A simple way to save the grid from more wind and solar
By
David Wojick
|
February 17th, 2025
The President says he would like to stop new wind power development from wrecking America’s electric power grid. There is a simple and sensible way to do this that stops solar as well. Simply ban hooking these destructively intermittent generators into the grid.
The States have the authority to build power generators but approving their connection to the American grid is a federal function. The lead agency is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the Energy Department. This authority is delegated to the Regional Transmission Operators (RTOs) subject to FERC oversight.
The present situation is absurd as the RTOs have queues of connection requests from renewables developers that in total megawatts exceed their peak demand. The unpredictable intermittency of generation from these renewables threatens to wreck the grid.
FERC has the authority and the responsibility to ban the connection of intermittent generation. They just approved a proposal from a regional transmission operator to prioritize approving the connection of dispatchable generators ahead of intermittent ones.
https://www.cfact.org/2025/02/17/a-simple-way-to-save-the-grid-from-more-wind-and-solar/
