Renewables, gas kept U.S. grids stable during intense summer heat
December 6, 2024 | News
This article was published by The Energy Mix on Dec. 5, 2024.
By Christopher Bonasia
Expanded electricity capacity from renewable sources like solar and wind, as well as gas, helped grid operators keep the lights on across the United States this summer, even as high temperatures drove demand.
“There were no major outages caused by inadequate generation capacity,” writes [pdf] the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in a recent report. “Although some consumers lost power because of localized events, the bulk power system—the network of generators and transmission lines—was able to supply sufficient electricity to keep the lights and air conditioners working.”
Demand for electricity either approached or exceeded record levels in several U.S. regions this past summer. Normally, widespread high demand would result in blackouts, but the grid’s performance in 2024 bucked that trend. NREL says this was largely because of increased power available from new energy technologies like solar, storage, and wind.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that gas-fired electricity generation also reached record levels in the summer and at times provided nearly half of all electricity generated in the contiguous U.S. Also noting the expansion of renewable sources, the EIA said that “natural gas is used increasingly to balance the intermittent nature of electricity produced from wind and solar.”
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis also highlighted the grid’s performance amid heatwaves in California and Texas, saying “the experiences from the summer of 2024 demonstrate clearly that renewable energy and storage can reliably run power systems transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
Researchers at NREL say the grid’s 2024 performance was not a fluke. Texas weather really hasn’t changed since last year, but the grid has evolved, said Paul Denholm, a senior research fellow at NREL. “Most likely, summer 2024 was a look at future grid operations, and these resources will play a bigger role meeting peak demand.”
The report specifies that thermal resources like coal and gas will continue to be important for meeting energy demand, but will be used less as capacity from other energy sources increases. The EIA estimates that, by 2025, U.S. grid-scale solar will increase to more than 140 gigawatts (GW), up from 109 GW as of August 2024. Grid-scale battery storage is also expected to grow from 22 GW to 38 GW in that time, and NREL notes that there is already a large volume of solar and storage resources stuck in interconnection queues to be installed after 2025.
“Based on these trends, solar and storage will likely have a growing role in keeping the lights and air conditioning working on the hottest summer days in more regions across the country,” says NREL.