PJM reported failures across the gas system, including low pressure, frozen compressors, and a lack of commercially available fuel. 24, an astonishing 46 gigawatts of power plants (enough to power California) were out of service. PJM even planned on assisting neighboring regions.Īs the bone-chilling cold moved in, outages at fossil fuel plants began stacking up. 23 the grid operator for 13 states from North Carolina to Illinois said it was ready. ![]() Ultimately, 65 million people in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest came far too close for comfort to rolling blackouts during the bone-chilling Arctic blast.įor months PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization, asked power plant owners to prepare for cold weather, and on Dec. In case after case, fossil fuel plants fail much more often than grid planners expect.ĭuring Winter Storm Elliott in December, coal and natural gas plant outages caused blackouts in North Carolina and Tennessee, and wider, more devastating outages were just barely avoided. In the past decade, crippling weather events include the 2011 cold weather outages in the Southwest, the 2014 polar vortex, and Winter Storm Uri, that struck Texas in 2021. The pattern is overwhelmingly clear and unsettlingly familiar. Ignoring this fact at the expense of renewables will continue to hamper planning for the reliable, clean, affordable grid the country needs. As power grids face the challenge of standing up to extreme weather events, the country must come to terms with the fact that gas continues to fail at its core value proposition: delivering power when it is needed most. The negative health and environmental impacts of gas and coal are well known and irrefutable. It’s long past time for grid operators and federal officials to move past the rhetoric from plant owners and take actions based on a plant’s real-world performance. The myth of fossil fuel’s reliability is putting people’s safety in jeopardy as extreme weather worsens. In case after case, gas and coal plants struggle when the electricity is needed most, while renewable energy resources such as wind and solar outperform expectations. ![]() This wave of fossil fuel power plant failures disproves the stubborn myth that natural gas and coal are our most reliable sources of power. As families across the country traveled to holiday gatherings in late December, a harsh winter storm pushed power grids to the brink of a nationwide crisis.Īs they have in the past, grid operators planned to rely heavily on gas and coal power plants to keep the lights and heat on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |