Electric Grid Nearing Overload Due to “Green” Energy Push and AI
It’s one of the reasons I started prepping two years ago. We are one spark away from a breakdown, and our stupid policies of forcing people to use more electricity are a big part of the problem.
I don’t get everything right (like primaries), but I’m right about the danger from our increasing “green” reliance on the electric grid.
It’s one of the reasons I’ve been prepping:
My prepping really hasn’t been for the “worst case scenario” – it’s been for the most likely bad scenario, mostly focused on energy grids on which we depend, and food.
The surest sign that the problem is really, really bad is that even WaPo is writing about it:
Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid….
The soaring demand is touching off a scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid while pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants.
“When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.” ….
The power crunch imperils their ability to supply the energy that will be needed to charge the millions of electric cars and household appliances required to meet state and federal climate goals….
It is all happening at the same time the energy transition is steering large numbers of Americans to rely on the power grid to fuel vehicles, heat pumps, induction stoves and all manner of other household appliances that previously ran on fossil fuels. A huge amount of clean energy is also needed to create the green hydrogen championed by the White House, as developers rush to build plants that can produce the powerful zero-emissions fuel, lured by generous federal subsidies.
Planners are increasingly concerned that the grid won’t be green enough or powerful enough to meet these demands….
“Utilities are not going to be able to move quickly enough to provide all this capacity,” said Christine Weydig, vice president of transportation at AlphaStruxure, which designs and operates clean-energy projects. “The infrastructure is not there. Different solutions will be needed.” Airports, she said, are looking into dramatically expanding the use of clean-power “microgrids” they can build on-site.
The Biden administration has made easing the grid bottleneck a priority, but it is a politically fraught process, and federal powers are limited. Building the transmission lines and transfer stations needed involves huge land acquisitions, exhaustive environmental reviews and negotiations to determine who should pay what costs.
We are one spark away from a breakdown, and our stupid policies of forcing people to use more electricity are a big part of the problem.
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Comments
Indeed. Just another fine example of the virtue signaling mindset of the left, who always go to extremes on their policies and NEVER, at least not in my lifetime, consider the consequences of their actions.
Just another example of policy dictating common sense and science. At least we will get to see these schemes in action in Californica first, where they are going whole hog into EVs etc, and already have black/brown outs (do I have to capitalize those now?) and they will become increasingly worse.
It will be fitting to get these crashes before the election, but they would find a way to use the loss of electricity to sleaze ballots in or commit some other type of typical Dem fraud.
The mountain areas of California are hugely vulnerable. People froze to death 50 miles from LA. Cali is banning all home generators that run on gasoline. The coastal elite will just postpone their ski trips until the bodies are removed.
NYS banned rural pellet stoves some years ago.
And installation of natural gas in new construction starting in 2026, though, the way things are going there won’t be a need for new construction of any sort in New York State by then.
Here is a new term to learn: Load Shedding Event.
That is where utilities start kicking people off because there is not enough power for everyone.
I remember when peak shaving was big…buy propane when it is cheap and power local turbogenerators when demand is high, shaving the load on the grid.
It can be done via hydro…even miserable Fairfield County, SC has a pumped storage system.
Now, they want to skip the generators and just pull electricity directly off your EV when grid demand is high. They call it Grid Edge Evolution.
This is true. But when working correctly, your power will be off for about 15 – 30 minutes. Then your power will be restored and somebody elses power will be shut off for a few minute. When “it” is working correctly.
“It” is the grid management software that can automatically shed load when necessary to keep the grid stable.
Here in Texas the utilities have commercial rates for companies and (IIRC) institutions such as schools. When power demands are exceptionally high (e.g. 115 degree afternoons) those with commercial rates have contracts allowing their service to be reduced or cut to free up power for residential use. So far EV charging in Texas isn’t a huge issue, AFAIK, but something will have to be done about that if this madness continues. I heard on the radio that car rental companies are forcing customers to use EVs, over the customers’ objections.
I have to disagree. These are the exact consequences they are looking for. The left is looking to stop all industrial production in order to crush modern society to death. They are nihilists. They hate themselves and they despise everything that reminds them of themselves … US. They are the sickest and most deranged people who have ever been.
