MISO warns of growing electric reliability gap

REPORT

North Dakota doing its part to prevent outages

The loss of baseload electric generation from coal plants that have retired or will retire soon is creating a widening gap between reliable power sources and expected peak demand on regional grids.

The North Dakota Public Service Commission recently met with officials from MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator), which delivers power to parts of North Dakota and 14 other states and provinces. The discussion centered around what MISO calls "resource adequacy."

Brian Tulloh, executive director of external affairs for MISO, said the pace of coal plant retirements has increased in recent years. He said the coal industry, as well as natural-gas fired generators, have found it difficult to attract capital due to the ESG movement (environmental, social and governance), which discourages investment in fossil fuels in favor of "sustainable resources." Tulloh noted that many of the plants are also aging and may not be repaired if breakdowns occur that would cost millions of dollars to fix. Gigawatts lost to retirement are being replaced with a roughly equal amount of gigawatts of wind and solar generation. But the problem, Tulloh pointed out, is that while coal plants are accredited at 90 percent of their nameplate capacity, wind is only accredited at 16 percent and solar at 35 percent, producing a shortfall in dispatchable generation.

“We are adding capacity on an installed basis, but we're actually going down in an accredited capacity basis, so that's there's a gap there,” Tulloh said. “There's a gap that we need to fill because we don't have any projections of demand fundamentally going down.”

Tulloh said MISO officials have increasingly been sounding the alarm about the growing threat to reliability, which he said has actually been met with criticism by environmental groups that want to promote a "clean energy" future.

“We started signaling a bit more aggressively, pointedly, around some concerns that we have about the ‘transition’ and risks that we see if the transition isn't managed carefully and thoughtfully,” Tulloh said. “We're taking a lot of criticism actually, for doing that. Some call it alarmist, but we think it's prudent to go down this path.”

The growing gap between available capacity and electric demand will ultimately lead to rolling blackouts if corrective action isn't taken. PSC chair Julie Fedorchak, who testified before a U.S. senate committee in July about the importance of maintaining the reliability of the electric grid, said North Dakota utilities have been responsible about maintaining adequate generating capacity, and should not be subjected to outages because other states have not done their part.

“I think it's especially unacceptable when you're in a state where you believe and have evidence that the state is trying to protect and invest in the kind of resources that are available,” Fedorchak said. “So, if you're paying for that, it's even harder to tolerate outages caused by unavailable generation, so North Dakota is going to be pretty stubborn in advocating for policies that recognize our differences and don't sweep us in with everybody else.”

Fedorchak said those who are pushing "clean energy" need to be patient, and recognize that renewables like wind and solar are not capable of replacing baseload coal plants and other thermal generation sources. w

"We are adding capacity on an installed basis, but we're actually going down in an accredited capacity basis, so that's there's a gap there,” Tulloh said.