With the national media highlighting the possibility of rolling electrical blackouts this summer, Brent Bennett, a policy director with the Texas Public Policy Foundation said an over-reliance on renewable energy is the cause of the instability.
"As millions of Texans who suffered through the February blackouts learned firsthand, market-distorting policies that incentivize the overbuilding of wind and solar at the expense of reliable generators and weather resiliency measures are stretching the ERCOT grid to its breaking point,” Bennett wrote in a newsletter that also featured a Wall Street Journal piece on the topic. "In order to maintain affordable and reliable electricity for all Texans over the next decade, the Public Utility Commission must implement a strong statewide reliability standard to ensure all electric generators can provide power when Texans need it most.”
The Wall Street Journal published an editorial May 27 calling attention to the potential for rolling blackouts this summer. It cited a warning from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) that stated two-thirds of the United States could see rolling blackouts this summer as a result of the "green energy transition." The green energy transition has made the grid more vulnerable to the variability of weather, and the "forced transition to green energy is distorting energy markets and destabilizing the grid."
The board explains that while the Left claims that climate change is responsible for the increased volatility of the grid, weather has long been volatile and has never been a major concern due to a proper supply of baseload generators. Many baseload generators have shut down, as competing with subsidized wind and solar generators is near impossible.
The editorial cites California as an example of bad energy policy, as the state installed emergency gas fired generators last August, has continually warned of outages and had to rely on imported power from other states.
The Midwest is in for a similar experience, according to NERC. While power in the Midwest used to be relatively cheap, the area may be in for a rude awakening. Approximately 3,200 MW in net generation capacity from mostly coal and nuclear sources has gone offline since last summer, NERC said. That amount of generation could power 2.4 million homes.
Vistra, an energy supplier, has noted that it plans to retire nearly 7,000 MW of coal generation by 2027, citing the impossibility of competing with renewables due to subsidies and the “irreparably dysfunctional” market, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Glick brushed aside NERC’s warnings last week, the Journal reported.
“I think the argument about going back to the way it used to be 30 years ago—that’s not going to happen,” he said. “We’re moving forward.”