I’m a sucker for a catchy power grid headline. Add in the hint of an intriguing mystery, and you have the ultimate clickbait for me. A few days ago I stumbled on one that fit all the criteria. It was a newspaper headline suggesting that utilities have a capacity “secret” that can save the grid from growing demand. My first reaction was uh-oh, it’s conspiracy theory time. This is a reputable publication, my interest had been piqued, I had to read it. Turns out it was speculation driven by legacy-thinking.
The reporter had run into that old-school philosophy of overbuilding infrastructure and generation capacity to handle the highest expected summer peak, which only takes place a few days out of the year. It’s been called over-engineering for reliability and the vintage tradition sparked lots of discussion concerning its effectiveness, not to mention cost. The article suggested that because of this operational framework, the grid has a great deal of underutilized capacity that’s available for most of the year.
That may have been true at once, but time marches on, and today the power grid is faced with growing summer and winter power peaks. Interestingly, those winter and summer peaks are separated by periods of lower demand, which resemble valleys known as “shoulder months.” The reporter recognized this phenomenon but proposed the utilities should be convinced to utilize this non-peak power for system growth like datacenters, and the looming power crisis would be averted.
Filling in Those Valleys
Once again, the premise was correct in the past, but over the years, these spring/fall valleys have become less pronounced. The winter peak is catching up and in some cases exceeding summer peaks. Don’t get me wrong, we still have summer and winter peaks, but grid operators are expecting them to merge and shift. The New York Times reports that many grids are experiencing greater strains in winter and “we’re entering a period where we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Last year, ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) published their infrastructure report card and dropped the energy segment from a C- to a D+. In a nutshell, the power grid does not have the infrastructure or energy capacity to support the rapid demand growth expected. It’s core infrastructure is significantly aged, but that’s only one of the forces at work. There’s a backlog of between 2.3 terawatts and 2.6 terawatts of projects stuck in the interconnection queues. The average delay for transmission projects is more than 6 years. It’s not unusual for the time line to run 7 to 10 years due to permitting, siting, and supply chain issues.
Wood Mackenzie reports that in 2025 substantial amounts of potential renewable generation capacity in the U.S. had been delayed or was at risk due to policy and regulatory uncertainty. In addition, the aging infrastructure makes the power delivery system more vulnerable to climate crisis, floods, wildfires, etc. causing outages and blackouts. It all plays into the D+ grade. Today’s technologies, however, can offer capacity workarounds while we navigate these challenges.
Resilience via Technology
Take wind and solar generation. Critics say those technologies are intermittent and not reliable. That argument died with the introduction of battery energy storage systems. The criticizers then switched to saying these sources weren’t stable due to lack of inertia, but then inverter-based applications were initiated providing synthetic inertia. Today’s power electronics can quickly inject or absorb power. Their fast frequency response counteracts imbalances and boosts grid stability by balancing generation and consumption.
We have discussed grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) several times. They excel when it comes to optimizing existing grid assets by adding capacities. GETs are reshaping the existing power grid by increasing capacity, reliability, and stability without requiring years of planning and permitting, or siting. They’re also inexpensive compared to traditional methods. Supporters say by applying GET technologies, you can get more out of what you have.
We started off this discussion with a “secret” solution utilities possessed that would answer all our growing power demands. That proved to be an outmoded concept about the power grid being designed/built to handle temporary excessive peak loads. Unfortunately, forces like global warming destabilization, extreme weather events, electric vehicles, electrification of heating, and other impacts are pushing demand far beyond those legacy designs. Advanced technologies are proven to work together to increase the power grid’s flexibility and resilience. They’re capable of handling rising demand while integrating utility-scale levels of clean energy.