This is what they want. Well, at least it’s a step in the direction they want – to reduce America and the West to rubble, basically. They could not give a damn about “virtue”. They don’t even believe in the concept of morality. They are just using it to attack our society. They don’t love the Earth; they hate humanity. It is the destruction of modern society that is their real goal.
Do these numbskulls understand basic principles of electric current? There is an issue called power factor that is a vector of two types of work performed via current…the amount required to create a magnetic field and the amount that actually performs work. Power factor losses in an unbalanced grid create I²r losses which result in heat.
In other words, our electrical grid is leaking heat into our atmpsphere.
That sounds very science-y, with math n everything.
Are you an “expert”, or one of those conspiracy theorists reasoning from first principles, and what’s actually observed?
35 years of industrial maintenance, working from 5.5 vdc to 39,500 volts AC.
Current rises in porportion to the square of the resistance as electricity wants to do work, and it it can’t rotate a shaft or move weight it will do work in the form of heat
So, an expert who knows things, in the really, real world, not an “expert” like gets quoted to bolster policy they’ve already decided on.
no
Power factor is a read thing, inductive loads like motors have to be balanced out with capacitors. Motors cause phase shift in one direction, capacitators in the other. Factories routinely correct phase shift on site. Yes, voltage drop in the grid does dissipate heat
Well, when a joke doesn’t land, you blame the joke, not the audience.
Scooterjay is obviously speaking from experience, using math and actual science. Vs. our politically-quoted non-expert experts who bloviate whatever’s convenient, based on none of that.
That’s the point I was trying to make, and missed.
Scooterjay speaks from a knowledgable position. To somebody not having the background it might look like geekspeak, but it’s true. This is junior high school level science – at least it was when I was in junior high school. Not sure about what it is now.
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Well, when a joke doesn’t land, you blame the joke, not the audience.
What you said is exactly the point I was trying to make, and missed.
The numbskulls do not care about basic electrical principals. Their interest is not in P=V x I; their interest is in absolute, boot-stomping political power – no reactive component, just pure PF of 1.0 for themselves.
Follow california off the cliff, and ban gas cars, and americans going to need to adjust to the new normal of rolling blackouts like lesser developed countries. The lights go dim for hour every week or so in places like jakarta. That’s just the way things have always been.
build coal plants 2 a month …
like China has done and is doing
or build nuke … lots of safety has been built in since 3. mile island
they have “mini” plants that can help take the load off of main coal/gas powered plants ….
Nukes would be great, but transmission is still a big issue. As indicated in this article, if we are going to electrify society, we have to build the grid for that.
A reasonable plan to improve and expand the grid plus sincere research into Gen IV nuclear would be a good contribution from government, rather than forcing technology on people.
The 50-60MW SMRs (small modular reactors) take very little space and are self-contained. They’re also designed to fail-safe: if there’s a problem, the system shuts down gracefully based on physical principles, not mechanical. Put them near the places that need energy, and use the wider grid to balance load, not transfer massive amounts of energy from generation to consumption.
this is what I was talking about
I read a lot … pick up bits and pieces of info … so I know these things exist .. just not the whole picture.
Everything old is new again.
Back in the day, lots of mfg plants n similar sized facilities did on-site generation because the grid wasn’t good enough, cost too much, or both. The grid fed into their internal power management … maybe.
These days, the same magic tech that inspires green grid fantasies has way more impact on point of use generation, distribution n storage. The threshold keeps getting lower for “the grid” to be just feeding your internal power management.
Back in the day, homesteads were largely self-sufficient at a much lower tech level. Even a century-old, in-city postage stamp can provide a lot of what you need, even today. Those file cabinet apartment pods where you recharge on NetFlix and DoorDash between shifts are different: you’re only consuming from the system, when you aren’t producing into the system. Precarious setup, that.
Pre rural electrification Jacab were hands down the best. They are still in demand and rare.
Jacobs Wind Electric
https://www.jacobswind.net
These micro-hydro guys are interesting:
https://www.microhydropower.com/
I don’t know much about crypto, but from what I read, it uses more electricity for “mining” than some countries.
Yes it uses a lot. I’m sure collective mining of some of the larger currencies outstrips some of the very low power countries. But that’s not really saying much since there are small states that also outstrip those countries. Also, there are a handful of countries still with no power on the “dark continent”.
