This morning, a large nuclear unit tripped instantly offline in Texas.
The graph above shows what that looks like on the ERCOT grid.
The grid held up, but it shows how every energy source presents its own challenges to grid operators.
This is not to beat up on nuclear plants, which exist, and are a great low carbon resource most of the time, but it’s a myth that nuclear plants are “always available”. They have intermittency, just like every other resource, either for sudden outages like this or planned month-long shutdowns for refueling – and grid operators have to plan accordingly.
By comparison, Solar and Wind are, yes, variable, but quite predictable, and thus inherently simpler for operators to compensate.
Texas, and other states, are adding massive energy storage that will make the grid more resilient to every situation.
As more EVs pop up in garages, they could become additional storage capacity could be available for emergencies, providing even more security.
A zero carbon grid will be much more resilient and reliable than the one we’ve had in the past.
South Texas Project Electric Generating Station officials declared an ‘Unusual Event’ around 7:20 a.m. after losing offsite power led to Unit 1 reactor tripping offline.
The incident was followed by a fire in the switchyard, which prompted immediate action from on-site crews. Local county emergency response teams and nearby industry partners were called in to assist with firefighting efforts.Officials with the nuclear charging station say the fire has been extinguished, and no injuries have been reported. Unit 1 remains offline and is under close monitoring by licensed plant operators. As a precaution, power output from Unit 2 was reduced to approximately 90 percent due to the conditions in the switchyard.
Despite the incident, both units are in a safe condition, and there is no danger to the public.
The Unusual Event classification is the lowest of four nuclear emergency levels and indicates an occurrence that deviates from normal plant operations without threatening public safety.
South Texas Project officials are working with federal, state, and local authorities to investigate the cause of the fire and ensure all safety protocols are upheld.
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Below, News report from WFAA on a similar event last year.
This is a ‘Man Bites Dog!!’ story. Today, and every day this month in Texas’ ERCOT grid area, solar dropped from ~6 gigawatts to zero in about an hour, gas and coal each went up a GW or two to make up. Nuclear had been producing 118 or 119 gigawatt-hours every day for the previous month. By my reckoning 24 hours by 4 reactors at 1.2 GW apiece = 115 GWhrs, so that’s as close to 100% as you get. Solar and wind combined made about 5x as much power together, over the month, as nuclear, but on any given day (for wind), or hour (for solar), that could be well over the average, or none. That’s no problem on a grid that’s 60% fossil powered, but will become one, increasingly so, as weather-dependent power sources increase.
Well what you do with solar and wind is add batteries and capacity. Generate much more power than you need and store the excess for when overall state weather limits production. It would certainly help when other power source go down.
“That’s no problem on a grid that’s 60% fossil powered, but will become one, increasingly so, as weather-dependent power sources increase.” Just curious, at what point will a lowering of fossil fuel powered grid electricity result in increasing problems? The number keep changing as more renewables are added and the falling of the cliff of reliability doesn’t happen. So, what is the new number? 50%, 40%? When should I start clutching my pearls?
“I’ve lost track of the number of times clean energy has been accused of being incapable of performing a certain task, but then does it anyway.” Julian Spector
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/electric-vehicles/newsletter-electric-trucking-is-coming-sooner-than-you-think
“It’s become increasingly obvious over the past few decades that all-renewable electricity can work well pretty much anywhere. Denial is increasingly confined to the uninformed.”
Amory Lovins, Inside Climate News, Aug. 25, 2022
Can’t find it in my notes but I think it was RMI’s Kingsmill Bond who talked about people saying VREs couldn’t be more than 2% of a grid. When it passed 2% they switched almost 1984-mid-sentence-style to 5%, then 10%, & so on. No upper limit’s been found yet. Ramez Naam suggested a rule that as much VRE can be added as their capacity factor, but Scotland, Denmark, & others are well beyond it because they’re each part of a larger grid. Didn’t say whether there was a formula or fudge factor for overlaps: 63% wind + 22% solar = 85% VRE? or something less, or more? (Also said no storage is needed til VRE reaches ~80%.)
Please show me someone who expects a flat line output from solar so I can slap them silly. Note that while those cheap, water-stingy, fuel-free 6GW were being cranked out, that was 6GW of non-FF thermal plants being displaced. Furthermore, the reason that the gas and coal didn’t have to crank out the full replacement was because grid batteries had been charging up when all of that cheap energy was available.
For us in Texas under the heat dome in 2023, solar+storage kept the grid from resorting the rolling blackouts despite record demand. Similarly, California survived a scorching heat wave with record demand in large part due to the solar+storage being added there.
Some apologists for nuclear power plants whine that energy sources with completely different cost and output profiles are no good because they aren’t like the perfect steady thermal nuclear power plants staffed and monitored 24/7 by highly trained technicians.