Speaker 1: It's going to be extremely humid, disrespectfully humid tomorrow. So
Speaker 1: here's what's happening about. One nineteen in Hillsborough, one fifteen
Speaker 1: in Corsic, fifteen in Waxahatchet one sixteen and four and
Speaker 1: Taro one O eight and Debt in one O seven
Speaker 1: and can So you get the idea dangerous.
Speaker 2: I'm West Kosova today on the Big Take. You think
Speaker 2: it's hot, now, well, imagine if the AC went out.
Speaker 3: The unrelenting temperature straining the power grid as the state
Speaker 3: set a June record for energy demand, the historic heat
Speaker 3: buckling roads from the Lone Star State to Louisiana, the.
Speaker 2: Crippling US heat wave that's smothering Texas and spreading across
Speaker 2: the South means millions of miserable people seeking relief are
Speaker 2: doing what you'd expect. They're cranking up the air conditioning,
Speaker 2: and that is pushing America's aging, over tax power grid
Speaker 2: to the max. With concerns about rolling blackouts or just
Speaker 2: playing shutdowns.
Speaker 4: To say it's a lot of work as a massive understatement,
Speaker 4: but there is an urgency to deal with this because
Speaker 4: we do have this very real climate threat and we're
Speaker 4: racing against the clock.
Speaker 2: Noreen Malick reports on the power industry for Bloomberg. She's
Speaker 2: here to tell us about why our grid is still
Speaker 2: so fragile and what can be done to future proof
Speaker 2: the system for a world where extreme weather shocks are
Speaker 2: becoming more frequent, and not just in summer, by the way,
Speaker 2: these problems are just as bad in winter, and maybe worse. Noreen,
Speaker 2: you have been writing a lot of stories lately about
Speaker 2: this unbelievable heat wave across the South and especially in Texas.
Speaker 2: Obviously it's making a whole lot of people miserable, but
Speaker 2: it's putting a huge strain on the energy grid and
Speaker 2: the ability just to keep up with the demands that
Speaker 2: everybody has.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Texas is an outlier in the US because
Speaker 4: demand is growing so fast. In Texas, it's one of
Speaker 4: the fastest, if not the fastest, outright. What that means is,
Speaker 4: over the last several years, they've had a population boom
Speaker 4: with people moving in from California and other states, and
Speaker 4: then you've had businesses expanding. On top of that, you've
Speaker 4: had strong economic growth, and then you've also had bitcoin miners,
Speaker 4: which are heavy power users, come in. In the last
Speaker 4: couple of years. So you've set up this base demand
Speaker 4: for power is growing, and then on top of that,
Speaker 4: every time you add heat, it like multiplies how much
Speaker 4: demand because they're all cranking up their air conditioners.
Speaker 5: And something you may not know.
Speaker 4: About Texas is that they use a lot of AC
Speaker 4: compared to the rest of the country. Like one megawatt,
Speaker 4: which is a unit of how you measure electricity, can
Speaker 4: provide power for typically two hundred homes in Texas and
Speaker 4: the rest of the country that's closer to like eight hundred.
Speaker 2: Homes, and that's all because of air conditioning.
Speaker 4: Well, it's just Texas homes are bigger. Somebody wants described
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of.
Speaker 4: Big foyers and big homes there.
Speaker 5: They all use a lot of electricity. But it's also
Speaker 5: swimming pools.
Speaker 4: And then of course gadgets and evs are coming online,
Speaker 4: but that's more newer on the EV side.
Speaker 2: And the heat in Texas, even for Texas in the summertime,
Speaker 2: is pretty extreme.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So anytime you have any type of weather driven demand,
Speaker 4: the amount of electricity or energy.
Speaker 5: Used escalates very quickly.
Speaker 4: And if you're talking about ninety to eight degrees versus
Speaker 4: one hundred and two degrees. That may seem like four
Speaker 4: degrees is not that much, but when it comes to
Speaker 4: air conditioning demand, the increase is way bigger.