My point being that we’re strapped for electricity and “crypto” wastes tons of it, while the PTB are whining about a shortage.
My point being we live in a first world country. Why are we even talking about electricity shortages when we can build mini nuke plants everywhere and fire up gas powered electric plants. Instead we are shutting plants down. Where I live they announced closing a coal powered plant, building a ton of solar farms which are eating up the countryside and now want a 40% increase in electric rates. This while warning of brown or blackouts this summer.
My point being that we live in the world as it is, not as you would have it.
Gonna be a hell of a fight upcoming as the urban areas demand transmission lines be built across rural areas to feed them the electricity they consume buy refuse to produce. In some ways this holds true for entire regions. Bottom line is if State X wants sufficient electricity they will produce it inside their State and if unwilling to do so to meet a reasonable minimum, say 95% of peak load, then eff them they can go kick rocks in the dark.
Cut off California, that would hep the grid and serve them right.
I’m perfectly fine with denying access to run those transmission lines into enemy territory.
Jamie Dimon of JPMORGANis already encouraging use of eminent domain for these projects. Normally eminent domain is limited to some local community benefit like a local sewer line project. This is a whole new animal which would have power generated in State A, used in State B but flow across transmission lines newly erected in States C,.D, E and so on.
That is already the case for most of the country isn’t it? Only Texas has its own grid, as far as I know, and the PTB are always itching to hitch us to the national grid.
Not really. Alabama Power, Mississippi Power and Georgia Power all work together b/c they are owned by the same holding company. They all also work well with the local electric co-operatives in each State. It’s mostly load balance and helping neighbors.
What Dimon is proposing is acquiring land in the southwest including TX. Building solar and wind farms. Then building new high voltage transmission lines to send the electricity generated to the East Coast and West Coast. So the Citizens of TX won’t share in the completed project as would be the case with a local sewer line project where an easement may be needed but you can connect to it. The project is wholly to push power out of the State, across other States until it reaches the coastal States/Cities where those residents get to enjoy the electricity but not those along the route in any meaningful way.
and those lines are easy enuff
to destroy
It’s almost like Elon Musk literally warned all of the fed gov about this problem and they decided to roast him for it.
The grid is NOT overloaded. This is not a problem with the grid.
The “green” push you are describing is causing a POWER SUPPLY SHORTAGE.
That’s a very defferint thing from the grid. Transmission and Distribution systems are fine.
Decommissioning nuclear and cosl POWER PLANTS does not overload the grid, it results in over- dependence on incredibly unreliable “green” sources of energy. At peak load, extreme heat or cold, that is precisely when these “green” sources are producing almost nothing.
I know. I buy electricity by the megawatt daily for a distribution electric company. I see exactly what is available, and at what price, at every moment all day every day.
Stop blaming the distribution and transmission electric companies for POWER SUPPLY shortages that are entirely dur to Democrat POLITICAL actions that are shutting down cheap, abundant, and reliable sources of electricity in favor of massively overpriced, and extremely unreliable, “green” sources.
This is NOT a problem with the grid.
You’d think people would have some slight clue as to how the world works.
Apparently not.
I think you are battling semantics. In this case, “the grid” is being used as euphemism for the sources of power that are put onto the grid and thus “supplied” by the grid.
Yeah, I think that when everyone is talking about The Grid they are not being very specific but are talking about generation and distribution together. People should be clearer what they mean.
Aarradin’s comment sounds like semantics, but he is correct. And the problem needs to be correctly defined so that the correct solution can be determined.
An overloaded grid would need more transmission lines, or upgraded conductors.
But the overwhelming problem is a lack of generation.
We need to stop retirning power plants and we need to build more power plants.
The EPA is destroying our electrical supply.
Yes, but the semantics are what they are. When people talk about “the grid” they mean the source of power, which comprises both transmission and generation. Just like when they talk about “the cloud,” they are talking about both remote computer storage and the Internet.
Long transmissions lines = significant loss of energy. Also, as the load increases so does that loss.
Which is why ambient temperature super conductivity is one of the Holy Grails
There are parts of the grid which are not overloaded, parts that are. The best solution is distributed power production, like solar electric and small nuclear plants near high loads. That and tossing illegals out, they represent wasted power.
