Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

 Hat Hair's Beege Welborn wonders Will the Sierra Club Apologize If the Lights Go Out in Baltimore?

I’m no math major (although I play one here at HotAir), and even I can see – without a whiteboard presentation – that (the numbers of incoming people + conversions to all-electric household/businesses + some unreliable. minimal generation renewable power sources) – shutting down functioning, reliable, megawatt fossil fuel plants ≠ enough power when you need it.

That’s where the problem is really going to bite the entire country in the asterisk. There are now all these regional power companies who handle the load shifts for multiple states, and bad decisions driven by the climate cult are beginning to be felt everywhere. It’s happening in New England, the Duke Energy case, also with the Tennessee Valley Authority last December…

In 2005, TVA generated 57 percent of its electricity from coal. Since 2012, TVA has retired six coal plants, which reduced the amount of energy produced by coal to about 14 percent. The utility says it could retire its entire coal fleet by 2035 – pending necessary approvals.

…and now it looks as if the regional manager – PJM – who handles wholesale electricity transmission for 13 states and D.C. is in a bit of a pickle, as well. My girl TurnMDRed sent me a really interesting heads-up about the situation. This was all brought about by the Sierra Club’s war on coal, the state of Maryland’s NetZero push, and the pressure of an already insane regulatory and punitive pricing market.

At the heart of this is the Brandon Shores, MD, coal-fired electric plant, owned by a TX power company called Talen. In the face of challenges over the plant’s coal furnaces, they entered into an agreement with the Sierra Club – I’m assuming out of self-preservation to avoid an expensive and drawn-out lawsuit – to transition or shutdown the Brandon Shores plant. In fact, the stated goal of the Sierra Club in all of these actions is to completely shut down coal-fired electrical plants and they have been pretty successful so far.
. . .
Talen also found out they got burned when a plant they had converted from coal to oil (H.A. Wagner Unit 3) was called upon much more frequently than anticipated, because they became the back-ups for a system relying on renewables. What happened was they bumped up against the artificial “capacity” limits for running on its “air permit.” If they had to shut down prematurely because of reaching those limits, then they started incurring significant penalties for not being able to run when called on.

I mean, this is some crazy stuff.

… Talen’s decision to retire H.A. Wagner has similar roots. The conversion of H.A. Wagner Unit 3 from coal to oil is nearly complete. H.A. Wagner, however, has been dispatched by PJM in 2023 much more often than anticipated. We now believe H.A. Wagner will reach the limits of its air permit, which only allows the plant to operate on oil to capacity factors under 15%, much more quickly than anticipated, putting Talen at risk of significant Capacity Performance penalties if H.A. Wagner is unable to run when called upon because of its permit limitations. The economic problem is compounded by the prices at which H.A. Wagner has been capped in the energy market when called. Accordingly, Talen intends to retire it as well, in June 2025.

Talen has said “To hell with them both,” and chosen to deactivate these last two without even bothering to try to convert the Brandon Shores plant. Yay, Sierra Club WINS!

Citizens lose, as PJM has nothing to replace them with.

Hopefully, this won't affect us down here in slower Maryland. Our power provider is not BGE, which is fed partially fed from Brandon Shores, but rather SMECO, the Southern Maryland Electric Co-op, but still, we share the same grid, and I fear the when push comes to shove, the state regulators will choose the Baltimorons over the rural hicks down south.

We need nuclear power, and we need it yesterday.