fuel security

08Jan

Beginning the Year in Crisis

While Americans rang in the new year with “auld lang syne,” the electricity grid regulators at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) were singing a very different tune: another winter grid crisis is here. On New Year’s Eve Jim Robb, NERC’s president and CEO, took to YouTube with a strong warning to the power […]
14Sep

The Next Grid Crisis is in New England

New England recognizes it has a dangerous fuel security problem on its hands. And a telling factor in that crisis is what it doesn’t have: fuel diversity in the form of coal capacity. New England’s overreliance on natural gas, constrained gas delivery system, and inability to site and build alternatives is barreling towards a completely […]
19Jan

Did We Learn Anything from Texas?

On December 30th, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) issued a press release declaring that 322 power generating and transmission facilities had undergone stringent inspections indicating the Texas grid was ready for winter. Implied was that the grid disaster of the previous February, which left hundreds dead and millions without power or heat for […]
05Jan

The Grid Crisis is Only Getting Worse

The New Year has arrived with bitter cold and winter storms that left almost 1 million households without power along the East Coast. The reliability of the nation’s energy systems is being tested once again and there is ever-growing concern they’re not up for the challenge. The North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC) ended 2021 […]
08Dec

The Grid Crisis is International

The grid reliability warnings keep coming. Both here and in Europe, electricity grids – particularly those that have raced away from dispatchable fuel diversity and allowed their reserve margins to erode – are facing ever-mounting warnings that available capacity may not keep up with demand. In the U.K., the national grid operator issued its first […]
22Sep

Europe’s Energy Crisis is all the Warning We Need

The past few weeks have seen Europe drift into an energy crisis of its own making – a perfect storm of bad policy. As wind generation has collapsed across Europe, overreliance on natural gas as a bridge fuel and backstop to renewable intermittency has come home to roost. Tight natural gas supplies, soaring prices and […]
26May

The Grid Reliability Warnings Keep Coming

Back in the summer of 2019, Jim Robb, the president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), said that when most engineers look at the Texas grid, they conclude that “there’s no way in hell they can keep the lights on. And yet they do.” Robb, speaking to the Federal Energy Regulatory […]
12May

In the Era of Cyberattacks, Fuel Diversity and Security Reign Supreme

The cyber threat to the nation’s energy infrastructure just crossed the Rubicon. A cyberattack forced the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, which transports 45% of the refined fuel used on the East Coast. Gas stations from New England to Georgia are without fuel and it will be days before the pipeline is operating normally, and […]
15Feb

A Fuel Security Crisis in Texas

The Texas grid is hanging on by a thread. Historic, freezing temperatures are wreaking havoc across the state. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has initiated rolling outages to keep the grid from collapsing. Without a hint of hyperbole, this is a full-blown reliability crisis that appears to be a fuel security crisis. There’s […]