by Joe Gervais

Vermont’s legislature continues the race to the precipice. 

The current trajectory of the Vermont House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee suggests that meaningful reform to the Global Warming Solutions Act will not happening this legislative session. Vermont’s legislators are leading us down the same path as Texas and California, where an unstable grid has resulted from a high reliance on intermittent renewable power sources. Among the tasks of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is ensuring the reliability of high voltage interstate transmission system. 

Our legislators do not appear to have recognized the connection between low cost, stable, reliable power and business. Large scale industry requires cheap, reliable power. The major data center players – Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all struck deals for nuclear power as the next generation data centers for Artificial Intelligence increase the need for energy. Rob Roper recently wrote of Rep Siblia’s debate with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) regarding the increasing costs of the Renewable Energy Standard increasing costs. She never accepted that point on legislated cost increases to be able to move on to the second point of that legislation also increasing the frailty of the grid, both dealbreakers for economic development. 

The negative impact of renewables on the grid is common knowledge. Yesterday, Thomas Shepstone wrote of the issues facing the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM), that are no different than that facing the Independent System Operator – New England (ISO-NE). Grids require baseload power that is reliable, which weather-dependent power is not. For peak usage, grids need dispatchable power – power that can be activated at a moment’s notice, again not a characteristic of renewables. Unfortunately, everything in Vermont’s queue for ISO-NE is solar, battery or a wind repower. 

Vermont does not operate as an island. Vermont is part of ISO-NE and imports significant power from Canada. In late January, New England had a sizable cold snap, and natural gas was prioritized to home heating. Solar and wind generation were largely unavailable (solar panels don’t work well with snow on them). To meet demand, coal and oil-fired plants filled the gap. If the progressives succeed in migrating homes to electric heat and the grid to renewables, these coal and oil fired plants won’t be available to fill the gap when solar and wind don’t show up to work. New England: Winter SHORTFALL is Coming and The Merit of Oildetail this challenge. 

California has mandated battery storage for new residential solar to address the issue of solar generating power when it isn’t needed and not generating when it is needed. There is also a large grid-scale battery facility at the Moss Landing power plant near Monterey, California. Unfortunately, battery systems have the same issue as EVs – when they catch on fire, the fires are extremely difficult to extinguish. Moss Landing recently experienced that, forcing residents to evacuate while the fire burned, and returning home to extremely toxic debris in a sensitive marine habitat. These residents have now filed a lawsuit claiming insufficient fire protection systems following the toxic fire.  

Another issue with battery storage for solar and wind, is it is prohibitively expensive. In the article Chris Wright is Right: Keep the Coal Plants Running, the Energy Bad Boys discussed the cost tradeoffs of coal vs. battery availability. The recent cold snap – there was 60 days of coal available at the plant. Battery systems are usually specified for 4 hours of storage. This doesn’t even cover the 12 hours a solar panel doesn’t generate on sunny days, let alone the weeks that my many Vermont solar panels have not seen sunlight due to the snow blanket on them. A recent analysis showed that coal costs $25 per megawatt-hour, while a grid-scale battery system costs over $317,500 to store the same megawatt for just one hour. With New England weather, an hour’s storage, or even a week’s storage isn’t sufficient to make an all-renewable grid reliable. We can debate whether two weeks, a month, or two months of storage is necessary, but the standard must be measured in weeks, not hours.  

ISO-NE has reports on the impact of electrification of heating on the grid. In the case of Vermont, electricity peak January demand is estimated to jump from 15 megawatts to 334 megawatts for the 95% probability case over the next decade. For the 99^th probability case, it increases to 464 megawatts. If we use the more conservative number, the cost of battery storage for this increased energy demand, which our Renewable Energy Standard says must be renewable, to provide two weeks coverage would be approximately $34 billion dollars. This is just not affordable for Vermonters. Vermonters are protesting any increase of fuel costs due to the affordable heat act. Trying to continue this renewable energy circus would cost Vermonters many thousands of dollars per year in increased electricity costs. 

We have seen the new federal administration place a moratorium on wind projects. David Wojick’s recent article suggested the FERC could use its authority to restrict or ban solar connections to the grid.  Is it reasonable to expect the FERC to look at the renewable energy mandates being pushed by progressive activists in Vermont and across the country and shut these activities down in the name of grid reliability?