Shellenberger reported in his right off that in the face of widespread public outrage, the Biden Administration last month backed away from a proposal to create a disinformation board at the Department of Homeland Security. But now it’s back with new demands to censor its critics, this time using a tactic that has worked in the recent past: by framing them as a threat to public health. In a talk with Axios, Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said, “The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.”
But later on, Shellenberger opines that the increased use of weather-dependent renewables is today increasing the risk of blackouts. California’s grid operator predicts blackouts if high heat, wildfires, or delays in adding these new sources of energy exacerbate the constraints. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which manages the Midwest electrical grid, said last month that lack of power plants may force it to cut power. And in Texas, the grid operator warned of similarly tight conditions during a heat wave.
“The risk of electricity shortages is rising throughout the U.S. as traditional power plants are being retired more quickly than they can be replaced by renewable energy and battery storage,” noted the Wall Street Journal. “Power grids are feeling the strain as the U.S. makes a historic transition from conventional power plants fueled by coal and natural gas to cleaner forms of energy such as wind and solar power, and aging nuclear plants are slated for retirement in many parts of the country.”
All of these challenges come at a time when McCarthy and the Biden administration are demanding yet more subsidies for weather-dependent renewables, which could be threatened by the concerns being raised about renewables. “As we move forward, we need to know that when you put a solar panel or a wind turbine up, it’s not the same as a thermal resource” such as a nuclear or natural gas plant, warned the head of MISO.
Last month, the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) warned that large regions of the U.S. are at high risk of blackouts this summer due to warmer temperatures and lack of power plants. It also raised the alarm about what it described as the increasingly urgent hazard to grid operations from the electronic controls that link solar and wind projects to high-voltage grid networks known as power inverters. They must be programmed to “ride through” disturbances like the loss of a power plant or high-voltage line. Dangerously often, said NERC, they are not.
The NERC report specifically cited solar project power outages in Texas and California last year. The events resulted in power plants going off-line. “That is one of the most dangerous things to happen on the bulk power system,” said a NERC official.
Wind and solar projects produce direct current (DC) power which is converted to alternating current (AC) electricity through its inverter. As such, they are often called “inverter resources.” Reliable, non-weather dependent power plants, like nuclear and natural gas ones, generate AC, so there is no inverter. The grid is intended to operate at a steady frequency. If there is too much demand for electricity on the grid system, such as on a hot summer day, and a power plant goes down, or a transmission line is disrupted, the frequency drops off. Traditional power plants have a lot of inertia and are not likely to turn off when that happens. Rather, they slow down until reserve systems kick in to provide additional energy and return the frequency to the required level.
Inverter-resources — solar and wind projects — will, on the other hand, trip off if they have not been programmed to respond to the drop in frequency. “If a large solar plant trips off when frequency is already diminished,” notes Lisa Linowes, an energy expert with the Wildlife Energy and Communities Coalition, “that can cause a cascading effect where the whole grid goes down — i.e the frequency drops to below an allowed threshold.”
Notes Linowes, “NERC's report makes clear that there are no regulations mandating the solar/wind guys install smart inverters or at least implement the ‘ride-through’ to keep the facility from tripping off. In fact, there are no mandated standards for inverter resources when connecting to the grid.” Linowes points to catastrophic failures in the UK in August 2019 and Australia in September 2016 due to large wind projects tripping off following a sudden loss of power elsewhere on the grid.
McCarthy has in the past worked both for the Center for American Progress (CAP), which is calling for censorship, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Both CAP and NRDC have accepted funding, or invested directly in, natural gas and renewable energy companies that have a direct interest in passing federal legislation. Could these financial motivations be driving their demands for censorship of renewable energy’s critics?
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