Speaker 2: So Norne just to give people an idea of what
Speaker 2: it means when there's so much demand put on the
Speaker 2: energy grid. What's happened to energy prices in Texas?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so electricity prices are extremely volatile. Just in the
Speaker 4: first fifteen days of June, we've seen prices go from
Speaker 4: like forty dollars per mega wadd hour you know, normal demand,
Speaker 4: to forty five hundred dollars when it was an extremely
Speaker 4: hot day for several hours.
Speaker 2: From forty one dollars to over four thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: one day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's not impossible to see that type
Speaker 4: of swing within a day, but then also across days.
Speaker 4: So the way power is priced, it's priced on a
Speaker 4: five minute basis, hourly basis, so there's a lot of
Speaker 4: way to splice it. So the average for the day
Speaker 4: was not four thousand, It was probably a few hundred dollars,
Speaker 4: But then there are certain hours around six seven PM
Speaker 4: where it was four thousand dollars per mega wad hour.
Speaker 2: And the reason why energy prices for natural gas, which
Speaker 2: is what the grid mostly operates on, are so high
Speaker 2: is I guess it's sort of akin to uber surge pricing.
Speaker 2: When everybody is looking for an uber the prices go up,
Speaker 2: and if everybody wants your energy, you get to charge
Speaker 2: more for it because there's no other place to go.
Speaker 4: Natural gas is the number one driver, and then you
Speaker 4: also have wind and solar. But what happens is exactly
Speaker 4: what you're saying. When you have those high demand periods,
Speaker 4: the price of electricity is set by the most expensive unit.
Speaker 4: So let's say on an average day, like if you're
Speaker 4: thinking about uber, everyone's driving like a Honda or a
Speaker 4: camera that's pretty fuel efficient. But let's say during rush hour,
Speaker 4: in a thunderstorm or a heat wave. I guess in
Speaker 4: Texas you have to bring out the Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
Speaker 4: Those are not fuel efficient, but everyone gets paid the
Speaker 4: price of the Ferrari in a Lamborghini, even if it's
Speaker 4: just some of the megawatts used.
Speaker 2: So when it surges like that, how much more does
Speaker 2: it cost? In total?
Speaker 4: It can cost billions of dollars over the course of
Speaker 4: days because you're pricing this every five minutes, every hour.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it quickly adds up.
Speaker 4: It takes time to filter out to customers depending on
Speaker 4: how they get builled. Texas households may have locked in
Speaker 4: a six month power rate, so that sets their price,
Speaker 4: say like ten cents per kill awot hour. Some power
Speaker 4: retailers will have fine prints. Well, if there is a
Speaker 4: rally in gas or power prices in real time, we
Speaker 4: will push on those costs to.
Speaker 5: You right away.
Speaker 4: For others, there's a lag. Customers will eventually pay for
Speaker 4: all of this, It just depends on how soon.
Speaker 2: And so Texas has been taken all kinds of measures
Speaker 2: to try to cut energy usage, asking people not to
Speaker 2: use as much. Is that realistic?
Speaker 4: So the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ORCOTT, which
Speaker 4: is what the state grid operator is called, has been
Speaker 4: more proactive and they have been putting out weather watches
Speaker 4: like this is the first summer they started putting out
Speaker 4: a weather watch to warn people of tight conditions, asking
Speaker 4: consumers to make cuts where it was safe to turn
Speaker 4: up their thermost to help keep the grid stable and
Speaker 4: avoid a shortage.
Speaker 2: Another thing you report, which I thought was interesting, you
Speaker 2: mentioned bitcoin miners which have moved into Texas and they
Speaker 2: use a ton of energy running those big hot supercomputers.
Speaker 2: They have slowed down in kind of stopped operations sometime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so bitcoin mining is really interesting because these are
Speaker 4: basically computing centers. They look like data centers from the outside,
Speaker 4: but obviously very sophisticated machines on the inside, but they
Speaker 4: have the capability to turn on and off really quickly.
Speaker 4: There's about two thousand megawatts of bitcoin mining in Texas.
Speaker 5: That's the equivalent of like, let's say, two.
