Above map from PowerOutage.us is from Saturday, January 13.
What stands out is Michigan, where hundreds of thousands of utility customers suffered blackout conditions during a massive winter cyclone.
Michigan generates 85 +percent of its power from “reliable” gas, coal, and nuclear.
Meanwhile, Iowa, with more than 62 percent renewable generation, under the same weather conditions, is lights-on and toasty.
On the west coast, Washington and Oregon jump right out at you, for good reason.
SEATTLE – The 14th largest natural gas storage facility in the United States went offline earlier today in the middle of a cold snap hitting the Pacific Northwest, causing a flurry of messages to customers urging them to reduce natural gas usage.
The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility, co-owned by Pugest Sound Energy, is located in Lewis County. According to PSE, the facility went offline around 2 p.m. on Saturday but has been slowly coming online ever since.
The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility, co-owned by Pugest Sound Energy, is located in Lewis County. According to PSE, the facility went offline around 2 p.m. on Saturday but has been slowly coming online ever since.
The storage facility provided enough gas to power upward of 6 million homes if it was all used to generate electricity. The gas network also supplies heating furnaces as cities like Seattle freeze in the coldest temperatures in the city in 14 years.
An emergency alert sent out across the gas network Saturday afternoon, a copy of which was posted on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter, by an industry worker. The notice warned that the pressure in the pipeline connecting Washington and Oregon was dropping “at a rapid rate.”
The Northwest Pipeline’s operator requested “all customers take IMMEDIATE action to reduce” demand for electricity and heat.
—
The lesson:
Reliable Transmission is more important than energy mix for reliability.
Fossil fuels, gas in particular, have serious vulnerabilities in cold weather.
Article today in AP:
https://apnews.com/article/wind-solar-energy-projects-local-opposition-eb300574867f53f8abba85127574adc3
The framing in that AP article is definitely decrying the loss of local control, including a rather unflattering picture of Ostrander. (Ironically, the ultimate “local control” is a landowner not being restricted by local zoning laws.)
I’m of mixed opinions about it. It’s a questionable precedent to erode local governance because when it’s the other party in power, they’ll have that authority as well. Texas recently erased city and county rights to do things like mask mandates – and the Republicans look like they’ll be in charge of the state for a while. Michigan could have a Republican governor and legislature again at some point, and then what?
But, on the other hand, NIMBYism is a real problem.
This made news in the NYT today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/business/energy-environment/california-rooftop-solar.html
“Thousands of companies — including installers, manufacturers and distributors — are reeling from the new policy, which took effect in April and greatly reduced incentives that had encouraged homeowners to install solar panels. Since the change, sales of rooftop solar installations in California dropped as much as 85 percent in some months of 2023 from a year earlier, according to a report by Ohm Analytics, a research firm that tracks the solar marketplace. Industry groups project that installations in the state will drop more than 40 percent this year and continue to decline through 2028.”
The Oregon map is a little misleading: those blue areas of no power out are predominately supplies by hydro, not to mention they are also considerably less populated.
That’s the chronic problem with using land-area maps to depict data that isn’t land-area relevant.
Classic example:
https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/960537_81_90771_DrdO3qFgW.gif
Add up those six green NE states and it has to be 85 to 90 thousand.