By Rick Lemonds, president & CEO of South Central Power Company
Growing up in Minnesota, and working for rural electric cooperatives my entire career, I’ve learned a thing or two about patience from farmers. On warm, early spring days, most backyard gardeners resist the temptation to rush out and plant seeds and bulbs in the ground. Experience (and history) helps these folks avoid the inevitable cold snap that comes along and wipes out their progress. Seasoned farmers know not to rush planting — it’s just too risky.
Farmers know, too, not to rush their harvest. By September, fields are looking bountiful and green. But the farmer knows to be patient. If you harvest too soon, you may wind up with lower yields or higher moisture. That’s a valuable life lesson that can be applied to many things, including where we are in the electric utility industry.
You see, utilities are in a state of transition in this country. For decades, we relied heavily on fossil fuels for power production. These large-scale power plants are often referred to as baseload, or dispatchable, generation — and they used to provide the bulk of the electricity we needed to operate the power grid and keep your lights on 24/7. They were available when we needed them, regardless of sunlight, wind, and other factors that influence other forms of power generation.
Today, we are transitioning to a more diverse energy mix that aspires to be cleaner and greener than power sources of the past. This transition involves not only incorporating power from intermittent sources of generation like solar and wind, it also means an overhaul of our transmission and distribution systems to account for new technology like utility-scale battery storage, distributed generation, microgrids, load control programs, and rate structures and incentives that help manage the supply and demand of power. It’s a delicate balance that we take for granted, but as many Americans are learning, if we rush our energy transition, we risk sitting in the dark with a less reliable grid that isn’t up to the critical challenge of keeping America running.
Just before Christmas last year, Americans in nine different states experienced rolling blackouts during frigid temperatures, but not because of storms or physical damage to power lines that local utilities could repair. The Christmas 2022 rolling service interruptions were due to a lack of available dispatchable baseload generation, and the grid’s inability to effectively move power from generation sources that had available capacity to areas of the country where that power was needed.
Although we were fortunate in Ohio to not have experienced these blackouts, we were at times only moments away from being forced to shut off power, just like consumers in the Carolinas, Tennessee and other locations. In total, roughly 1.7 million electric consumers experienced outages during this event, and unfortunately, we can expect this to happen again — and more frequently — if we continue to rush the energy transition that’s already underway.
Unfortunately, the federal government’s response to this crisis isn’t to slow down the transition; it’s instead an irresponsible attempt to speed it up. Our multistate regional grid operator, PJM, projects that more than 20% of our existing installed baseload generation capacity will be retired by 2030 due to ever-tightening regulations on fossil fuel plants. And, in May, the EPA released sweeping new proposed rules that would force electric utilities to shutter reliable sources of generation at an even more alarming rate.
Electric cooperatives in Ohio and elsewhere are committed to an “all-of-the-above” approach to power generation that includes renewable sources like solar and wind. And we recognize that rushing this transition could be devastating to the businesses, homes, and farms that rely on affordable, dependable power.
Our industry leaders want more renewable power, and we want a better, smarter grid, but these goals should not come at the expense of reliability. Power reliability is one of the cornerstones of what makes America work, just like our farmers. Let’s take a lesson from them and not irresponsibly rush our energy transition. Ensuring affordable and reliable power for ourselves and future generations is much too important.
From the July 2023 issue of Ohio Cooperative Living.