Reposted with permission from Robert Bryce’s substack
Winter Storm Elliott over the East Coast of the U.S., December 23, 2022. Credit score: Wikipedia.
Chris Keefer, the Toronto-based doctor and founding father of Canadians for Nuclear Power, calls the electrical grid a “civilizational life help system.”
Keefer, in fact, is right. Probably the most crucial techniques in our society — medical, water, wastewater, site visitors lights, telecommunications, and lighting — rely upon dependable electrical energy. However earlier this month, the Federal Power Regulatory Fee and the North American Electrical Reliability Company issued their ultimate report on a winter storm that hammered the northeastern U.S. final yr. And that report proves that our pure fuel grid is simply as important as our electrical grid. FERC and NERC have repeatedly mentioned that the 2 grids are intertwined, interdependent, and irreplaceable. Certainly, a dependable and resilient pure fuel grid is crucial to our power safety, and due to this fact, our nationwide safety.
Put quick, policymakers ignore the significance of the fuel pipeline system at our excessive peril.
Subscribed
In bone-dry language, the report “Inquiry into Bulk-Energy System Operations Throughout December 2022 Winter Storm Elliott,” explains how the fuel pipeline community in New York practically failed final Christmas when temperatures plummeted in the course of the bomb cyclone. Freeze-related manufacturing declines, mixed with hovering demand from energy crops, houses, and companies, led to shortages of fuel all through the Northeast. The shortage of fuel, in addition to mechanical and electrical points, resulted in an “unprecedented” lack of electrical technology capability totaling some 90,000 megawatts. Whereas the dearth of electrical energy was harmful, the opportunity of a lack of strain within the pure fuel community ought to ship a bone-chilling shiver by the sacroiliac of each politician and bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., New York and the Northeast.
The report explains that if the fuel pipeline system had failed, the restoration course of in New York Metropolis would have taken “months.” As well as, the property injury as a result of broken water pipes in houses and buildings would probably have brought about a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} in injury.
Left unsaid within the report is that the collapse of the fuel grid in the course of the interval wherein temperatures in New York Metropolis stayed under freezing would have brought about a calamity not like some other in U.S. historical past. The chilly that lasted from December 23 to December 28 may have resulted in hundreds, and even tens of hundreds, of deaths. The injury from burst water pipes would have rendered untold numbers of residential and workplace buildings in New York Metropolis unusable.
A buddy who works for the federal authorities in Washington, D.C., and is conversant in the FERC/NERC report advised me final week that the lack of fuel in New York Metropolis would have required evacuating most people within the metropolis. Let that soak in for a minute. New York Metropolis has roughly 8.5 million residents. Evacuating even 25% of Gotham’s residents throughout excessive chilly would have required a herculean effort. However even assuming such an evacuation could possibly be completed, think about how the nation would deal with 2 million displaced New Yorkers who couldn’t return to their houses for months. And whilst you’re at it, think about if these 2 million New Yorkers had their houses soaked by damaged water pipes.
Briefly, the U.S. narrowly averted each a humanitarian and financial disaster that might have put the nation’s financial system right into a tailspin. Think about America’s monetary capital in such disarray that cash middle banks and Wall Road couldn’t perform as a result of their workplace buildings didn’t have warmth.
Right here’s the crucial part of the report, which explains that Winter Storm Elliott “tremendously impacted the operations” of Consolidated Edison, the electrical and fuel utility that serves a lot of New York Metropolis. It continues:
On Christmas Eve morning, the 5 interstate pure fuel pipelines serving Con Edison started experiencing drops in strain at Con Edison’s citygate as a result of manufacturing losses and operational points. The pressures declined precipitously and at midday, the pipelines knowledgeable Con Edison that that they had exhausted their line pack and storage withdrawals, and pressures wouldn’t enhance till demand decreased… Had Con Edison’s citygate pressures not recovered, it was in peril of dropping strain on, or needing to chop service to, all or massive parts of its system. Even dropping service to 130,000 clients could be thought-about a main outage and will have taken 5 to seven weeks to revive, relying on the supply of mutual assist. Had it misplaced the vast majority of its system, over 1,000,000 clients in New York Metropolis and close by areas would have been unable to warmth their flats and homes whereas the surface temperature was within the single digits…”
Subscribed
The report additionally gives an excellent rationalization for why restoring fuel service is so difficult:
System outages for an area pure fuel distribution firm usually take longer to revive than agency load shed, and even cascading outages, on the electrical grid. As soon as electrical energy is restored to a circuit, the entire houses can return to their regular functioning— lights flip again on, heating or air-con techniques return to regular perform, and so forth. In contrast, for the pure fuel native distribution system to return system outages to regular operation, employees should go house-to-house and individually mild each pilot mild. Con Edison estimated it could have taken months to revive service, even with mutual help from different utilities, had it skilled an entire lack of its system.
A latest fuel outage within the Pacific Northwest demonstrates the problem of restoring service. On November 8, a fuel transmission pipeline close to Pullman, Washington, was broken in an accident. The accident resulted in a shut off of fuel to about 35,000 clients served by Avista Corp. As a result of lack of line strain, the corporate needed to dispatch a crew to each fuel buyer within the affected areas of their fuel community and manually shut off every meter. After the pipeline was repaired, the utility deployed over 800 Avista staff, together with 300 employees from different fuel utilities (who had been responding beneath mutual-aid agreements) and about 60 non-public contractors, to start the method of turning the fuel system again on and relighting pilot lights on stoves and water heaters. It took practically every week for the utility to revive service to the affected clients.
