S. A. Shelley: For those of you too young to remember, in the late nineties and early naughts (naughties?), there was a super major company called Enron. Enron was a darling of Wall Street and was hugely profitable in trading energy. It was an inventive company, too, in that it developed things such as weather derivatives and dubious accounting schemes. But it was mostly a scam, a fraud undertaken on a massive scale. The company eventually collapsed, and from time to time in Houston, you can still meet a former Enron employee in a pub who, after a beer or two, will tell you wonderful tales of excess at that company.
But one often forgotten and overlooked practice that Enron excelled at was manipulating markets and physical energy grid assets to extort money: Everyone paid Enron. This situation is exemplified best by the role that Enron had in the great California energy crisis of 2000 to 2001. California had been experiencing power demand growth and subsidiaries of Enron had contracted with various California utilities to provide power. However, Enron then went on to game the system by doing such things as providing power in surges that the California grid could not transmit, and then claiming grid curtailment (congestion) charges. In effect, Enron was paid to supply power and then paid to not deliver that same power because of grid constraints. Ultimately California residents paid twice for power that they could not receive. It was a masterful stroke of clever contracting that, though of dubious morality, was legal at that time. Years later, it was even shown that Enron had taken power plants offline during California peak demand to force electricity prices higher during such times. Where else in the world can such unbridled capitalism (deviousness) flourish?
Which brings us to modern times and the renewable energy surge along with associated grid constraints. Grid operators in the UK have started paying wind farm operators huge sums, in excess of 1 billion GBP to not deliver power.
UK Is Paying £1 Billion to Waste a Record Amount of Wind Power – BNN Bloomberg
But the grid hasn’t expanded at the same pace. As a result, the operator is increasingly paying wind farms, particularly those in Scotland, not to run. So far this year, the UK has spent more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in “congestion costs” to turn off plants that can’t deliver electricity because of grid constraints, and switch on others.
It’s just as bad in Germany with grid constraints. In 2022 about 3% of all renewable energy generated by wind and solar were curtailed – produced but not delivered to the grid because of grid and network physical constraints. In 2023, about 4% of all renewable energy generated was not delivered (curtailments).
In way back times, when a power company built a new power plant (coal, gas, whatever) it was also tasked by the utility regulator to build the supporting transmission lines and substations. (See the Vogtle nuclear power plant as such an example.)
But for some strange reason, the politicians pushing renewable energy ignored or simply forgot about the grid. The grid is also forgotten by most folks. Very few people understand how the grid is a delicately balanced system of power inputs and outflows. Residents expect to be able to turn on their dishwasher whenever they want and have the power right then and there to operate the machine. Never once do most residents appreciate, let alone understand, the complex engineering and massive infrastructure required to make that small bit of modern convenience work. Rarer still do politicians ever talk about adding more power lines and substations.
It should also be noted that the solution has its own set of problems. Transmission infrastructure requires large swaths of land, often through populated areas, and residents and special interest groups (often fossil fuel companies) typically fight against such developments, the so-called NIMBY problem. It is much easier to get approval for an offshore development, take all the accolades for helping solve the earth’s climate problems, and then leave the hard work for someone else.
Big wind farm producers are no doubt cognizant of the grid constraints yet indifferent to those problems. They are perfectly willing to suck every subsidizing Dollar or Euro out of government coffers at all levels to build their huge wind farms. The wind farm developers care only for their power cable to the to the grid connection point and not past it. If they have to earn congestion or curtailment fees, so be it, because consumers will just have to pay for it. We pay, we always pay, for the actions of politicians with small intellects and big egos for as long as these politicians continue their utopian green visions without understanding the complex connections on that path forward. Until our elected representatives get smarter there will always be such reincarnations of Enron who take advantage of the grid congestion problem.
Vive l’Alberta Libre!
There is no saving Canada.
In September in Canada, there is a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples. (Some Canadians call it National Surf Day because of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau snuck off in secret to surf that very first solemn day which he publicly championed and then privately ignored.) In 2024, in the main branch of the City of Calgary Public Library, there were many displays about Indigenous history. One display was a large map of the province of Alberta. On that map the large cities were indicated as well as a mixture of Indigenous and Metis historical land areas. Figure 1 below is an image capture of that map.
In Alberta, there is only one city named Red Deer. On the map two are shown in different geographic locations. There are also some questionable land boundaries indicated and most indigenous treaty bands are not shown at all. In the main branch of the City of Calgary library there is an archive of maps on the top floor: Current maps of Alberta of all kinds are also kept there. Apparently, it was too much for the library staff to fact check in-house: They probably felt that their work was sufficient. Such is the continuing decline in Canada.