Why did electric grids buckle under intense cold? Here’s what’s to blame — and not
As residents across the Midwest braced for continued power outages and frigid temperatures, Kansas state Sen. Mike Thompson pointed the blame at renewable energy.
In a Facebook post, Thompson, a Shawnee Republican and Chair of the Senate Utilities Committee, warned that frozen wind turbines and sparse solar energy were hurting the state’s energy capacity.
“This is why the expansion of renewables is dangerous for us going forward. We are putting too much reliance on sources that cannot meet our needs, especially in times like this,” Thompson, a former TV meteorologist, wrote.
Utility executives and climate activists disputed Thompson’s claims. In fact, wind was one energy source that did not perform below expectations.
“Wind has produced a little bit more than we had forecast and it’s about 10% of our energy mix,” said Mike Ross, Southwest Power Pool senior vice president of government affairs and public relations during a grid update today. “As of yesterday, our forecast has been pretty spot on which has been a blessing for us.”
One lesson that should not be taken away from this weekend: that it underscores the need for more natural gas and fossil fuel production. These forms of energy are more liable to be less available in severe cold and they’re more expensive, said Alan Anderson, who studies energy and renewable energy law and is the vice chair of the Energy Practice Group for Polsinelli, a nationwide law firm.
“I think this should be seen as, we should continue on the path of renewables because they’re lower cost and more resilient,” Anderson said. “What I think will be proven here, as in the past, is that happened less than what happened to coal and natural gas. Wind was down, as predicted, but coal and natural gas were down way more.”
The Southwest Power Pool, which coordinates energy resources across the region, shut service off in order to conserve energy for the first time in more than 80 years as temperatures hit near-record lows in the Kansas City area and demand spiked to historic highs.
Energy production faltered as it struggled to keep up with not just the cold, but the longevity of the severe weather.
While stories of frozen wind turbines caught the most attention, nearly all energy production methods were freezing, including natural gas wells.
Evergy, Kansas and Missouri’s largest utility, said it had enough energy to supply their customers without having to shut anyone off. However, as part of the Southwest Power Pool, Evergy helped supply electricity to other states to ensure no single state was experiencing an undue burden.
Utilities can draw from other states and other power pools, so the power pool can usually shift power generation to help those who need it.
Though the event was unprecedented, it could spell changes for Kansas energy policy. Lawmakers in both parties used the weather emergency as an opportunity to point out deficiencies in the current system. Meanwhile, scientists predict such events could become more common with climate change, as arctic warming weakens the jet stream which holds frigid temperatures at the poles.
Energy Sources
The Kansas Corporation Commission said it was too early to determine if a specific energy source caused the strain and said that there have been shortages of all energy types.
No energy type is operating at its capacity for this time of year. The Southwest Power Pool predicts how much energy will come from each source in a given time period, and while natural gas and coal performed below expectations, wind met and at times exceeded projections.
“We had a lot of wind generation that helped and it was being delivered as we had forecasted it to be, and that’s really what’s critical for us,” said Lanny Nickell, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Southwest Power Pool during a press update yesterday. “We need to be able to depend on our forecasts.”
New technology, activists say, will help these situations.
“This isn’t the time to be pointing blame at any one fuel source and it is a reason for a diversified generation portfolio, because every energy source had its difficulties,” said Kimberly Svaty, of Kansas Municipal Utilities and the Advanced Power Alliance. “We need to continue to invest in research and development to find new technologies that will allow for this scenario. That means new battery storage, potentially the use of green hydrogen and additional investment in the transmission system.”
While alarming for some, the events of the past weekend seemed familiar to Anderson, the Polisnelli energy lawyer.
Anderson has studied these types of weather events for years and analyzes their impact on the energy sector.
Once the data is available, Anderson will be able to use it to analyze what went wrong and which power sources didn’t live up to their expectations.
“I think we’re going to find, if it’s similar to previous years and what we’ve been hearing, that there was some wind generation that had icing, but it wasn’t of massive magnitude, and that was forecasted,” Anderson said. “The bigger impact was natural gas and coal having more significant percentages not available, and that was beyond what they had forecasted...Each of the sources had a challenge, but I think we’ll find that the renewables had less percentage of a challenge.”
The crisis was made worse by how far south it reached. Northern wind farms have a technology that helps turbines to operate in cold weather. Farms in warmer places, like Texas or Oklahoma, might not. Evergy wind farms in western Kansas are equipped with cold weather protections.
Possible Solutions
Building more energy capacity to prevent outages like this is not a realistic goal for utilities, as the benefits would be outweighed by the financial and environmental costs, said several industry experts.
“This is an 85-year event. These are the lowest temperatures recorded in parts of our region in 85 years,” said Mike Ross, Southwest Power Pool senior vice president of government affairs and public relations during a grid update Monday. “Do consumers want to pay for the generation that’s needed for a few days every 85 years?”
Instead, experts said, Kansas should look towards creating energy policy and legislation that would help residents invest in energy efficiency, weatherization, and transitions to more wind and solar. The Southwest Power Pool was 641 megawatts short when they asked Evergy and other utility companies to shed load, implementing the rolling blackouts.
“Imagine if all 14 of those states had 10-20 megawatts of rooftop solar with battery storage that the utilities could call on,” said Dorothy Barnett, director of the Climate and Energy Project in Kansas. “If the utilities across the region could draw on everybody’s home battery, perhaps that’s one way we could have protected against this type of interruption.”
Though there are many directions the state could take, one thing is clear — lawmakers intend to meet with energy leaders in the coming weeks and months in an effort to determine what happened and discuss solutions.
“This is gonna point out where there might be some weaknesses and where we can work with all the critical infrastructure people,” said Thompson, the Shawnee Republican.
This could also appear as a state energy plan. There have been rumblings of Kansas state energy plan in the past, and last weekend’s cold snap might push it into the limelight.
Unlike Missouri, Kansas is one of only eight states in the nation that does not have an energy plan, according to the National Association of State Energy Officials.
Rep. Annie Kuether, a Topeka Democrat, said she hoped the week’s events would push the state towards forming such a plan, something Thompson said the legislature would “have to look at.”
“We can’t necessarily legislate our way out of this right now,” she said. “We’re not built for this kind of temperature in this part of the country...I would suggest it may have something to do with climate.”
The way forward, Kuether said, would require a comprehensive plan created by a non-political task force to address utility prices, energy sources, grid upgrades and storage potentials.
“You’ve got a look at the whole picture and everyone needs to be at the table to bring your ideas together,” she said.
This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 7:06 PM.