If it took every week to revive service to 35,000 fuel clients in Washington state, it’s straightforward to grasp how difficult it could be to revive service in a metropolis as huge and sophisticated as New York. Con Edison has 1.1 million fuel clients in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Westchester County. Put one other method, Con Ed’s fuel system is about 240 occasions as massive as Avista’s. Even with a crew of 10,000 employees, it may take months to revive New York’s fuel system if it failed.
Subscribed
It seems policymakers have been numbed into complacency about massive technology outages and near-catastrophic misses over the previous decade that embrace occasions like Winter Storms Uri and Elliott. However this newest near-catastrophe should be put into context. As talked about above, NERC and FERC have repeatedly warned that the electrical grid has grow to be too depending on pure fuel. I like pure fuel. And the elevated use of fuel (on the expense of coal) within the energy sector has helped the U.S. minimize its carbon dioxide emissions greater than some other nation on the earth. However not like coal — and the enriched uranium that fuels a nuclear energy plant— fuel is a just-in-time gasoline. That makes it weak to disruptions in service. And if fuel provides run quick, so will electrical energy provides.
In August, NERC once more warned concerning the overreliance on pure fuel, saying that fuel and electrical energy markets “are considerably out of synchronism.” It continued, saying, “Pure fuel entry is additional challenged by a number of precedence makes use of, together with dwelling heating and industrial processes. Coordination ought to concentrate on…the challenges electrical mills face in accessing pure fuel throughout crucial durations, akin to extreme winter climate occasions.” It additionally mentioned the grid is more and more weak to “lengthy period temperatures in addition to wind and photo voltaic droughts.”
In September, Jim Robb, the CEO of NERC, commented on a preliminary discovering about Winter Storm Elliott, saying it “underscores the necessity to take pressing motion on the interdependence between the majority electrical and pure fuel techniques, together with the necessity for enough and dependable fuel and electrical infrastructure to maintain power reliability.”
The opposite key backdrop to this report, in fact, is the headlong rush to shutter coal-fired energy crops, a push that’s being funded, partially, by billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg. As I reported right here final month, Bloomberg is giving one other $500 million to a bunch of NGOs who’re diligently working to:
shutter the majority of our most vital energy crops — those that burn coal and pure fuel and are due to this fact dispatchable and weather-resilient — and, in Bloomberg’s phrases, substitute them with “renewable power.”… A extra radical agenda is troublesome to conjure. The coal and fuel crops that Bloomberg and his allies within the anti-industry {industry} wish to shutter produced about 40% of all of the electrical energy used within the U.S. final yr.
In all, Bloomberg has dedicated greater than $1 billion to a bunch of radical NGOs — together with the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Membership, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Earthjustice, all of which have working budgets of greater than $100 million per yr — who’re aiming to undermine the integrity, affordability, and resilience of our electrical grid.
The opposite important little bit of context is a latest assertion by PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest grid operator, that the untimely shutdown of Maryland’s largest coal plant, Brandon Shores, will harm grid reliability. As Fox Information Digital reported earlier this week, an evaluation by PJM “confirmed that the deactivation of the Brandon Shores items would trigger extreme voltage drop and thermal violations throughout seven PJM zones, which may result in a widespread reliability danger in Baltimore and the quick surrounding areas.”
Why is Brandon Shores closing? The quick reply: in 2020, the plant’s proprietor, Talen Power, agreed to shutter it as a part of a deal it made with, look forward to it…the Sierra Membership.
The punchline right here is clear: America’s crucial power networks are nearing catastrophic breaking factors as a result of underinvestment in dependable sources of gasoline and technology, and by that, I imply pipelines, nuclear crops, and coal- and gas-fired energy crops. As my buddy in Washington advised me final week, the power sector doesn’t want extra regulation; “it wants extra infrastructure.” However the northeastern U.S. doesn’t have sufficient fuel pipelines to fulfill demand throughout excessive climate. That’s notably true within the wake of the closure of the Indian Level nuclear plant in New York. The output of that plant was changed by gas-fired energy crops.
Regardless of the necessity for extra fuel, over the previous few years, 4 main interstate pipelines, with a complete of 931 miles of pipe, have been blocked in New York by local weather activist teams together with 350.org. These teams discovered a keen ally within the state’s execrable former governor, Andrew Cuomo.
A ultimate level: On November 8, NERC launched its 2023-2024 “Winter Reliability Evaluation.” As famous by Reuters, the report discovered that “greater than half of the U.S. and elements of Canada…may fall wanting electrical energy throughout excessive chilly once more this winter as a result of missing pure fuel infrastructure.” The report additionally famous, “Latest excessive chilly climate occasions have proven that power supply disruptions can have devastating penalties for electrical and fuel shoppers in impacted areas.”
We’ve been warned. In reality, we’ve repeatedly been warned by each FERC and NERC that we don’t have sufficient fuel pipelines and that our electrical grid is relying too closely on pure gas-fired energy crops and weather-dependent sources like wind and photo voltaic.
Policymakers ought to consider them and start taking motion earlier than we’ve to evacuate New York Metropolis as a result of occasions just like the bomb cyclone that struck final Christmas.
H/T abelbill, bm, Mark Krebs
