(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order across 17 states directing the employment of unused backup generation to keep power during summer heat, and an energy industry advocate says the emergency points to the unreliability and failure of wind and solar power.
Founder and director of energy worker advocacy group Power the Future Daniel Turner told The Center Square: “We've been powering this country with electricity for almost 150 years – through World War II, through the Great Depression, through the Dust Bowl – and we've never had electricity problems until the last 20 years.”
“The American people need to ask why,” Turner said. “The American people need to understand where their energy comes from, and why it has been either politicized or weaponized.”
“It's not like we have forgotten how to power the country,” Turner said. “ It's not data centers. It's not demand. It's not Elon Musk. We know how to produce reliable affordable energy.”
“The question is, why we don't do it anymore,” Turner said. “And that's a really difficult conversation."
Turner said that “wind and solar are failing because they’re intermittent and that's always going to be their problem.”
“Wind will always rely upon wind power, and the wind does not always blow,” Turner said. “Solar is always going to rely upon fixed hours, and we're always going to have nighttime.
“So there's a delta, and that delta is where prices begin to spike because our energy consumption doesn't decrease based upon certain times,” Turner said.
“ In fact, a lot of energy actually goes up at night,” Turner noted. “People put on their air conditioners at home when they're trying to sleep et cetera, so our energy consumption actually starts to go up at nighttime and that's when solar disappears.
“When you have these intermittent sources of electricity – but your demand is consistent – that is going to create constant disruptions in markets,” Turner said. “And that's what we're seeing right now.”
On Sunday, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order “to keep Americans across 17 states powered during the region’s energy emergency brought on by hot weather conditions,” according to a press release.
“The order directs the Southwest Power Pool, Inc. (SPP) to dispatch specified generation units and to order their operation as needed to maintain reliability,” the release said. “The order also authorizes SPP to direct backup generation resources to operate as a last resort.”
The release said that an estimate of over 35 gigawatts of “unused backup generation remain[s] available nationwide.”
The Department of Energy has not yet responded to The Center Square’s request for comment.
Turner said one thing that makes the order significant is that it “opens up opportunities for baseload power production.”
“I think that's where our biggest challenge is going to be, because no matter what baseload power is, there's going to be some sort of opposition,” Turner said. “And that's always going to drive intermittency and price spikes.”
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