Speaker 4: Large nuclear plants, and so they see high power prices
Speaker 4: in the thousand dollars range, it makes sense to shut
Speaker 4: down and not operate because they're not using that much.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, not only are they saving money,
Speaker 4: but some of that is actually participating in a grid
Speaker 4: program where they get paid to curtail. And that's when Urkot,
Speaker 4: the grid operator, tells them, hey, can you like ramp
Speaker 4: down a little bit or a lot so that we
Speaker 4: can reduce stress on the grid and send that power
Speaker 4: to somebody else.
Speaker 2: We're talking about natural gas power, but you know, Texas
Speaker 2: has a lost sun, Texas has a lot of wind.
Speaker 2: How much can those forms of renewable energy we talk
Speaker 2: about all the time help out.
Speaker 4: In the current heat wave, actually solar is doing really well.
Speaker 4: It's maxing out. It's considered to have a summer capacity
Speaker 4: of like more than twelve thousand megawatts, so when the
Speaker 4: sun is shining mid morning to like when the sun sets,
Speaker 4: it's operating pretty much close to max capacity. And that's
Speaker 4: been a real benefit for the grid. If you think
Speaker 4: about twelve thousand megawatts versus like record demand, which was
Speaker 4: eighty thousand megawatts last year a little more than that,
Speaker 4: that's a significant chunk. And then wind has actually been
Speaker 4: low in the middle of the afternoon. That has actually
Speaker 4: been one of the reasons that supply is really tight
Speaker 4: and ARCOT they now have so much demand growth that
Speaker 4: they actually need renewables to kick in to keep the
Speaker 4: lights on. A regulator recently told me that RKOT is
Speaker 4: beholden to the breath of God. That basically means if
Speaker 4: the wind picks up and it's supposed to get stronger,
Speaker 4: then that gives more bandwidth for URKOTT to like operate
Speaker 4: the grids safely and not really worry.
Speaker 2: And of course sun just goes down every day, so
Speaker 2: at night you're never going to have that solar power.
Speaker 5: That's actually the riskiest part of the day.
Speaker 4: Historically, you know, the grids have always been set up
Speaker 4: to deal with peak summer demand the hottest hour of
Speaker 4: the day, and that was usually like five or six pm.
Speaker 4: But now since we have solar, the risk has actually
Speaker 4: shifted to late afternoon when the sun is starting to set,
Speaker 4: or the evening hours when there is no sun, and
Speaker 4: that's really when you need everything else to like ramp
Speaker 4: up quickly or be strong, and so that risk can
Speaker 4: actually be at like seven, eight or nine pm.
Speaker 2: Noreen, We're talking all about Texas just because so big
Speaker 2: and so hot, but it's also hot across the South,
Speaker 2: and Texas is a bit of an outlier because they
Speaker 2: run their own power grid. What are other states experiencing
Speaker 2: right now and how are they dealing with it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Texas is unique because not only do they
Speaker 4: run their own power grid, but they have very few
Speaker 4: links to other grids, so they have to kind of
Speaker 4: be self sufficient. But the nearby grids are also facing stress.
Speaker 4: The one directly to the east and it kind of
Speaker 4: like has a slice of Texas and goes all the
Speaker 4: way to the Great Lakes is the Miso grid. The
Speaker 4: mid Continent Independent System Operator. They have actually put out
Speaker 4: an alert for operating the grid conservatively in their southern region,
Speaker 4: which includes Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, these different grids. When they
Speaker 4: see a heat event coming, they will tell any power
Speaker 4: plant or operator of transmission lines or other infrastructure to
Speaker 4: cancel all maintenance so that basically everything is lined up
Speaker 4: and ready to go. And so that's like a first
Speaker 4: call to arms.
Speaker 2: So the storage problem, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why we have these big spikes in energy prices because
Speaker 2: there's no buffer, is something that other states are starting
Speaker 2: to look at. You write about New York, which I
Speaker 2: guess is testing out this giant battery.
