In case you think someone has the answer to New York’s looming energy disaster – Would you enjoy it?
IN This post last week, I note that New York’s electric grid operator, NYISO, recently issued some clear, if not explicit, warnings about the impossibility of energy transition as required by the Energy Security Act. State’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Advocates (CLCPA). in one Report November 2023NYISO stated (buried on page 52) that “DEFR is needed to balance intermittent supply with demand,” and those DEFRs must be “considerable capacity.” DEFR is the elusive and yet-to-be-invented “dispatchable zero-emissions resource.” At a conference the following month, Zachary Smith, NYISO’s Deputy Director of Systems Integration Planning, reiterated the need for these DEFRs in large numbers. Smith presented charts quantifying the DEFR capacity needed for New York to “balance” its future intermittent wind/solar supply at over 30 GW. 30 GW is roughly equal to the state’s peak electricity demand and roughly equivalent to the existing capacity of New York’s natural gas plants, all of which are required to close by 2040.
So what is the answer to the big DEFR conundrum? The Public Service Commission of New York, acting in accordance with its ordinary course, has initiated a proceeding, under the Proceed 15-E-0302to discover the answer. My co-blogger in New York, Roger Caiazza call this the “DEFR Proceedings”, although I don’t see the PSC using that name. Everyone can submit their great thoughts and ideas. So far there appear to be more than 22,000 entries entered into the docket – more than any human could read.
In just the past few days, some major comments from key players have emerged. On Monday (June 17), a comment that appeared on this DEFR docket was co-signed by two environmental NGOs, Earth Justice and the Sierra Club. These are two of the biggest, best-funded and loudest advocates of the urgent need for an immediate energy transition away from fossil fuels. With hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and a large staff, these guys have certainly found the answer to the DEFR conundrum.
In fact, incredibly, they had no clue at all. The basic approach of their Comment was to reject the whole idea that a large amount of DEFR might be needed, on the sole basis that there might be some (unspecified) error in the model used by NYISO. use. Their preferred solution is to turn off everyone’s power via a central switch when power drops. Back to the Stone Age!
Here is their topic sentence:
Commentators were concerned that NYISO’s presentation at the December technical conference overstated the need for emissions-free, dispatchable resources (“DEFR”) and downplayed the of taking steps in the near future to reduce this gap.
Okay, if perhaps NYISO has “overstated” the need for these DEFRs, what is your alternative calculation of how much resources would be needed and what assumptions go into that calculation? They don’t provide any of that information, not even a rough estimate or guess of any kind. Instead, they seek to discourage and prevent any further development of these DEFRs:
Rushing to deploy expensive and untested DEFRs risks leaving New York with flawed technologies, as it is unclear at this time which technologies will emerge with the potential to scale up. commercial and cost-effective, let alone which of the commonly mentioned DEFR technologies will be truly emission-free.
So, if there is no development or implementation of DEFR in the next few years – during which time New York is expected to close natural gas plants and electrify building heating systems as well. and large numbers of cars – how do you propose to deal with it? power supply? Basically, all they allow is “storage, wind and solar.”
Instead of selecting DEFR technologies to subsidize that may be suboptimal, DPS should focus on accelerating the build-out of storage, solar and wind, along with other existing methods to Minimize the DEFR gap.
If “storage” is a backup source for intermittent wind and solar power, how much will you need and how much will it cost, and is the storage technology capable of maintaining a charge for as long as possible? Is time necessary? The only answer provided to these questions is the touching hope of some miraculous results from a small and barely initiated federal program:
Deploying new long-term storage to fill any gaps could become a viable avenue to fill remaining gaps. In fact, just this April, the US Department of Energy disbursed $15 million to advance projects aimed at “enabling energy storage technology capable of long-term operation (10+ hours). . . . .
As readers here know, 10 hours of storage is not enough to get through even one long, calm winter night. Actual storage demand for wind and solar backup for an entire year is about 1000 hours.
So it looks like we will use those “other existing methods” to balance supply and demand to potentially fill the DEFR “gap.” What is it? It turns out that phrase refers to a combination of hoping for imports from neighboring countries (don’t they use coal?) and dismissing the idea that you can have electricity when you want it:
Some of these existing methods include but are not limited to improving inter-regional coordination, expanding import capacity with inter-regional transmission, expanding intra-regional transmission, increase energy efficiency and meet demand requirements, while incorporating bulk load flexibility where possible.
“Meeting the imperative” is Maoist parlance for turning off electricity from central headquarters when the wind is not blowing.
Interestingly, about half of this Commentary is then devoted to the issue of potential hydrogen infrastructure development as a means of supporting wind/solar systems. Given that these people are opposed to investigating any other DEFR, you might think they would be fans of hydrogen. But you could be wrong. In fact, from this Comment you will learn that they mirror Manhattan Contrarians on many of hydrogen’s problems:
[P]ipelines built specifically to transport hydrogen do not exist in New York. [E]Existing gas pipelines in New York cannot safely transport hydrogen concentrations beyond minimum levels, and creating a new pipeline distribution system for hydrogen would incur enormous costs. Hydrogen leaks are a serious concern. Due to its small molecular size, hydrogen easily leaks at a rate 1.3-2.8 times greater than methane. . . . Increasing the distance pipelines are capable of transporting hydrogen in New York also poses significant cost challenges. . . . [H]ydrogen embrittles steel and cast iron pipelines, requiring costly replacement of existing pipeline infrastructure to accommodate hydrogen. . . . [E]Even if existing natural gas pipelines could easily be repurposed to transport higher proportions of hydrogen, the amount of energy flowing through the pipeline would be significantly reduced. . . . [S]Burning hydrogen poses both cost and feasibility hurdles.
And so on from there. There is no reliable means of generating electricity that meets environmental purity standards. While they would just say it in the Orwellian terms of “meeting demand,” these people are clearly advocating an end to the idea of electricity whenever you want it.
Mr. Caiazza does More detailed thoughts on this Commentary at his website here.
The bottom line: no one has the answer to how to keep the lights on after natural gas plants shut down. For now, we continue to pay attention to disasters.
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