Wind and Solar Resource Availability Fatal Flaw
21 hours ago
Roger Caiazza
As a retired electric utility meteorologist, I have been following issues associated with wind and solar resource availability for many years. My thinking has evolved to the point where I now believe that in a rational world it would be recognized that any electric grid relying on wind and solar is doomed to failure. This post explains why.
Background
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) recently convened a webinar for the Cold Weather Preparedness Small Group Advisory Sessions (SGAS) to “provide an educational opportunity for registered entities to meet with NERC and Regional Entity representatives to discuss the cold weather preparedness Standards and possible compliance approaches in an open and non-audit environment.” The impetus for this initiative was the February 2021 Texas event described in the following slide. The regulatory fallout for this event is not finished but the need to discuss how best to address these events is so acute that SGAS was established in “an open and non-audit environment”.
Source: May 6, 2024 NERC Cold Weather Preparedness Small Group Advisory Session
The takeaway point is that there are already electric grid resource adequacy issues in the existing system during extreme weather events. I am most concerned about the future grid that relies on weather impacted resources. Even though Texas has substantial wind and solar resources their presence did not contribute meaningfully to this Texas blackout. Instead, it was the failure of many components of the traditional generating and transmission systems to be sufficiently hardened to extreme cold. In the future the weather dependent grid will cause similar problems more frequently and, as I will show, may not be able to prevent a catastrophic blackout.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/06/04/wind-and-solar-resource-availability-fatal-flaw/