Speaker 4: New York's largest battery is about seven point five megawatts
Speaker 4: and it's a four hour battery. If you ran that
Speaker 4: battery out for four hours at full capacity, that would
Speaker 4: be enough to charge one point five million phones. It
Speaker 4: makes a difference in extreme weather events, but it's the
Speaker 4: tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2: And I guess that's a really big point that you
Speaker 2: also write about, which is that the US Department of
Speaker 2: Energy says the US is far behind in building what
Speaker 2: we need to keep up with increasing demand.
Speaker 4: Yes, so the energy transition is not going as fast
Speaker 4: as it needs to be. The Energy Department has estimated
Speaker 4: that about thirty to fifty gigawatts of clean energy is
Speaker 4: built a year, and that pace needs to quicken to
Speaker 4: ninety gigawatts. There's a lot of people in finance, in developers,
Speaker 4: venture capital, policy makers on a state federal level trying
Speaker 4: to find a way to make it easier to connect
Speaker 4: these projects so that they could be connected faster. It's
Speaker 4: going to take some time to figure this out, and
Speaker 4: the concern is can you put all these pieces together,
Speaker 4: get through all the red tape To say it's a
Speaker 4: lot of work as a massive understatement, but there is
Speaker 4: an urgency to deal with this because we do have
Speaker 4: this very real climate threat and we're racing against the clock.
Speaker 2: After the break, even with the heat, the power industry
Speaker 2: is racing for winter.
Speaker 6: A snowstorm and brutal cold hit an unprepared energy system
Speaker 6: and left nearly five million customers in Texas, North Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana,
Speaker 6: and Mississippi in the dark. Power companies in affected states
Speaker 6: had to resort to rolling power to save their networks
Speaker 6: from collapsing, leaving households and businesses without power and.
Speaker 2: Heat norhen here we are sitting in the middle of
Speaker 2: the summer talking about heat. But one really interesting thing
Speaker 2: you write is that the heat is only part of
Speaker 2: the problem, and maybe not even the biggest. It's when
Speaker 2: winter comes. It seems a long way off, but it's
Speaker 2: the cold that often puts the biggest stress on the
Speaker 2: energy grid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and actually, how this summer plays out is going
Speaker 4: to directly determine what happens next winter. And what I
Speaker 4: mean by that is the summer months are when you
Speaker 4: refill all the natural gas inventories. You know, the last
Speaker 4: couple of summers, demand has been super high for natural
Speaker 4: gas being burned by power generators, and so that limited
Speaker 4: the amount of inventories that were there ahead of winter.
Speaker 4: So if we're burning through that gas now, there's going
Speaker 4: to be less ready and stuff piles for next winter.
Speaker 2: And I want to ask you about one big storm
Speaker 2: that you write about which served as the kind of
Speaker 2: moment where the energy industry realized they needed to do something,
Speaker 2: and that was winter Storm Elliot in December twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: Winter Storm Elliott was a really big wake up call
Speaker 4: because most of the attention at the time was focused
Speaker 4: on like Kentexas survive this after the winter storm Uri
Speaker 4: like two years ago, and what happened was the greatest
Speaker 4: risks emerged on the East coast. Elliott was a fast
Speaker 4: moving winter storm that moved across from like the northwest,
Speaker 4: across the central US and it hit the East coast
Speaker 4: on December twenty third. And the storm moved so quickly
Speaker 4: it caused temperatures on the PJAM grid, which stands for
Speaker 4: historically Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. It was the cornerstone
Speaker 4: of what is now the largest US power grid, which
Speaker 4: stretches basically from New Jersey to the northern edge of
Speaker 4: North Carolina and out to like Illinois. It serves more
Speaker 4: than sixty five million Americans. The storm caused temperatures to
Speaker 4: fall by twenty nine degrees in twelve hours. That was
Speaker 4: the fastest drop in temperature in history for that grid.
Speaker 4: If you had a slower moving storm and you knew
Speaker 4: it was going to get cold, you would have power
Speaker 4: plants that would have time to find fuel or to
Speaker 4: make preparations.
