FERC maintains mandatory https://scriptmafia.org/tutorials/576944-iso-50001-energy-management-master-energy-management-system.html technical standards for reliability that are imposed on U.S. regional power grid operators. The “bulk power system” includes generation and transmission infrastructure. A variety of technologies contribute to a reliable power grid, based on each of their strengths and weaknesses.
Due to environmental, seasonal and daily cycles, renewables cannot consistently produce energy throughout the day and may generate more than is needed during peak cycles. The electric grid is a complex system in which grid operators must ensure power supply and demand are always balanced to avoid blackouts or other system failures. We have already demonstrated the ability of the grid to maintain reliable operation with high levels of variable renewable energy. Nationally, growth in wind and solar power generation from 1% in 2008 to 13% in 2022 has not caused the grid to become less reliable (EIA 2023, CRS 2022). Wind and solar resources https://themors.com/two-silvers-one-surge-how-hall-and-ogden-rewrote-the-days-script-for-team-usa/ tend to be maximized due to their inexpensive operating costs ($0 fuel costs). The current grid requires electricity to be generated as it is needed.
There is no reliability authority for natural gas pipelines, including intra- and https://uofa.ru/en/ob-utverzhdenii-instrukcii-po-tehnicheskoi-ekspluatacii-zdanii/ inter-state pipelines. Yet FERC’s requirements for interregional planning have largely caused grid operators to merely “check the boxes” and have not, for the most part, led to connections across the seams between regions. The lack of similar federal approval and siting authority over the interstate electric grid has resulted in a patchwork of siloed private, public, and hybrid government actors at federal and state levels that occasionally work together collaboratively but often do not, making necessary grid modernization difficult.
Smart Grid Technologies
Part I of the paper introduces the electricity grid and its current challenges, while Part II describes the current governance regime for the grid. The economics of clean energy have shifted, the private sector is already building out a carbon-free generation portfolio, and our grid reliability institutions are, perversely, now some of the primary barriers to a reliable grid. Yet agency decarbonization efforts and the growth of renewable energy have not been the primary culprits of recent major reliability failures. Blame has also been directed at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as it works to fulfill its mandate to protect Americans from the health and welfare impacts of climate change. Even the country’s main reliability regulator, NERC, has raised concerns about the rise of renewable energy contributing to our country’s growing grid reliability woes.4
- The requirement for increased utility infrastructure is causing electricity prices to increase and forcing utilities to seek measures that would make data centers cover more of the risk in their investments.
- Redundant lines, transformers, and backup generators allow the system to reroute power or increase generation when a component fails, significantly improving reliability and operational flexibility.
- Renewable energy solutions are already powering communities across the nation, with renewables plus storage delivering safe, reliable backup power and year-round benefits.
- If energy market prices are allowed to reach high levels, retailers may file for bankruptcy instead of paying their wholesale market obligations.
- This white paper argues that the primary cause of our unreliable grid is not the changing energy mix but rather a failure of grid governance.
As you might imagine, this has catastrophic consequences – like changing rainfall patterns and increasing droughts and wildfires – all of which affect our power grid at every level. And without major modification to how we contribute to the current climate crisis, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects warming to increase to nearly 40 degrees fahrenheit by the year 2100. Ensuring resilience with distributed renewable energy, storage and microgrids is paramount. Renewable energy solutions are already powering communities across the nation, with renewables plus storage delivering safe, reliable backup power and year-round benefits. For areas that are hurricane-prone or susceptible to natural disasters, microgrids built on solar and storage can address the need for increased resiliency. Resilience is chief among the benefits of microgrids, as they can disconnect from the larger grid and restore power to a community as soon as an outage occurs.
Essential reliability services
In the early days of data-center development in Virginia, data centers required between 10 megawatts and 20 megawatts of electricity, which has now grown to at least 300 megawatts. Utilities particularly want assurances from tech companies that they will pay for surplus costs if forecasted AI demand results in more power lines and plants than U.S. data centers ultimately need. Utilities want tech companies to pay more to connect their new data centers to the power grid, as the cost of new power infrastructure needed to serve data-center demand could further raise rates for other customers.
- For areas that are hurricane-prone or susceptible to natural disasters, microgrids built on solar and storage can address the need for increased resiliency.
- Less dramatically, Congress might draw from existing strengths and give FERC’s Office of Electric Reliability (OER), which currently serves an oversight and collaborative role with NERC and states, primary authority to propose reliability standards to FERC.
- Ranks are simply indicators of current standing, but the demand on our energy systems is growing everywhere.
- Improving data collection practices to become more standardized and reflect different levels of the grid is necessary to capture the complexities of grid needs to a sufficient level of detail.
- Recent public policy discourse has focused on the impact of load growth on grid reliability, particularly from data centers, and some policies go as far as trying to prescribe certain types of generators in the name of meeting reliability needs.
- Underneath all of these entities, the actors responsible for the more granular implementation of NERC’s reliability standards include “reliability coordinators,” which work to “prevent or mitigate emergency operating situations.”25
Distributed Energy Resources and Microgrids
- Due to the instability that solar and wind generators can cause to the grid, FERC approved new standards to increase grid reliability.
- One approach that is becoming increasingly cost effective and growing in popularity is to combining renewable energy projects, like wind and solar, with battery storage.
- Existing distributed frameworks have yet to address scalability issues resulting from the growing number and diversity of distributed renewable resources like rooftop and community solar panels, electric vehicles, smart thermostats.
- And particularly when they include batteries, DERs can provide the very type of flexible and reactive power necessary to respond to rapid fluctuations in output from large-scale renewable energy generation.
- It’s the job of the utility company to manage electricity supply, demand and transmission in a safe and sufficient way so end users can trust that their lights will turn on when they flip a switch.
- Federal and state policies driving the electrification of transportation and other sectors are causing recently flat electricity use (“load”) to increase, demanding more rapid expansion of electricity generation.13 The most cost-effective new resources, solar and wind, are largely weather-dependent and require balancing to preserve reliability.
However, NERC is aware of new challenges and regularly highlights intermittent renewables and climate-induced events such as wildfires, drought, and extreme weather in its reports.36 Yet when NERC goes to address these challenges, it tends to focus on traditional solutions squarely within its wheelhouse, rather than think systemically or dynamically. Underneath all of these entities, the actors responsible for the more granular implementation of NERC’s reliability standards include “reliability coordinators,” which work to “prevent or mitigate emergency operating situations.”25 There is growing attention to technical approaches to enhancing the reliability of an evolving, expanding U.S. electric grid.17 But these technical approaches, which already exist, will only be implemented with a major overhaul of grid governance—the system that dictates how the grid changes, how quickly it changes, and how reliably it operates. Federal and state policies driving the electrification of transportation and other sectors are causing recently flat electricity use (“load”) to increase, demanding more rapid expansion of electricity generation.13 The most cost-effective new resources, solar and wind, are largely weather-dependent and require balancing to preserve reliability.
In 2018, FERC encouraged the expansion of batteries by ordering that grid operators allow storage resources to participate in all wholesale markets. Large (transmission-scale) and small (distribution-scale) energy storage—primarily through batteries—is a critical component of grid reliability as resource variability increases and the grid experiences more threats from weather extremes and other natural disasters. Microgrids, such as mid-scale solar arrays located in a community area and paired with a battery, can also provide critical peaker power and electricity during a blackout. Nearly all the midwestern states opted out, preventing large-scale demand response from enhancing grid reliability throughout large parts of the country.84
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