Past experiences are often repeated. It isn’t any secret, and it is not surprising that Texas is not configured for winter weather. Almost thirty million people live in Texas and within a given year, these people may encounter a few days of snow and ice and a few months later, it will be over 100 degrees with a south wind making it feel like you are living in a convection oven. Surviving higher temperatures is far easier than surviving extreme cold. Cold temperatures kill more often than hot temperatures and if you live in a home built for higher temperatures and not insulated properly, you need heat to live when ice is forming on the street.
Peter Zeihan, Geopolitical Strategist, reported that as Texas’s population and business sectors grow, more demand on a fragile grid will produce more brownouts and blackouts. Of course, I am paraphrasing but we do not have to accept an outcome caused by the growth of Texas, resulting in interruption of power to utility customers. We experienced this in 2021, four years ago, when demand for power and the capacity to meet demand were in conflict. As a result, utilities, and the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) purposefully forced mass blackouts causing lives to be lost and extensive property damage.
Ah yes, the Texas legislature, Governor, Lt. Governor, and others browbeat, cajoled, and went on a witch hunt for those responsible. People were fired from ERCOT, and its board was reconfigured. Utility CEOs and lobbyists were yelled at, and fingers were pointed in every direction. Texans have been assured that the problems which caused the blackouts were resolved yet, every summer and for each winter following 2021, warnings are sent out to the public to prepare for possible power disruptions. Is Better communication better than incompetence?
Yet 2021’s Winter Storm Uri was not the iceberg that sank the Titanic, devastating as it was. The iceberg remains and Mr. Zeihan pointed it out very clearly, Texas is facing an energy demand and supply problem which is only going to get worse as the state grows in population and business activity and the grid fails to keep up.
Solutions in Motion
Building up capacity (generation and transmission) makes the most sense. How that is done is at the heart of vigorous debates and often influenced by ideology. The design of our grid is, in effect, over 100 years old. We are wanting to launch rockets with a team of horses. Instead, groups and grid operators argue over natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, geothermal, solar and batteries as a compendium of solutions to meet Texas’s growth and demand for power. Each method of generating power comes with positives and negatives. Those advocating for one method of generation point out the negatives of the other and the dialogue becomes unproductive.
Do you remember launching rockets with the horses I just mentioned? Despite attempts to modernize the grid, little has been done to truly result in that end. Under the logic of “well its something,” consumer side grid modernization was the deployment of smart meters which aren’t that smart and don’t really work as promised but they are something after all. The truth is if we only modernize and build capacity on the generation end of the continuum and fail to truly modernize the consumer end with hardware and software which better controls, meters, and monitoring, the Texas ice storm of 2021 will only be a prequal of more harm to come.
We get it, we really do, utilities do not want to spend the money unless they are forced to do so. They do not want the risk of a new set of modernization projects unless a peer has already stepped forward to be the pioneer. What we also get is inaction which kicks the can down the road toward long term consequences which will be far more expensive to remedy. Doing nothing will ensure something expensive and harmful will occur.
Sure, Chicken Little ran around proclaiming the sky is falling and it never really did. However, we are not the lone voice, many from generation to consumption are proclaiming the sky is falling. We know what the coming calamity is and how it will manifest because we see grid failures in other states and nations where demand exceeds the grid’s ability to generate and transmit power, where growth exceeds capacity. We also know how to prevent the problems from occurring. There is a better way to solve this problem than only putting more generation capacity in motion and although that would be a terrific solution, it is not a complete solution. Doing nothing or the bare minimum just to keep policymakers quiet is not a sound direction.
Real Solutions Breed Real Benefits
Placing more capacity online is a solution and frankly, without delving into the debate about generation source, more capacity is a really good idea. If you look at the grid as a continuum, the decades old practice of hanging cable from pole to pole is not going to change any time soon and there is an argument that it should not. Better management of foliage would be great preventative maintenance.
Let’s talk about the kind of solutions we need to ensure the grid is healthy, reliable, and resilient.
First, smart meters were an off the shelf technology to address the consumer side of the US Federal Government’s grid modernization efforts. Smart meters were something and that’s just about it. They exist to build a monthly bill, and they provide some data but their ability to be used as a remote asset for load shedding does not work reliably. Even if they could be reliably turned off for a load shedding event, turning them back on is a different story and the consumer is without power, something we do not want to have happen.
