America’s Power Grid Is Increasingly Unreliable
Behind a rising number of outages are new stresses on the system caused by aging power lines and a power-plant fleet rapidly going "green".
The U.S. electrical system is becoming less dependable.
The problem is likely to get worse before it gets better.
Large, sustained outages have occurred with increasing frequency in the U.S. over the past two decades, according to a review of federal data.
In 2000, there were fewer than two dozen major disruptions, the data shows. By 2020, the number surpassed 180.
Utility customers on average experienced just over eight hours of power interruptions in 2020, more than double the amount in 2013, when the government began tracking outage lengths.
The data doesn’t include 2021, but those numbers are certain to follow the trend after a freak freeze in Texas, a major hurricane in New Orleans, wildfires in California and a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest left millions in the dark for days.
The U.S. power system is faltering just as millions of Americans are becoming more dependent on it—not just to light their homes, but increasingly to work remotely, charge their phones and cars, and cook their food—as more modern conveniences become electrified.
At the same time, the grid is undergoing the largest transformation in its history.
In many parts of the U.S., utilities are no longer the dominant producers of electricity following the creation of a patchwork of wind and solar producers.
Regulators in many parts of the country are attempting to further speed the build-out of "renewable energy", even as customers become more dependent on the grid to charge electric vehicles and replace traditional furnaces and gas appliances with electric alternatives.
The movement toward electrification is driven by initiatives among cities and towns to enact mandates aimed at phasing out natural gas for cooking and heating.
A number of states have enacted mandates to eliminate carbon emissions from the grid in the coming decades, and the Biden administration has set a goal to do so by 2035.
The pace of change, hastened by efforts to "reduce carbon emissions", has raised concerns that power plants will retire more quickly than they can be replaced, creating new strain on the grid at a time when other factors are converging to weaken it.
A decade ago, coal, nuclear and gas-fired power plants—which can produce power around the clock or fire up when needed—supplied the bulk of the nation’s electricity.
Since then, wind and solar farms, whose output depends on weather and time of day, have become some of the most substantial sources of power.
When demand threatens to exceed supply, as it has during severe hot and cold spells in Texas and California in recent years, grid operators may call on utilities to initiate rolling blackouts, or brief intentional outages over a region to spread the pain among everyone and prevent the wider grid from a total failure.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-power-grid-is-increasingly-unreliable-11645196772
