Chattanooga Electrical Engineering News Blog
Topics Related to Electronics and Electrical Engineering
A recent NPR article warns that much of the nation’s power grid is vulnerable to the winter threat approaching with major winter storms that could cause power outages and power shortages potentially affecting over 60% of US and Canada.
“North America’s power grid is vulnerable…People living in Southwestern states are at particular risk.”
TVA’s load growth demand forecasted is expecting over a 30% increase in power demand within the next decade. Like other utilities trending away from fossil fuel power generation due to stringent carbon emission regulations, TVA is retiring their coal-powered plants and replacing with cleaner energy generation and renewable resources.
The trend of moving away from older fossil fuel technology to cleaner generation systems is very costly. TVA recognizes this and has approved moving forward with capital expenditures of $15 billion that it will invest over the next 3 years by performing system reliability upgrades and transition into cleaner energy supply.
As coal power and other fossil fuels continue to decline as the nation’s leading power generation source, more power utilities are increasing renewable energy sources such as solar power.
Pennsylvania is replacing their planned fossil fuel generation retirements with clean solar power. The state is helping promote more jobs and job transitions for the green switch from traditional carbon emission type power generation into renewable energy resources.
With the increases in power generation retirements in both coal powered and nuclear energy plants, presents major reliability concerns to the electric infrastructure. There is over “83 GW of fossil fuel and nuclear generation” in planned retirements over the next decade that could wreak havoc on the nations power system.
NERC indicated in their “Long-Term Reliability Assessment” that this “creates blackout risks for most of the United States.”
The Memphis Light Gas & Water (MLGW) board decided to reject the long-term agreement with power supplier TVA. “The deal – if approved – would have included a 3.1% base rate decrease, but a TVA spokesperson said since the deal was rejected, the company is committed to holding rates steady for the next decade, following the past four years of no rate increases.
‘We are just so excited that we broke through on this issue,’ Protect Our Aquifer Executive Director Sarah Houston added. ‘We have been adamant for months that TVA’s never-ending contract is a bad deal for Memphis.’ “
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued “new mandatory standards for inverter-based resources (IBRs) in an effort to enhance the reliability of the bulk electric system. IBRs are solar photovoltaic, wind, fuel cell and battery storage resources that use power electronic devices to change direct current power to alternating current power, to be transmitted on the bulk-power system.
In its November 17 action orders, FERC focused on three IBR-relateded actions: