Duke is caught prior to now, and it’s asking the Fee to let it commit North Carolina to a inflexible, costly climate-destroying gasoline future. A clear power future is right here, and it’s time Duke obtained on board.
Shelley Robbins | August 19, 2024
| Fossil Gasoline, North Carolina, Utilities
The Duke Power Carbon Plan hearings on the North Carolina Utilities Fee (NCUC) ended on August 5, 2024, and it’s extra clear than ever that Duke is unprepared to take the steps required to maneuver away from its reliance on polluting assets.
Excessive Stakes Hearings Draw A number of Intervenors
Intervenors within the Carbon Plan docket embody SACE, Sierra Membership, and NRDC, represented by SELC, in addition to the North Carolina Sustainable Power Affiliation (NCSEA), the Environmental Protection Fund (EDF), and NC WARN; environmental justice organizations represented by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice; Carolinas Clear Power Enterprise Affiliation; enterprise advocacy organizations; the electrical cooperatives; the Legal professional Common’s Workplace and the Workplace of Public Employees; and offshore wind builders Avangrid and TotalEnergies. The variety of intervenors signifies how excessive the stakes are as Duke retires its soiled coal fleet whereas concurrently dealing with growing load progress – all whereas assembly the carbon discount necessities established by the Common Meeting in bipartisan Home Invoice 951: cut back carbon air pollution 70% under 2005 ranges by 2030 and obtain internet zero by 2050.
Duke Seeks a 30% Enhance in Reserve Margin
It has turn into obvious that Duke has not moved shortly sufficient to satisfy the legislation’s necessities. And Duke seems caught in previous methods of serious about fossil gasoline assets. Proceedings in one other docket revealed that the utility’s operations and upkeep spending has decreased by way of the years. Then Winter Storm Elliott occurred, and Duke’s neglect doubtless contributed to the multi-faceted failure of a number of coal and fossil gasoline crops, leading to rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve in 2022. Since that point, Duke has analyzed these reliability failures and made corrections and winterizations the place it will possibly, thereby making the technology fleet extra dependable. However Duke is now asking the Fee to approve growing its reserve margin from 17% to 22% – an astonishing 30% improve. The reserve margin is the surplus capability that Duke would want to construct in an effort to keep away from occasions just like the Winter Storm Elliott failures. However one of many classes from that huge load-shed occasion ought to have been that it’s not simply concerning the amount of assets, but additionally the standard. Gasoline and coal crops skilled extra pressured outages and derates attributable to excessive chilly climate than clear choices like photo voltaic and pumped hydro storage.
Winter Storm Elliott Ought to Have Been a Wakeup Name
So to restate: Duke lowered operations and upkeep and personnel at its energy crops by way of the years – after which skilled an excessive reliability failure throughout Elliott – after which Duke acknowledged that it made the suitable winterization modifications in response to Winter Storm Elliott and thereby making the technology fleet extra dependable. However now Duke is asking for permission to overbuild the system much more, regardless of the reliability enhancements made at their crops. It tousled, however it appears to need of us to overlook that it tousled in order that it is going to be in a position to make use of that one occasion as a cause to construct (and earn a return on) a system that’s larger than is actually vital.
One frequent function of current excessive chilly climate outages across the nation has been gasoline availability – fossil gasoline was in brief provide in current winter storms, each throughout Winter Storm Elliott and through Texas’s Winter Storm Uri. In some situations, plant components froze and failed, however in different situations, there wasn’t sufficient gasoline or strain within the pipelines for the fossil gasoline crops to burn. Failures that happen at frozen gasoline wellheads and alongside the pipeline route can have a cascading impact the extra that Duke depends on gasoline sooner or later. Duke’s evaluation of reliability wants exhibits that it’s not accounting for this type of correlated outage threat, which has been a standard function in current excessive winter climate occasions.
Will this gas-reliant system that Duke is asking for take full benefit of applied sciences which might be:
- free from gasoline dangers and prices, and
- extensively deployed elsewhere – assets resembling offshore wind, battery storage, photo voltaic paired with battery storage, and aggregated behind-the-meter assets?
No, not likely.
There are some of these applied sciences, in addition to new nuclear, in Duke’s proposed plan, however largely they’re asking for lots of fossil gasoline crops. They’re asking for fossil gasoline know-how and nuclear applied sciences, additionally known as thermal assets, that Duke has appreciable expertise with. What turned obvious throughout the listening to is that Duke Power – one of many largest investor-owned utilities within the nation – doesn’t appear snug with the inverter-based non-combustion applied sciences, resembling offshore wind, photo voltaic paired with storage, and digital energy crops, which might be presently being deployed at scale by different utilities nationwide.
Battery Storage Can Present Group Resilience
In Chattanooga, the municipal utility EPB is including 36 MW of battery power storage at two decommissioned substations, and so they count on to have 150 MW of battery capability within the close to future. This looks like a small quantity, however it represents 10-15% of the town’s highest peak demand for electrical energy. Like Duke, EPB was pressured to implement rolling blackouts on Christmas Eve throughout Winter Storm Elliott in 2022. EPB buys electrical energy from TVA, which enforced the load discount throughout that occasion. Sooner or later, if TVA requires a load discount, EPB can name on battery storage reasonably than chopping off energy to clients. This can be a good instance of battery storage offering resilience for a complete group. If EPB can do that in its 600-square mile Chattanooga service space, it’s arduous to grasp Duke Power’s hesitation in deploying batteries at scale. Duke dramatically lowered the quantity of battery storage that its power-sector mannequin was allowed to pick out in its supplemental modeling, and made clear that it’s going to add storage very slowly so it will possibly study the know-how incrementally. Someway, storage integration doesn’t appear to be an issue for EPB, or for Florida or Georgia or Texas or California or Massachusetts.
Caught within the Previous and Doubling Down on Fossil Gasoline
It’s clear that Duke staff do all the things of their energy to realize a dependable grid. The rolling blackouts related to Winter Storm Elliott rightly prompted soul-searching from Duke. Nobody needs that to ever occur once more. However as a substitute of seeing that occasion as a wakeup name to deploy applied sciences that can assist keep away from a local weather disaster, Duke has gone into its shell and is doubling-down on fossil fuels. Duke is asking the Fee to approve a plan to construct gasoline crops that can lock North Carolina into an costly, inflexible, fossil gasoline dominated future. In the meantime, the remainder of the nation races forward in deploying photo voltaic and photo voltaic plus storage, onshore wind, offshore wind, aggregated behind-the-meter assets, and transmission to interconnect to areas the place the wind and photo voltaic are considerable, low-cost, and dependable.
Sooner or later, when Duke has lastly turn into snug with applied sciences lengthy after everybody else, North Carolinians shall be caught paying for gasoline infrastructure that has by that time turn into irrelevant, polluted our communities, and contributed to the local weather disaster alongside the way in which. The selections made by the Fee within the subsequent six months – whether or not to approve Duke’s plan, whether or not to approve the primary of 5 mixed cycle gasoline crops, whether or not to approve the primary of many peaker combustion generators – will decide whether or not North Carolina aggressively embraces the alternatives supplied by non-combustion alternate options resembling wind and photo voltaic and batteries and aggregated assets, or whether or not we keep tethered to local weather air pollution and fossil gasoline infrastructure.
Duke is caught prior to now, and it’s asking the Fee to let it commit North Carolina to a inflexible, costly climate-destroying gasoline future. A clear power future is right here, and it’s time Duke obtained on board.
