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Energy & Environment Energy Regulators -- NERC, FERC, DOE Shedding some light on Electric Utilities by Sophia Barkat Electricity is a marvel of Science. But it takes engineers, power plant administration and legislators to create a reliable power distribution system. When the system fails how should we start investigating to find the cause? In North America Power is not provided by municipal utilities. Businesses have a major share of the market. And because of the way people differ on who should have more say -- corporations or elected officials -- the business of regulating the Electricity Distribution falls in the hands of independent think-tanks who get all the monitoring data but sometimes very little accountability. # The Independent Energy Regulator: Enter NERC.com, the North American Energy Reliability Council -- the think-tank that has been calling the shots on the whole Power Distribution System since 1968. So who are they? And how do they relate to the big picture of regulators in the Electric Energy business? Main page says: "NERC's mission is to ensure that the bulk electric system in North America is reliable, adequate and secure. Since its formation in 1968, NERC has operated successfully as a voluntary organization, relying on reciprocity, peer pressure and the mutual self-interest of all those involved. Through this voluntary approach, NERC has helped to make the North American bulk electric system the most reliable in the world." Under http://www.nerc.com/~filez/pressreleases.html you'll find NERC report on: "We Need Reliability Legislation, Not Rulemaking" by Eugene F. Gorzelnik, efg@nerc.com. In this 2001 report, NERC claims that the US Department of Energy, DOE, has been more concerned with giving legislative power to FERC -- Federal Energy Reliability Commission -- an organization within Congress that does not understand the energy distribution business. NERC wants an independent organization to be in charge of seeing that energy is available for Americans. # Enter Bush Administration in 2001 and the new Energy Plan: Turns out that NERC has endorsed the Bush Administrations policy regarding Distribution of Electric Power across Interstate Electric Grids. See the link titled: "NERC Applauds the Administration's National Energy Plan", by Ellen Vancko and Eugene Gorzelnick. It says how happy NERC is that an independent organization -- hmm...perhaps NERC? -- will be in charge of energy distribution to N. America under oversight of FERC, of course. The authors say that "NERC is pleased on the removal of constraints on interstate electric grids and removing obstacles to expanding the grids to meet the growing needs of the economy ... Operating around limitations, foregoing economic opportunities and risking major grid reliability problems because we cannot find a way to expand our energy infrastructure is not a sound or responsible strategy." Hmm.. In light of the artificial energy shortage that Enron created on Californians -- why Gov. Davis had to let the State of California pick up the tab and created a deficit while holding down the bill that Californians had to pick up -- one must be skeptical whenever any Independent Think-tank says the nation is experiencing energy shortages. Such consultants have no direct accountability to the US Congress. NERC certainly doesn't. It may be getting all the data that monitors power plants all across North America but it doesn't own Americans anything. And even though NERC claims it's Independent Board Members don't have a direct monetary stakes in the Energy business who is to say they don't something? (See "Requesting Candidates for NERC Board of Trustees" August 5, 2003, at homepage) Members of the Board range from Investment Bankers to Management Consultants! Not a crowd that is known to be free of profit motive by nature. I mean, why do they need a Board of Trustees for anyway? I thought they were supposed to be a think-tank who gave expert advice on Power Distribution Policy! In any case, let's assume NERC is free of the influence of the Energy Industry. The fact that they say "foregoing economic opportunities.." sort of implies they are invested in the economic prosperity of some group -- is it the energy lobby or are they simply implying that having more power is necessary to keep up with demand growth? More so, they say: a) Interstate Grids are under-utilized -- under-capacity. b) Interstate Grids must be expanded It suggests that underutilized interstate grid between say CT and MA, should not be forced to work under capacity because of some limitation imposed on it by DOE or FERC. This could make sense if limitations placed on grid capacity by DOE and FERC were arbitrary and that these did not consider physical limitations placed on grids by the Nature of Electricity. To understand the difference one must look at what physical limitations on grids are and how they arise. # The nature of Electric Wires: To understand how currents flow in any circuit one may look at some properties of conductors. Introductory Physics reveals that electric circuits have several properties related to them: 1) Power -- will transfer energy. Load is Power per unit area of cross-section of cable. Power is Electrical Energy or Work per unit time. 2) Heat Loss -- wires will oppose current and create heat loss as either current or resistance go up. 3) when wires carrying current in the same direction are close to each other they repel each other noticeably. They attract each other if the currents in the wires are in opposite directions. It matters how wires carrying currents are arranged with respect to each other to avoid wires breaking under these forces. 