Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid - Meredith Angwin

[Saluki]

If you read this book, and "The Grid", by Bakke you will know more than 99% of the population about how electricity is made, sold and transmitted. This book gives you just enough info on the capacity bidding to understand how it works and what's wrong with it, but without getting too far into the weeds. 

 

It explains the problem with intermittent renewable power like wind and solar.  They need standby backup, which is almost always coal, gas or nuclear, and the more renewables you add to the system, the more backup systems that you need.  Paradoxically, these backup systems tend to be more polluting.  A modern gas fired turbine generator produces a lot of heat and that heat can be turned into steam, which can generate more turbine power and electricity. It's 50% more efficient if you use the excess heat for steam power.  But if if you only use it for backup, and turn it on and off to make up for spikes and drops in wind power, then it's not continuously burning and you can't make steam with it.  The result is that it's 50% more polluting.  And with conventional power sources the grid needs about 1.3x peak power generation but with renewables, they need about 1.7x.  

 

She also makes a good case for nuclear (it doesn't produce emissions) for backup power.  The Germans did away with some of their new  nuclear power and pushed hard for renewables, but the importation of Russian gas was disrupted by the war in Ukraine so they had to use backup coal power.  The French still have nuclear and the Germans air is 6x more polluted despite their green power.  The only EU country with worse air quality than Germany now is Poland. 

 

In New England homes have priority when it comes to gas, so they won't freeze to death.  But if your gas is going to people's homes, it's not going to power plants, so they need alternate sources of power.  Batteries don't work at scale, and it's kind of foolish to assume they will be the answer.  It assumes a bunch of breakthroughs, but hope shouldn't be part of your emergency plan. 

 

The bidding system is also fascinating.  A lot of wind energy gets bid into the system at $0 because they get government subsidies that are much more than they get from selling power, but they get it for power produced, so they are incentivized to sell all of it. This means that a lot of backup power can't compete and goes away, which makes the grid more reliant on intermittent power sources, which makes it more fragile.  

 

Learned a lot that I didn't know from this book.  I would recommend it if you are interested in power/utilities or green energy. 

[Eng12345]

Curious how technically deep these books go... at one point I considered a career in power marketing and considered pursuing my NERC RC certificate. I remain continually curious about it and have not completely written that off my career - just for now. The power markets have always been fascinating to me as they are traded 24/7 and based on real physical tangible things. 

 

The current wind incentives have screwed the markets up so much that now we are building giant inefficient peaking turbines to chase wind load. 

 

I think that's one of the biggest tragedies of all of this climate bs - we are not rewarding thermal performance. 

Edited January 23 by Eng12345

[rkbabang]

Thanks for reminding me of this book.  I'd been meaning to read this since I watched her presentation to the NH Nuclear Study Commission a year ago.  She gave a good presentation about the difference between the  "physical grid" (how the grid actually works) vs the "policy grid" (how politicians/bureaucrats wish it worked/lie to themselves about how it works). 

 

Video and slides here:

https://nuclearnh.energy/event/regular-meeting-dec-12-2022/

 

[pricingpower]

I listened to it via Audible which was a bit odd in a couple sections as they had a male narrator for the female author, a physical copy of the book would have worked better I think. 

 

I came away feeling the entire power space is getting less investable given how deeply mismanaged the regulation is (in New England at least).  I think she made a pretty persuasive case that structuring the "policy grid" to run with nobody actually viewing themselves as responsible is going to eventually cause serious problems.

[Saluki]

Yes, I listened to the Audiobook also and it was a little confusing that the author was a woman and it's read by a man.  I agree that the grid is a mess for political reasons and that people are making money selling into the grid, but no one makes money keeping the grid going and there are political pressures across state lines that have nothing to do with keeping the lights on, so it's not a good setup. 

 

I have a feeling that other states are as bad as New England, but that's the grid that she's most familiar with, so that's what she focused on.  If I recall from the book, most grids are designed to have about 1.3x the power needed, just in case, and it Texas it was 1.1, which was a disaster when they had a cold spell and couldn't get natural gas in to work the generators.  

 

She made a very convincing case for Nuclear, which I had a knee-jerk reaction to, just like most people. 

[Castanza]

Grid has been on my list for a few years, but I tend to focus on other topics regarding the power grid because of reasons. You've inspired me to pick up a copy.

 

If you're interested in power grid related topics I highly recommend the following two books which have focuses on cyber security aspects of the grid. 

 

Sandworm : Andy Greenberg

 

Countdown to Zero Day : Kim Zetter

 

___________________

 

Quick example of how vulnerable our power grid is: 

1 - Looks for ICS (Industrial Control Systems) on Google or any search engine

2 - Peruse CISA to see if there are any recent announcements

3 - Once you determine a ICS continue begin "Googling" eg: Siemens Synco OZW default password"

4 - You're looking for the product manual

5 - Search the Table of Contents for default passwords "Log info Web Server"

6 - Head on over to Shodan.io, and search for your ICS model and a port. "Siemens port:80" <---who needs https anyways?

7 - You will now see hundreds of ICS systems (connected to the internet) and their detailed information 

8 - From here you could begin trying default passwords and gain access....(do NOT do this as from this point on you're breaking the law) 

9 - With a little luck and a little time you too could find 20+ year old equipment managing key infrastructure with ZERO security.