RUTHFULLY YOURS

Centrally planned “green” solar and wind power are simply not reliable when they’re needed the most. A recent wave of blackouts and brownouts in the Canadian province of Alberta proves it.

“With temperatures near minus 45 [Celsius, minus 49 Fahrenheit] over the weekend even colder in some parts of Alberta and virtually no wind or solar showing up on the grid, Alberta issued an electricity advisory asking its residents to conserve electricity to avoid brownouts,” Ontario energy minister Todd Smith said in a Facebook video. Smith happened to be in Edmonton, Alberta, to announce a deal between the provinces to construct a small modular nuclear reactor.

The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which manages the province’s grid, began a series of declared states of emergency last Friday. The grid fluctuated throughout the crisis until this past Monday. Energy supply repeatedly collapsed and residents were repeatedly asked to conserve electricity by shutting off essential services.

The province has massively invested in green energy. Three quarters of Canada’s new wind and solar generation is based there. But fewer than 1 percent of both Alberta’s 4,481 potential megawatts of wind power and 1,650 of solar power could operate when the province most needed electricity. Essentially all of the province’s solar- and wind-power plants were offline. Greatly increased energy demand for electric heat pumps, cars, and even phone batteries, which work far less efficiently in cold weather, ensured disaster.

Cold temperatures are obviously bad for solar power as snow or hail can cover or damage panels, and the batteries necessary to support it become less efficient. They create serious wind-power issues as well. The “cold brittle behavior” of materials like turbine blades changes, and they become prone to shattering. As a result, despite adequate winds, at the province’s wind farms cold temperatures forced a shutdown.

In contrast, Alberta still could access 99 percent of its coal power and 76 percent of its natural gas, despite the latter often having problems in cold temperatures, on demand. But systematic divestment in conventional power systems capable of generating a baseload of electricity in favor of “just-in-time” wind and solar power made the electrical grid vulnerable. When Albertans most needed their energy, wind and solar ensured there wasn’t enough to go around.

“Until we get serious about developing grids with a significant component of dispatchable low carbon resources, we are going to continue to risk brownouts and blackouts on the grid,” Jeff Terry, an energy-research professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, told National Review. He continued:

Unfortunately, many of these periods of low supply are occurring while facing incredibly cold conditions. These are life threatening situations. This is something that was unheard of just three decades ago when our electrical grid was predominantly coal and nuclear. Mainly, because both of those types of generation have significant supplies of fuel on hand. Just-in-time power generation is a recipe for unreliability.

The problem was clearly caused by a mismatch between energy demand and the times green energy can be supplied in Alberta. A graph of the solar-output curve in Edmonton, Alberta, shows that, unsurprisingly, much of the province’s green energy is generated during the summer months. That’s not when the demand for electricity is most desperate in the chilly Canadian province.

Many observers predicted that overreliance on undependable solar and wind energy would result in disaster. “If you continue going down this route, you’re going to have significant challenges in managing disturbances,” John Moura, director of reliability assessment at the North American Electric Reliability Corp, told EnergyWire in February 2016. Moura was commenting on a U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) investigation, which found that there is a “significant risk” wind and solar simply power would render North American electricity unreliable, as the U.S. and Canadian power grids are heavily linked.

To function, power grids require demand to exactly match supply. This is an enormous problem for variable wind and solar power. Power demand is relatively predictable. Conventional power plants, such as nuclear, coal, and natural-gas plants, can adjust output accordingly, as they put out a steady and predictable supply of electricity.

In contrast, the “just-in-time” nature of solar and wind power means that the human need for electricity is at the mercy of the inherently unpredictable elements. And worse, as is the case in Alberta, these systems often provide energy when it’s needed least.

Green-energy proponents sometimes believe society should adjust human behavior and energy usage to the unreliability of wind and solar. This is called “demand response.” The implication is that people should minimize energy use at certain times and expect electricity to be occasionally unavailable.

The policy has been pushed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) since 2011. It forces energy companies to pay middlemen for “negative electricity” — power theoretically saved by consumers during peak demand times. This generally results in higher electricity costs for consumers at best, and as was the case in Alberta, shortages, at worst. It is basically fake “socialized electricity” set up to make green energy profitable. Of course, people and the economy don’t regard power as a luxury and don’t like blackouts. But relying on fickle energy sources will inherently lead to blackouts.

The California 2022 heatwave caused similar blackouts, largely due to the state electric grid’s overreliance on unreliable green energy in a time of record energy demand.

“This is an extraordinary heat event we are experiencing, and the efforts by consumers to lean in and reduce their energy use after 4 p.m. are absolutely essential,” Elliot Mainzer, president and CEO of the California Independent System Operator (which runs California’s grid), said. “Over the last several days we have seen a positive impact on lowering demand because of everyone’s help, but now we need a reduction in energy use that is two or three times greater than what we’ve seen so far as this historic heat wave continues to intensify.”

California governor Gavin Newsom delcared a state of emergency and temporarily reactivated the very conventional power plants he’d previously worked so hard to shut down. The California ISO advised residents to “be ready for potential rotating power outages” as electricity demand spiked while power supplied by wind and solar went offline.

Canada and California offer a preview of the blackouts to come if policy-makers elsewhere similarly rush to rely on unstable wind and solar power. If you like knowing the light will come on when you flick the switch, opposing such ill-considered energy policies is common sense.