The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) 2024 Summer Reliability Assessment, issued in May, sounds the alarm that much of North America is vulnerable to blackouts and power shortages during the high demand Summer months. High on the list for concern is Texas, the U.S. Southwest, California, the U.S. Northeast, much of the U.S. Midwest, Canada’s British Columbia, and the Baja area in northwest Mexico.
While the U.S. has added 25 GW of solar power in just the last year, it has shut down 40% of all generating capacity by eliminating over 290 coal-fired plants. Almost all coal-fired plants will be closed by 2039. The power grid is now highly dependent upon the virtually unregulated fuel of natural gas that became so abundant during the fracking boom of the late 2000s.
Much of the existing power grid is based on legacy technologies that create various vulnerabilities. For example 70% of the high-voltage, long-distance power lines are at their life expectancy of about 30 years. With aged equipment, especially during periods of peak demand, there is a concern of “cascading failures” in which one small failure in the system can trigger many failures.
In January 2022 the White House issued the Building a Better Grid Initiative, but it is mostly focused on the transition to renewable, unreliable energy supplies and many of the nation’s vulnerabilities will actually increase despite the billions that will be spent.
Of all the vulnerable regions Texas is at the top of the list. The Texas power grid is not connected to the rest of the country, so there are fewer options to deal with a crisis. During a cold snap in February 2021, some 250 people died in Texas due to widespread power outages. In May 2022, Texas lost six power plants because of an unexpectedly early heat wave. Texas has been the most aggressive state in adding solar power to the grid, yet it has guaranteed a daily crisis when power generation falls each evening, but electrical demand often rises.
