Shorting the Grid, by Meredith Angwin, could have made great bed-time reading — put you right to sleep! Could have been. But it isn’t. I honestly don’t know how anyone managed to write a book like this, but she did it. The complexity of the multiple layers of policies and their relationships in much of our grid governance is truly unbelievable. Markets that aren’t really markets, “deregulation” with ever-growing mountains of regulations, renewable energy credits (RECs) and zero emission credits (ZECs), forward capacity auctions, jump-ball filings… Oh my!
But the complexity is the point. It isn’t a bug, it’s a feature! Angwin begins by stating the obvious: People expect reliable, inexpensive, plentiful, and clean electrical power using a diversity of fuels, and a resilient and well-balanced grid. But in the Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) areas, none of that matters. This left me frankly gob-smacked. Nobody has responsibility for maintaining a reliable grid. There are no adults in the room. There is no consumer choice, no transparency, no accountability. “The buck never stops anywhere," as she aptly points out. And this is our wake-up call.
The problems are too many to enumerate in a review, but I will mention a few of them:
* Grid-scale storage is forever a thing of the future — like fusion power, always “about twenty years away.” And extremely resource intensive.
* Renewables are “cheap” because they make their real money on “out-of-market revenues.” This allows them to bid to sell power at very low, even negative, prices, which drives down the grid prices for everyone else. Further, renewables are intermittent, unpredictable, and unreliable, due to the fact that the sun is not always shining nor the wind blowing. They must always be backed up with load-following generation, and the best load-followers are fossil plants. And the higher the penetration of renewables, the greater the instability of the grid.
* The FERC requires RTOs to be fuel-neutral. This leads to shortages, as happens when dual-fuel gas/oil plants cannot be required to stock oil on site, and eventually to rolling blackouts.
* Simply selling kWh to the grid is not the least bit lucrative. The most reliable power generators that we have, nuclear plants, cannot be profitable by doing what they do best. This leads to closure of highly reliable and non-pollutung power plants. And once a nuclear plant is closed, it does not reopen. Further, the reliable power is almost always replaced by whatever is the next most reliable source — namely, fossil fuels.
* Markets are supposed to be about customer choice. In an RTO area, there is no choice — the “customer” is really just a “ratepayer."
* RTOs attempt to solve almost any problem with another kind of auction. Perhaps the most startling thing about the auctions is the way in which the “clearing price” is determined. This is the price that all generators receive. And the price is not set at the lowest bid, it is set at the highest! But wait, renewables can bid the grid prices way down. Confused? You are not alone! Remember, confusion is a feature.
And at the end of the day, electricity prices tend to be higher in the “deregulated” RTO areas. It simply has not worked out the way telephone and airline deregulation did. None of these problems are about the power generators, technology, fuel choices, or carbon footprints. The problem is in the governance. The question, as always, is: who profits? Follow the money. And the result is an expensive, fragile, and high-carbon grid.
I could go on, but as Meredith wanted to write a readable book, so I want to write a readable review. I do want to mention her coverage of the difference between choices made by Germany and France (as well as Sweden and Ontario). Germany tried to decarbonize by building massive renewables — and closing their non-emitting nuclear plants. The result has been an expensive and high-carbon grid. France, in contrast, successfully decarbonized in ten years by going nuclear. Same with Sweden and Ontario. The choices made by governments are what make the difference, not individual behaviors. Organizations that push consumers toward what I call energy austerity encourage us to make personal sacrifices in order to do our part. This is just another case of passing the buck. If you are of the belief that taking personal responsibility for using less energy will lead to lower emissions, then the author with the lesson of Germany, will disabuse you of this notion. The RTOs push us toward the German model. Our role models should, rather, be France, Sweden, and Ontario.
Meredith says that this book was ten years in the making. I can believe it. She insisted that she could not and would not produce a book that was unreadable or would put the reader to sleep. Fear not! She writes in a conversational way, as if you are talking over dinner, or sharing coffee and brownies. (Never forget the brownies!)
The grammar is pristine, with no strange idiosyncrasies of capitalization or punctuation. As a self-appointed proof-reader, I notice these things. Throughout the entire 400 pages, I think I counted all of three very minor typos that did not obscure the meaning in any way. Every word is obviously chosen with care. There is no arcane language, and every industry term, buzzword, and practice is carefully explained. It includes extensive endnotes — 292, to be exact. I recommend following many of these references, especially to her blog posts.
Finally, she concludes with a chapter on actions that we can take. She does not tell us all about these shocking problems without leaving us with great suggestions for what we can do about them. This was entirely expected — her previous book, “Campaigning for Clean Air,” which I also reviewed, is the best book on advocacy and activism I have ever read, and having been a political activist in my time, I have read a few.
Do yourself a favor — buy and read this book. And then share it.
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Shorting the Grid, Meredith AngwinBook reviewAmazon, 20201114This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the inner workings of our electrical grid. The grid is a complicated topic on both technical and policy levels.With the elevated focus on climate change and emissions reductions, our electricity supply is coming under deeper scrutiny, and the trend will continue as we attempt to electrify other sectors such as transportation (some nations and states are declaring that all vehicles will be electric by set target dates) and residential construction (many cities are pursuing bans on new fossil fuel infrastructure such as natural gas supplies to houses). There will be more and more demand for clean electricity, and more resultant strain placed on existing grid infrastructure. We must begin planning for this future, and to plan, we must understand the current situation.Fortunately for us, we now have this wonderful resource to share with our policy-makers, and we can give examples of why certain improvements are necessary in straightforward, level-headed, and no-nonsense terminology. Meredith has armed us with both knowledge and the capacity to share understanding of what may become one of the most important issues of our future - how to keep our civilization powered while also protecting human health and the planet.
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