Speaker 5: This was so fast moving.
Speaker 4: It was at the start of a three day holiday weekend,
Speaker 4: when you know people are already on vacation, and so
Speaker 4: there were not enough people around. Trading floors at natural
Speaker 4: gas desks were closed. This is typical every weekend and
Speaker 4: every long weekend, but when you have an extreme weather
Speaker 4: come in, it creates a scramble.
Speaker 2: And so what happened to all those people who were
Speaker 2: supposed to be on the receiving end of all that
Speaker 2: gas powered electricity.
Speaker 4: What was difficult about this storm is that the failures
Speaker 4: were really widespread. In terms of the causes, the gas
Speaker 4: industry was probably the best indicator that there was trouble
Speaker 4: to come, because gas prices are really reactive to weather events.
Speaker 4: They tend to look at a forecast two weeks out
Speaker 4: in advance, and then if that forecast is reaffirmed every
Speaker 4: day and is still as intense by the time you
Speaker 4: were five days, three days or the next day out,
Speaker 4: gas prices just like go off the charts. And so
Speaker 4: what happened in the US and in Pjam gas prices
Speaker 4: started rallying ahead of time. So that was a good
Speaker 4: sign and that thing that there could be trouble or
Speaker 4: that there were tight gas supplies. It was on the
Speaker 4: morning of December twenty third, it was still fifty degrees
Speaker 4: in places like Pennsylvania. But you saw power generators start
Speaker 4: to drop off the grid, and one of the concerns
Speaker 4: we heard was that the rally and gas prices was
Speaker 4: higher than power prices, and so if they decided to
Speaker 4: run on December twenty third, they would have been operating
Speaker 4: at a loss by the time temperatures dropped, especially on
Speaker 4: December twenty fourth, that's when you actually started to see
Speaker 4: significant drops in gas production. The Appalachian regions, which is
Speaker 4: the Marcellus and Utica shale drops significantly. Utica fell by
Speaker 4: about half and Pennsylvania fell by about twenty percent. Anytime
Speaker 4: you see gas production falling off, so there's less gas
Speaker 4: going onto pipelines, and there is high demand on the
Speaker 4: other side, which is homes, businesses, and power plants tapping
Speaker 4: those pipelines more, it creates a pressure imbalance.
Speaker 2: Describe what you mean by pressure issues for people like
Speaker 2: me who don't understand the technical aspects of delivering gas
Speaker 2: through a pipeline to a power plant.
Speaker 4: When you're expecting a cold weather event, pipeline operators will
Speaker 4: do something called line pack. That's when they basically increase
Speaker 4: how much gas is being pumped into a pipeline system,
Speaker 4: and then you want to make sure that it evens
Speaker 4: out like over like long distances. But if you can
Speaker 4: pump these molecules and they're more condensed, you have higher pressure.
Speaker 4: The idea is you use the pipelines as a storage system,
Speaker 4: so when demand comes online, you are ready instantaneously to
Speaker 4: tap that. Utilities we heard were taking a lot of
Speaker 4: gas off the system because homeowners and businesses were turning
Speaker 4: up their heaters. That means that they're taking off gas
Speaker 4: at a faster rate than it can be put on,
Speaker 4: and so that changes the difference in pressure, and that
Speaker 4: can create instability.
Speaker 5: It's like if you're in a traffic jam.
Speaker 4: If suddenly you have a car that starts and stops
Speaker 4: in the middle, it creates like this halted flow of traffic.
Speaker 4: But if everyone just drives at ten miles per hour,
Speaker 4: you'll all just suddenly keep moving in a flow and
Speaker 4: the exits will keep flowing out if there's no other
Speaker 4: acts on the end.
Speaker 2: And so the danger is if there isn't enough gas
Speaker 2: coming through, then you lose that pressure. So they have
Speaker 2: to keep up a constant supply.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if the pressure gets too low, you cannot run
Speaker 4: power plants at some level that happened during winter Storm
Speaker 4: Ury in Texas. There was a sudden drop in gas.