“PEREGRUZKA!!” — Shrillary
In the heating season you can get free computation by replacing furnaces with armies of computers. When heat is required, they mine bitcoin. A watt might as well do a watt computation before it turns into a watt of heat.
100% efficient only for resistive heating, but lesser for other types.
Resistive heating is expensive and wasteful. I question rather bitcoin mining is worthwhile. I see bitcoin as a pyramid scam. There is nothing tangible.
Bitcoin has a tangible use in being money – if it can ever actually serve as such. And that, by itself, is worth a lot. Many might doubt whether bitcoin will become some true form of money (I certainly have serious doubts about that – not about the idea of cryptocurrencies, but about bitcoin, specifically, and at these valuations) but if it does then its value is serious and important.
Gold (or other elements) will always present much better foundations for extra-governmental money but cryptos have some very serious particular advantages over physical money as regards transport, transactions, and borders. Personally, I think that Rhenium is the best candidate for real reserve money, right now, given its dirt cheap price and extreme rarity.
But bitcoin is something real. It is hyped to the heavens, right now, but there is a serious pressing need for independent money that governments cannot control (which bitcoin is not, though it is a good step in that direction). The energy used for mining bitcoin is just energy that people want to pay to use. We should have surplus energy so that people can use as much as they can pay for rather than worrying about what people are using energy for.
“It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation.”
Plenty of people foresaw these problems…just not anyone they wanted to listen to.
What do you do when your desperate unprepped neighbors come a knocking? Unless you are prepared to threaten deadly force, you need a remote, desolate location and the means to get there.
I’m not prepared to threaten deadly force, I’m prepared to use it if they come to steal the things keeping my family alive if it’s a shtf scenario.
The neighbor across the road suggested if the SHTF and people from the cities start coming out to our area we should close the Farm Road at two points and nobody but locals will be allowed to enter. Neither of us wish for things to come to that, but as diver64 notes it is a matter of self and family preservation.
In the recent cold snap in the Southeast, the temperatures dropped below the changeover set points for many peoples’ heat pumps and they went on electric strip heat. The temps stayed below the changeover for a week or more, meaning they heated their homes with the most expensive heat source they had. Now they’re screaming about their electricity bills and blaming Alabama Power for the expense. Explaining this in the most elementary way often is greeted with a deer-in-the-headlights look.
Meanwhile, we who have high efficiency heat pumps backed up by a high efficiency gas furnace worry little about the extra expense, especially if we took the wise choice to sign up for budget billing years ago.
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Or a simple auxiliary heat source like a fireplace or woodstove or even a propane/Nat gas wall mounted vented heater(s).
Here in the Frozen North, the backup heat is often a gas furnace, built right into the zoned, central air ducting. Of course, the state is busy getting rid off gas furnaces in new homes. Getting rid of gas stoves came after that.
Pre rural electrification Jacab were hands down the best. They are still in demand and rare.
Jacobs Wind Electric
https://www.jacobswind.net
nc here … electric heat pump
temp goes below 40 and the
propane furnace kicks in …
also a member of the co op ….
For about 5 bucks in .308 ammo, a couple of tweekers could take down the grid of the east coast.
BTW – an ad on this site is hijacking the page.
“When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
Codswallop, you whippersnapper.
Back in the late 50’s, the cause celebre of the chattering classes — as pressured by the electric utilities themselves — was the “All-Electric Home.” “Quiet, clean, dependable baseboard heating” was the rage.
My father, a heating and refrigerating professional, was incensed. Electric was the most expensive and least efficient choice for heating. At least in Rhode Island — where, when s* got real, s* got COLD — the economical choice was fuel oil, followed by gas, if you were lucky enough to have lines nearby. Resistive electricity (there were no heat pumps then) was at the very bottom. (Coal didn’t have much presence in RI, and wood was “for poor people.”)
So if you want to know how we got here, look in a mirror. Or at least a family photo album.
Do you recall the approximate transmission loss number: generation to point of use? I recall something like 50%, but can’t recall the source right now. So, suspect.
Might one note the following? It appears that the Goody-Two-Shoesers have done it again.
With a cast iron stove capable of either wood or coal for operation, along with kerosene heaters (and Aladdin lamps for light) it has been our backup/emergency heat supply. Wish that anthracite coal were readily available (could be shipped at exorbitant rates), excellent heat source which can sit out in the weather long term without rotting like wood.