The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has responded appropriately to US Energy Sec. Rick Perry’s call for an examination of whether competitive markets might be jeopardizing the US power grid’s resilience and reliability by forcing utilities to retire nuclear and coal-fired power plants prematurely, a panel of stakeholders generally agreed on Oct. 31.
Their opinions, however, during the discussion hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center differed over the question of whether the discussion’s scope should be expanded to include preparing for possible power disruptions by foreign interests as well as interruptions by extreme weather events.
Sean Cunningham, executive director at DOE’s Office of Energy and Systems Analysis, said Perry’s Sept. 23 order revived important conversations not only about power system resilience and reliability, but also security and price formation. “We should be looking at costs to consumers if coal and nuclear are removed from the power mix, as some groups want,” he said. “This should involve security, not picking winners and losers.”
Martin J. Durbin, American Petroleum Institute’s executive vice-president and chief strategy officer, said, “There’s no question that natural gas disrupted the existing markets system significantly, but it’s also important to look at the success power markets have shown in the last 5 years. Gas helped create efficiency, diversity, and affordability. Now, we need to identify problems and discuss ways to solve them.”
William L. Murray, vice-president for state and electric public policy at Dominion Energy—which previously invested in nuclear power but now emphasizes using gas to generate electricity—said, “You want a diverse set of resources to deal with today’s realities and tomorrow’s unknowns. We knew nuclear plants retiring, before they were worn out, was a problem before the secretary mentioned it. Right or wrong, no one asks security questions during a power outage. We should be asking them now because breakdown impacts are so much broader than they were 25 years ago.”
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].