/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>58392352
I'm just hoping WW3 is good for coal. Something needs to save coal in the West. If it takes WW3 to do so, then so be it. I will be doing my part at the mines, producing good, energy-rich coals for the war effort.
But I do like Russia and China. They're big fans of coal -- especially China.

The Grid’s Gas Problem

While the flexibility of the natural gas fleet is critically important to balancing the variability of renewable generation, a deeply valuable capability under most operating conditions, the gas system – from wellhead to power plant – has proven to be extraordinarily susceptible and unreliable during bitter cold.

It has been the poor performance of the gas system that has pushed the grid to the verge of disaster – or actual disaster – again and again over the past few years.

Notably, it was the failure of the gas delivery system in Texas that precipitated the near collapse of the state’s grid during winter storm Uri in February of 2021 that left millions in the dark and claimed the lives of 246 people.

During winter storm Elliot in December of 2022, the gas system was once again the leading culprit in a grid crisis that saw rolling blackouts in multiple Eastern states and nearly cost more than a million families in New York City their heating.

A stunning 90.5 GW, or 13% of the generating capacity in the Eastern Interconnection — the grid system covering two-thirds of the U.S. — failed to run or operated at reduced capacity during Elliot.

Gas-fired capacity accounted for 63% of the outages. On the PJM grid, the nation’s largest regional grid serving 65 million Americans, gas capacity accounted for 70% — or 32 gigawatts – of outages, enough capacity to power more than 20 million homes.

In January of 2018, during another polar vortex event, half of the total PJM natural gas capacity was not available to supply peak demand. And in February of 2014, during another cold snap, PJM found that 23% of total generator outages were due to interruptions of natural gas supply. In both 2018 and 2014, it was coal generation that came to the rescue, ramping up power supply when gas couldn’t.

https://www.countoncoal.org/2024/03/epa-misses-the-point-on-grid-reliability/