Circuit level load shedding is a far better solution. The ability of a consumer to prioritize circuits means that power to life sustaining systems like durable medical equipment, HVAC systems, and kitchen appliances will keep people alive regardless of outside temperature and still shed considerable load when a grid is forced to conserve and ration power. Property damage would also be mitigated.
The ability to manage and control power like a throttle, rather than just turning it on or off, would go far to improve resilience and reliability but there is more to this than customer comfort. Flipping the switch to full grid energizing, where a rush of current is suddenly active, does incredible harm to grid equipment but also to consumer appliances. Being able to engage in soft starts allows systems to come online in sequence rather than all at once. This reduces stress on electric motors throughout the continuum from substations to refrigerators.
Should there be other features which benefit both consumers and utilities? I mentioned data collected by smart meters. That information is essentially a guess. A smart meter can interpret usage by an air conditioner or refrigerator, but it can’t very well interpret load caused by holiday lights on your house.
The system I am talking about can perform circuit level load shedding, soft start management, and provide real time granular data of exactly how power is being consumed, when it is consumed, and for what duration per cycle. It can be used as a basis to analyze appliance health and subscriptions could be entered into with HVAC repair companies to respond to maintenance issues before major repairs are required.
Further, the system has a robust communication system providing near real-time data and will reliably restore. Moreover, this system is a virtual right of way allowing for a more efficient deployment of broadband access without the last mile expense of trenching and laying cable or fiber.
Energy theft is a costly part of business that inflates consumer utility bills. If everyone were honest, it would not be an issue worth mentioning but sadly, there are always people looking for something they don’t have to buy. A system which can not only identify when there is instance of energy theft, but it can prevent it would save upwards of $9 to $18 per month per consumer. This would save consumers money and reduce costs for the utility as well.
Big Brother
I mentioned this in my last article on this forum. People have an expectation of privacy. Yet that expectation is not really universal and not always reasonable. Our smart phones listen to and record our conversations, our internet searches and activity history feeds the advertisements we see online, and we actually put listening devices in our homes ready to respond like a digital butler to set our morning wake up call or to play a song we want to hear. When it comes to our entertainment, our privacy is less important than our desire to be entertained.
We can make the case and articulate the limits of how data is used so most people are comfortable with the outcome. This system is robust, but it does not have to be onerous or threatening. Most systems providing service to our homes or businesses know more about us than perhaps we want known but a system which is a safety between warmth and no power at all is a good trade off. We do understand some people will not want to run the risk. Okay, so a simple opt-out is the solution. A system that stops at the wall means instead of circuit level load shedding, when a utility needs to conserve power, someone who opts-out loses power. The consumer’s bill is the same guess as before. In other words, nothing changes.
Adoption and Deployment
Just placing systems on the walls of homes does not provide the benefit unless utilities are engaged and invested in the system. Investment is not just talking about money it is, as a word, intended to indicate a transformation in how utilities operate. The Titanic would not have sunk if a hundred other conditions had been different. Let’s face it, with utilities operating a business model that is, in effect, over 100 years old and designed by George Westinghouse, we are talking about major surgery.
Reading that sentence is daunting enough but this is a transformation that will not require significant changes, practices maybe. Yes, we are talking about changing how energy is metered to include submetering. We are talking about how energy usage is calculated and billed. We are talking about soft start systems and creating new business with a virtual right of way all with better data. Other industries make these changes and perform well. Utilities can achieve the same kind of successes.
Engagement is scaled deployment across markets funded with private venture funding as well as federal and state funding. Not doing so is ignoring a glaring problem. We have talked with utility professionals, and they know there is an iceberg in the water and every day they don’t hit it is a day they did not have to face the challenge of what may seem like they are upending their jobs and business. We know there are hurdles to this kind of change, but we also know it works.
Kicking the can down the road will not continue to work, and I have been there. With bold action, big problems can be avoided and if we do the hard work to build a safe, reliable, and resilient grid, we will not encounter problems, we will encounter positive returns.
We will be here tomorrow to provide power to our customers and communities for them to live and do business.