How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts

Posted on 9 September 2024 by dana1981

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections

In February 2021, several severe storms swept across the United States, culminating with one that the Weather Channel unofficially named Winter Storm Uri. In Texas, Uri knocked out power to over 4.5 million homes and 10 million people. Hundreds of Texans died as a result, and the storm is estimated to have cost the state $130 billion.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, quickly sought to blame the crisis on renewable energy. While the storm and blackouts were still ongoing, Abbott told Sean Hannity of Fox News, “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America … fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we will be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime.”

Subsequent investigations into the causes of the Texas blackouts concluded that Gov. Abbott was wrong. Although wind energy underperformed in the cold temperatures, so did gas and coal power plants. But incidents like these raise the question: Will clean energy and climate policies make communities more vulnerable to dangerous power outages?

The answer, as other states have demonstrated, is no – with sufficient planning and preparation, that is.

What caused the deadly Texas blackouts?

No one type of energy was to blame for the tragic blackouts in Texas. All types of electricity generation facilities experienced failure, according to an analysis of the event by the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.

“Natural gas, coal, and nuclear were expected to serve as the firm baseload power that could be relied upon,” the report concluded. “However, that proved not to be the case, particularly for gas-powered electricity, though all fuel sources faced some challenges from the winter weather.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, similarly concluded that natural gas power plants were responsible for the majority of Texas’ power outages.

The other major take-away from the FERC report? Many of the power generation facilities in Texas had not followed recommendations to prepare for severe winter storms with equipment winterization plans.

All types of equipment have temperature limits above or below which they can’t operate efficiently, or at all. Wind farms can operate in frigid temperatures if equipped with de-icing equipment. Gas infrastructure can be enclosed or fitted with heating cables to prevent some cold weather shutdowns.

As climate change continues to cause more extreme weather – heat waves, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and perhaps even winter storms associated with polar vortexes – facility operators need to be prepared to keep the lights on. That’s a challenge another state, California, has been working to address.

California’s counterpoint

On two record-breaking hot days in August 2020, hundreds of thousands of Californians experienced power outages for a few hours. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was quick to blame these rolling blackouts – which briefly affected 1-2% of the state’s population – on California’s clean energy and climate policies.

An analysis of the August 2020 blackout by California’s grid operator concluded that these power outages were largely caused by two factors. First, the heat wave was unexpectedly extreme and spanned much of the western United States, including neighboring states. As a result, those states did not have extra power to share with California.

Second, at the time, 2020 was California’s hottest August on record by a full degree Fahrenheit. California had insufficient reliable power supplies in the early evening hours as the sun set but temperatures remained high.

But California has not experienced significant power outages in the subsequent four summers. In fact, July 2024 was California’s hottest July on record by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit, with daily maximum temperatures across the month averaging nearly 97 °F. And yet the state’s power grid – which has become significantly cleaner since 2020 – not only avoided blackouts but in fact exported energy to neighboring states during the record-breaking heat wave.

How is that possible, given the myth that “Solar only works when it’s sunny?” That’s where complementary solutions come in, like adding batteries to store extra solar power during the day and building more long-distance electrical transmission lines to strengthen the power grid.

As the state’s grid operator reported, “California’s power grid held up against prolonged record temperatures because of new clean energy resources, more battery storage, and enhanced coordination with state government.”

California also can exchange electricity with its neighbors during times of need – a solution that’s lacking in Texas.

Texas’ power grid is an island

Unlike all other states in the continental U.S., Texas’ power grid remains relatively isolated from the rest of the country and thus lies outside of FERC’s jurisdiction.

There are benefits and downsides to this grid independence approach. Due to looser regulations, Texas has been able to build energy infrastructure like electrical transmission lines, wind turbines, and most recently, solar farms at a faster pace than much of the rest of the country.

But because it has few electrical transmission connections to its neighbors, when Texas is hit by an extreme weather event that knocks out a significant proportion of its power generation, the state has nowhere to turn for help. This ability to import electricity from neighboring regions outside of the extreme weather event is a helpful tool in avoiding major blackouts.

For example, a recent MIT study evaluated a proposed bill that would mandate an increase in regional transmission interconnections. The study reviewed how the bill’s requirements would have affected the number of homes that lost power as a result of Winter Storm Elliot in the eastern United States in December 2022. The study estimated that if these states had more capacity to import electricity from neighboring regions, the number of homes that lost power would have been reduced from 4.7 million to 2.1 million – a 58% reduction in blackouts.

In short, Texas’ grid isolation from its neighbors makes the state more vulnerable to power outages during extreme weather events.

Climate policies are part of the solution to blackouts

Texas’ blackouts were not caused by clean energy or climate policies, but largely by a lack of preparation for the increasingly extreme weather that climate change brings. As renowned climate scientist Lonnie Thompson wrote in 2010, “Sooner or later, we will all deal with global warming. The only question is how much we will mitigate, adapt, and suffer.”

This characterization holds true for the stability of the power grid as well. We can begin to solve the problem by implementing clean energy and climate policies to reduce climate pollution and minimize future extreme weather events. And we can try to adapt by winterizing infrastructure and deploying grid-stabilizing solutions like battery storage and inter-regional transmission connections.

But if we fail to sufficiently mitigate and adapt to this problem by continuing with the status quo, more U.S. residents will suffer from these dangerous power outages.

Tom Toro is a cartoonist and writer who has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010.