when it is available, but cannot replace conventional generation because it is not dispatchable and is subject to rapid and unpredictable fluctuations in output which must be supplemented by the conventional generators or, if available, by storage.
Periodic power outages resulting from severe weather, accidental damage to power poles and lines, and equipment failure have been normal events. However, as intermittent, non-dispatchable renewable generation proliferates, offsetting progressively greater portions of conventional generation output and increasing the cost per unit of the remaining output, conventional generators are being idled or even shutdown to control operating expense.
https://edreid.substack.com/p/the-new-normal
