Power Insecurity: How has the shift from conventional to renewables impacted the US power system?

The recent winter storm in Texas has once again raised the issue of power security as a significant exposure across the US, with some of the worst episodes occurring in the country’s major states. As with the Californian heatwave of 2020, the growth of renewable energy is typically only part of the story – there are many other contributing factors, several strikingly similar to the events in California despite the differing weather conditions. So, what are these factors, and what part is the ongoing energy transition playing in these events?

This whitepaper evaluates:

• Renewables growth and the intermittence gap
• How to balance grid demand without sufficient battery storage
• Grid dynamics and how power is traded
• Operational regimes and how to fill the gap
• Powerplant outage insurance availability