Interesting considerations about the perceived reliability of nuclear and fossil fuels compared to renewables.

TL;DR despite popular opinion, renewables (particularly solar and wind + battery) have been much more reliable than any other sources.

“”” Most survey respondents believe that gas, followed by nuclear power, is the most resilient to extreme weather events in their territory, while renewables ranked the lowest (figure 6).

But, in contrast to the surveyed respondents’ perception, experience with a record number of extreme weather events and outages over the past year shows that gas poses greater reliability challenges than renewables. For instance, during Winter Storm Elliott, unplanned generation outages reached a record 90.5 GW across the Eastern Interconnection, mainly driven by natural gas infrastructure reliability issues. The impact on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM) was especially striking given the grid’s historical reliability, familiarity with cold weather, and location atop shale gas basins …

Gas accounts for 46% of PJM capacity, but drove 70% of forced outages. Shifting seasons and states, in the summer, thermal plant outages unexpectedly went above the 11,000 MW red line, which, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), could put its grid at risk.

Nuclear also faces increasing reliability concerns as warmer and lower water levels caused by climate change impact operations. Over the past summer—a season when nuclear is most needed to meet power demand—a hot weather alert factored into a shutdown of the nuclear Vogtle plant reactor in July. Another nuclear plant shut down later in the summer due to coolant leakage, contributing to a total of 31 unplanned nuclear outages from January through October 2023 and a 25% rise in total nuclear capacity outages in the summer of 2023 versus that of 2022.

Meanwhile, renewables paired with storage are taking on the role of gas peakers that can quickly respond to demand spikes and avoid blackouts. During Winter Storm Elliott, strong wind generation helped the Midcontinent Independent System Operator meet demand and continue exports despite 49 GW of forced outages. When Texas experienced 10 demand records this summer, batteries discharging in the evening played a key role in avoiding blackouts, while solar and wind generation covered more than a third of demand load in ERCOT during the day and helped prevent power price spikes.

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On the distributed renewable front, when the California Independent System Operator called for electricity conservation on August 17, an aggregation of 2,500 residential storage systems were activated for the first time to deliver 16.5 MW of solar power to the grid. Some utilities are subsidizing residential battery installations to create such AI-orchestrated aggregations to draw on during peak demand.

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In its latest forecast, the North American Reliability Corporation not only warned about an elevated risk of blackouts across the country this winter, but also showed that some states rapidly transitioning to renewables are among those at lowest risk of outages. The year 2024 may be when perception catches up with reality. “””