Every fact you are saying may be true, but “fossil fuels are a bigger cause of blackouts than renewables” doesn’t follow from the facts your gave, you’re just assuming it is true. That is the last thing I will say on this.
I'm not assuming it. I'm referring to the very real, major blackouts that have occurred in the US over the past couple of years. These events have plenty of reliable sources that tell exactly what happened.
In the Texas blackouts, the problems were coal and gas plants going offline due to the cold that they weren't winterized against. It had nothing to do with Wind or Solar failing unexpectedly, despite the governor's claims early in the blackouts.
In the recent rolling blackouts in the Southeast, TVA and Duke Energy reported that the cause was their coal and gas plants freezing up. Nothing to do with renewables again.
I cannot recall any major blackouts caused by the fossil fuel plants operating normally while renewables failed to produce on schedule. I would love to see some examples, if they exist.
The Cleantechnica article that I linked to earlier (which you surely didn't read) also provided quotes on this exact topic, and that analysis agrees with my own, FWIW.
I could dig into the specifics of these events and provide more sources, but you don't seem likely to care.
I am very much on team renewable, but the only reason those fossil fuel plants are needed in the first place is because of the very nature of renewables. So it’s disingenuous to say that fossil fuels are responsible for blackouts when it’s the dispatchability of renewables that required fossil fuel burning in the first place.
I don’t think the GP meant anything other than this.
No... as I recall, in the Texas blackouts, the renewables actually generated more power than originally forecasted. If the natural gas and coal plants go offline completely, that has nothing to do with the dispatchability of renewables. The fossil fuel plants would be part of the grid regardless, because it takes decades for those plants to reach the end of their lifecycle and be decommissioned.
The grid relies on every type of power doing what it says it will do. It is possible to predict when solar and wind will deliver power, and how much they will deliver. The stability of the grid relies on that. The fossil fuel plants were the ones that had problems. If they had produced power as they normally do, there would have been no blackout.
> These are different arguments.
Do you still think I changed my argument? I'm fairly sure I didn't, but I can see how you reached that conclusion without the clarifications above.
They were forecasted to produce 6% and actually made 8%, vs 41% from the prior week. You can’t blame renewables in this case, but you aren’t presenting facts in an unbiased way.
Renewable integration into the grid is heavily dependent on forecasting. You may think it is biased, but I see that statistic as things going better than forecasted. With proper forecasting, you can overbuild and make up for lower production. With proper forecasting, you can employ demand response.
When the fossil fuel plants turn off completely and unexpectedly, there’s nothing you can do, because no one planned for that. The grid was relying on the power plants, and they weren’t there. If the grid had planned for the unreliability of those plants, the grid might’ve had more renewables to make up for it, who knows.
People building renewables plan for the variability. As I’ve mentioned, energy storage is essential for the long term.
You're comparing a future of renewables to a present of non-renewables. You could also add in additional generation to cover the gap you mentioned in the future as well.
> But unlike utilities under traditional models, they don’t ensure that the resources can deliver power under adverse conditions, they don’t require that generators have secured firm fuel supplies, and they don’t make sure the resources will be ready and available to operate.[0]
The question should squarely be "can renewables create the same base load and peak load required to run the entire demand of the grid"? From there than we can talk about the other topics such as what is required to deliver the energy, which is cheaper to operate, etc.
[0] https://judithcurry.com/2021/02/18/assigning-blame-for-the-b...
Transmission was not the problem in any of these blackouts that I’m referring to. Powerlines failing affects extremely localized parts of the distribution network, but the coal and gas plants literally stopped producing. It was a production failure.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/natural-gas-power-st...
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-...
On the other question, that goes back to how we desperately need energy storage and demand response.
> "It is possible to “winterize” natural gas power plants, natural gas production and wind turbines, experts said, which prevents such major interruptions in other states with more regular extreme winter weather."
This is really my point. The production sources (and how the elemental source of that energy is acquired) and transmission of energy to residents can be winterized regardless of what they are (wind, gas, etc.). So the point isn't whether wind or gas is better.
> that goes back to how we desperately need energy storage and demand response.
Don't disagree (because this would create a much larger buffer), however if you have fully winterized energy production and transmission, then this point is moot.
If a hospital loses power to lifesaving equipment, 100% of the time it is due to a failure of backup generators.
Renewables are fairly predictable, so they can be counted on. The production is variable, but not unreliable or unpredictable. It's an important distinction, and it gives more time for the grid to coordinate with Demand Response (or peaker plants) to match load and production.
Obviously the weather models involved are still improving, but for solar especially, it's easy to predict when the sun will go down. Cloud coverage and wind forecasting are active areas of development to make things easier and more predictable for everyone.
Was Germany's months-long period of low wind in 2022 predictable in this sense? Was Germany supposed to stop using electricity for months as Demand Reduction? I buy that you can maybe store enough power for overnight demand if solar generates enough during the day (at some potentially large cost), but wind can just stop blowing for weeks. Storage cannot solve that without outrageous cost, or blackouts.
Critically, we have the ability to transmit power over distance. That's the whole point of having a grid, instead of just having each person operating off-grid and only having access to the resources that are within arm's reach of their house. Individual solar panels may be under a cloud or individual wind turbines may experience no wind, but it is tremendously less likely for entire regions to experience this for an extended period of time.
The US has encountered several winter storms that brought a number of our fossil fuel plants to a halt for days at a time, causing blackouts. That's not theoretical.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28521533
https://public.substack.com/p/german-emissions-from-electric...
We do have transmission, but it is lossy and expensive, and the places it is cheaper to transmit from are geographically adjacent and are going to have similar solar and wind conditions.
If you're talking about Texas' gas plants, yeah, that was not good. But gas plants are an essential part of preventing blackouts in a wind/solar grid, so I'm not sure this is a point in wind/solar's favor.