The failure of gas-burning power plants to provide energy in cold weather is back in the news. With performance penalties levied by the grid operator PJM, plant owners are attacking the rules designed to ensure reliability. These penalties, totaling more than $1 billion, are meant to pay incentives to the plants that over-performed their obligations, including wind farms.
In 2016, PJM put these reliability rules and penalties into place, and they were put to the test with the winter storm Elliott in 2022. Gas plant outages and performance failures mounted to account for as much as 23 percent of the expected supply. Investigations continue, but PJM provided numerous charts of the causes as they were reported by the plant owners.
The policy was designed to impose financial incentives big enough to encourage plant owners to take precautions to keep their plants ready to run despite the weather. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) accepted the rule, with the expectation such a carrot-and-stick approach fit with the broader market-based system that rewards generator owners in PJM.
While American buildings have not been particularly well built for energy efficiency in this kind of weather, the growing deployment of wind farms to convert wind to electricity helped fill the demand. Along with the cold it brought, Winter Storm Elliott included prodigious winds and the wind farms in the PJM region did what they were built to do: make energy.
The results could hardly be clearer. But now that the time has come to collect the penalties and pay the incentives, gas plant owners in PJM are seeking to evade the penalties or even declaring bankruptcy. It’s time for the gas plant owners to follow the rules they helped put in place. If we are going to have a grid reliability system that provides incentives, we can’t be gaming the rules every time the gas generators get caught with their plants down.
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FAQ
Q1. How electric car batteries work?
A1. Electric car batteries are typically lithium-ion batteries that store energy and power the motor. They are recharged by plugging the car into an electric outlet or charging station.
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A2. The Tesla Model S has the longest range of any electric car currently on the market, with a range of up to 370 miles on a single charge.
Q3. How electric car batteries are recycled?
A3. Electric car batteries are recycled by breaking them down into their component parts and then separating out the metals, plastics, and other materials for reuse. The metals are melted down and reused in new products, while the plastics and other materials are recycled into new products.