Speaker 4: They couldn't maintain the pressure and power plants had to
Speaker 4: shut down, and that contributed to the blockouts.
Speaker 2: And in this winter storm Elliott in December, you right
Speaker 2: that there is this scramble to try to find gas
Speaker 2: to keep it flowing into the plant to keep up
Speaker 2: this pressure.
Speaker 4: So there was a mad scramble because the gas industry
Speaker 4: operates on a different schedule from the power industry. When
Speaker 4: you're thinking about buying power for the next day and
Speaker 4: the day ahead market, your day starts at midnight and
Speaker 4: is it you know, for the full twenty four hour
Speaker 4: it's for that one day, But the gas day starts
Speaker 4: at ten am. So on Friday, December twenty third, if
Speaker 4: you had a problem at like nine am that you
Speaker 4: suddenly needed gas, you actually had to have that secured
Speaker 4: on Wednesday because that would have fallen into that day
Speaker 4: ahead schedule for a gas So that is a fundamental
Speaker 4: issue that exists every day and is a problem every weekend.
Speaker 4: But you know, when you don't have a high demand day,
Speaker 4: you know there's ways around it. There's enough spare supply
Speaker 4: to like tap into. The other problem is this is
Speaker 4: a three day weekend. The gas industry basically shuts down
Speaker 4: every Friday. There are always traders and like some folks
Speaker 4: around that can help you fill in for a last
Speaker 4: minute fuel, but for the most part, people are out
Speaker 4: for the weekend. And then on top of that, this
Speaker 4: was a holiday weekend, so they were on vacation for real,
Speaker 4: but also like for three days.
Speaker 5: So if you were.
Speaker 4: Trying to buy gas for like Christmas, which is on Monday,
Speaker 4: you had to know what that demand was going to
Speaker 4: be on Friday. When you have a fast moving storm,
Speaker 4: it's always hard to predict what actually is going to
Speaker 4: show up. Usually demand on a holiday weekend is week
Speaker 4: The fact that demand came in really strong was another
Speaker 4: surprising factor, and that added to the scramble.
Speaker 2: So this is obviously a pretty extreme example, but I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people listening to this will be
Speaker 2: pretty surprised to hear just how it kind of catches
Speaker 2: catch can it can be to keep all of our
Speaker 2: lights on how common an occurrence is this.
Speaker 4: I've covered gas for a long time and then covered power,
Speaker 4: and I remember gas every weekend were like, our price
Speaker 4: is going crazy. It's an issue every weekend and every
Speaker 4: long weekend. A power generator executive testified at the Federal
Speaker 4: Energy Regulatory Commission at a mid June meeting saying, the
Speaker 4: Intercontinental Exchange, which is where you buy a lot of
Speaker 4: your spot gas purchases if you were a power plant,
Speaker 4: is telling folks that for the upcoming July fourth holiday,
Speaker 4: you have to buy your gas on Friday. The point
Speaker 4: that this executive was making was that if there was
Speaker 4: an extreme weather event, then that would create another big
Speaker 4: round of uncertainty and another scramble if things got severe.
Speaker 2: When we come back, what can we do to bulk
Speaker 2: up the grid and avert all these troubles. What are
Speaker 2: the companies actually doing to try to fix this boom
Speaker 2: in bus cycle that seems to happen with great regularity.
Speaker 4: So the boom in bus cycle is kind of like
Speaker 4: subdued or you can ride the waves like on a
Speaker 4: normal day on extreme weather events. There have been a
Speaker 4: lot of efforts in the last decade. This is not
Speaker 4: a new issue to increase coordination communication with the gas
Speaker 4: industry the power industry because power is considered a public
Speaker 4: good and you need to keep the lights on to
Speaker 4: keep the economy running. There are standards that power generators
Speaker 4: utilities have to follow to ensure that they can operate
Speaker 4: throughout the year and especially during cold weather events. Now
Speaker 4: there's a lot of criticism that those standards don't go
Speaker 4: far enough, but the gas industry does not fall under
Speaker 4: that realm of oversight, and there have been calls that
Speaker 4: the gas industry needs to have weatherization standards and needs
Speaker 4: to communicate more, disclose more information with the power industry.