4) Copper wires are used. These are the cheapest conductors and the fastest (after Silver -- which is too expensive for mass use). You can't get a better conductor for faster transfer of electricity and thus greater load. More so, a wire will melt if the current is increased without the wire getting area to dissipate heat. Close packing reduced surface area and increases chances of meltdown. # What's an Interstate Grid: An Interstate Electric Grid is a place where for e.g. Massachussetts power line and Connecticutt's Power lines connect. As such it is the meeting point of many power lines. All grids have some physical limit due to space. Also current carrying wires tend to exert forces on each other and they also can melt down. Electrical fires start when wires heat up or wires snap. This leads to power outages too. Thus, physical limitations on grids are surface area, and the physical properties of conducting wires. # Now lets look at where electricity is being made: 1) Nuclear Power Plants --- each plant operates under strict safety levels and therefore has a limited capacity for producing electricity. 2) Hydroelectric Power plants -- these rely on the velocity of water, the height of the waterfall usually a constraint. Most natural waterfalls are already utilized to a maximum. 3) Solar power & Wind power plants -- works regionally, dependant on climate and weather. May not work for most parts of the US. So each type of power plant has it's own physical limitations. Now to increase the Loads of interstate Electrical Grids one must do so without increasing the risks of Electric outages and fires from crowding of wires. One must respect the ways of Nature. One must work within safe-limits of nuclear fission. Creating more interstate grids and more power-plants can solve the problem. However, hydro-electricity sources are limited and nuclear power is risky -- even if u can keep fission within contrrol you cannot stop it from falling into the hands of terrorists. And Fossil fuels -- such as coal -- by virtue of being part of the hydroelectric process, are already limited as far as usefulness in electric power output by the extent to which hydro-electricity can be increased. Hence, there are no easy solutions as to what type of power plants will be used. # Nuclear Power Plants are easy to create and don't have weather/climate constraints: As such, danger aside, they have been the choice of power companies all across the US. So much so, companies that own "Green" power plans also own nuclear power plants. The economic profitability of such plants is so high in the face of growing urbanization in America -- but not growing manufacturing -- that there might be an incentive to create public demand for more power plants and fast. # Okay. So you increased the number of plants. Will they run efficiently now? Sandia National Labs did a study for the DOE in 2001: http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN02-11-00/grid_story.html They said, "The software tools power companies use to monitor and control the electric grid were not designed for the level of complexity and the number of transactions the system is experiencing today..... It's clear that the deterministic software tools available today are not adequate for predicting and averting major outages in the future." Hmm.. Sounds to me like more needs to be fixed than just the carrying capacities of interstate grids. # And now to the current situation in the Northeast Finally here we are. First Energy Co. which is being blamed for the problem claims that it had no part in the crisis. Part of Cleveland Ohio's deregulated market it did receive a complaint from Dennis Kucinich in Feb 2003: http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/oh10_kucinich/030203DavisBesseRevoke.html "Because First Energy (1) has admittedly operated the plant in violation of NRC rules and regulations and its own operating license, (2) has admittedly failed to observe safety standards necessary to protect health and to minimize danger to life or property, and (3) has deliberately withheld information from the NRC and fraudulently misrepresented plant conditions in order to continue to operate the plant in an unsafe manner, the NRC, in order to comply with its regulations and guidelines, must revoke First Energy's license to operate the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station." "It is very clear that First Energy has placed profits above public safety in operating the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Plant," stated Kucinich. "Not only has First Energy admitted to violating the rules and regulations of the NRC, it deliberately withheld information from the NRC putting the public at an unimaginable risk. In order to continue to serve public safety, NRC must revoke First Energy's operating license." But Dennis Kucinich is known for being hard on private power plants, so we don't know if this is just him being persistent in election year or not. And the infamous 5 by 7 inch hole, 6 inches deep, in the head of the nuclear reactor, which could have created a nuclear meltdown had been discovered and repaired by its workers. In fact, the severity of the situation had been so large I can only imagine that First Energy was under the strictest scrutiny and maximum pressure to show compliance with EPA and NRC. So, how is it that it could have failed again and so soon? Seems to me that First Energy, could well have been a scapegoat in the August 14th-15th outage situation. But one can also imagine that the NRC missed out on many an error due to negligence and that the failure did occur first at First Energy. |
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