Power Plant Retirements Are Affecting Grid Reliability!

Grid-Reliability
Photo from Utility Dive / Sean Gallup / Getty Images

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.”

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Multiple Power Utilities Affected by Recent Cyber Attacks!

Power-Utilities-Cyber-Attacks

The US Electrical Grid Infrastructure continues to be vulnerable to cyber attackers and foreign nation state adversaries in attempts to bring havoc on power systems that supply other critical infrastructures.

Cyber security protection continues to be a major focus on power utilities and other critical systems. These cyber threats continue after power companies and their contractors as in the recent attacks.

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Memphis Light Gas & Water Rejects 20-Year TVA Power Contract

MLGW

By Local Memphis News:

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.’ “

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China Reveals World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Turbine

China-Wind-Turbine

By PowerMag:

“Two Chinese companies announced production of the largest offshore wind turbine built to date, a 16-MW unit developed by China Three Gorges (CTG) and Goldwind.

The groups on Nov. 24 showed off the turbine at a factory in Fujian province. The turbine has a 252-meter rotor diameter, with a 50,000-meter sweep area. The hub height is 146 meters.

Lei Mingshan, chairman of CTG, in a statement said, ‘the successful rollout of the 16-MW unit marks that my country’s wind power equipment industry has achieved a historic leap from ‘following’ to ‘running alongside’ and then to ‘leading’, creating the latest benchmark for the development of global offshore wind power equipment.’ ”

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FERC Tightens Regulations for Inverter Based Resources

FERC-Regulatory

By Renewable Energy World:

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:

  • An order directing the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) to develop a plan to register the entities that own and operate IBRs;
  • A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to direct NERC to develop reliability standards for IBRs that cover data sharing, model validation, planning and operational studies, and performance requirements; and
  • An order approving reliability standards that are related to IBRs, which NERC proposed earlier in 2022.”

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Higher Electricity Prices Estimated for this Winter Season

Winter-Peak-Power-Demand

By UtilityDive:

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) reported that “the grid operator’s extreme winter weather scenario shows that peak demand could increase to as much as 26,086 MW, higher than its previous all-time winter peak.

NYISO repeated its earlier warning that it expects a sharp rise in wholesale electricity prices, and in consumer bills, this winter due to lingering impacts of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that the price of natural gas delivered to electric generators would average $8.81/MMBtu this summer, up from $3.93/MMBtu in 2021.”

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