Speaker 2: You've talked about PGM and how they've faced some of
Speaker 2: these problems. What does the company say about this.
Speaker 4: PJM is technically a corporation, but it's considered a quasi
Speaker 4: government agency appointed by the federal government to run this
Speaker 4: thirteenth state grid. They have said that the large number
Speaker 4: of outages driven by natural gas plants was unacceptable and
Speaker 4: that a large portion of them were because of equipment
Speaker 4: outages versus gas availability.
Speaker 2: NARIM, is there a concern that we're going to start
Speaker 2: to see more and more of this happening across the country.
Speaker 5: That's certainly the fear.
Speaker 4: I spoke to Mark Christi, who is a commissioner on
Speaker 4: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is the agency that
Speaker 4: oversees the power industry. He's been warning about these reliability
Speaker 4: concerns and concerns related to the gas deliverability issues for
Speaker 4: over a year now, but then when we spoke with
Speaker 4: him recently, he said that these concerns are accelerating because
Speaker 4: you can't save power like in a barrel of oil.
Speaker 4: The power grid has to be balanced every minute of
Speaker 4: the day.
Speaker 5: It's very specific.
Speaker 4: If you lose that balance too much for too many minutes,
Speaker 4: the grid is subject to failure. That's what almost happened
Speaker 4: in Texas in twenty two. Anyone what winter Storm Elliott was.
Speaker 4: It was a warning that you cannot say that you
Speaker 4: have a lot of extra power plants on the grid
Speaker 4: and you'll be okay. They are now taking another look
Speaker 4: and saying we need to see what actually shows up
Speaker 4: in these extreme weather events, whether it's in the summer
Speaker 4: or winter.
Speaker 2: Maurine is a power industry looking beyond natural gas to
Speaker 2: get past some of these problems.
Speaker 4: Yes, the power industry is definitely looking beyond gas, but
Speaker 4: that is a complicated answer because there is no obvious
Speaker 4: replacement to natural gas. Natural gas right now is needed
Speaker 4: to provide a lot of the power on the grid.
Speaker 4: But as we go forward, as we have more renewables
Speaker 4: hook up to the grid, gas isn't going to be
Speaker 4: used as much every hour of the day, but you're
Speaker 4: going to need it more and more to step in
Speaker 4: dependably on those most critical hours when the sunset and
Speaker 4: all that solar goes offline, or when there's a low
Speaker 4: wind day. There isn't enough battery storage to make up
Speaker 4: for all of that, and you still need to actually
Speaker 4: like produce.
Speaker 5: Power to store in batteries.
Speaker 4: So the benefit we saw from gas in the last
Speaker 4: decade is it was easy to replace coal. It was
Speaker 4: an easy answer. One megawat from a gas power plant
Speaker 4: was enough to replace one megawat from coal, and doing
Speaker 4: so it helped cut costs for consumers because you were
Speaker 4: tapping this cheap shale gas. But it also had a
Speaker 4: lot of environmental benefit because it burns cleaner than coal.
Speaker 4: We're now at a stage where, given the climate crisis,
Speaker 4: gas isn't clean enough, and so there are technologies that
Speaker 4: are being considered, like carbon capture or shifting off of
Speaker 4: natural gas. There is a lot of energy, part of
Speaker 4: my pun being put into trying to solve this problem
Speaker 4: of what does the grid of the future look like.
Speaker 4: But there is a really hard engineering problem. How do
Speaker 4: you keep this system like a physics problem? How do
Speaker 4: you keep this system running and keep the lights on.
Speaker 4: There's a saying that the power industry likes to use.
Speaker 4: Gas may only be seven percent of the economy, but
Speaker 4: it's the first seven percent the entire economy relies on it.
Speaker 2: Noreen, thanks so much for talking with me today.
Speaker 5: Thank you, it was great.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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Speaker 3: Don't don't talk There