Frankly, there’s little that would be scarier that comes to mind, Baltimore being what it is in broad daylight. But a dark Baltimore not weather induced, but blacked out purely by a climate cult settlement?

Ho, boy. That would raise some hackles. Or at least you’d think it would.

There’s a more insidious, creeping trend across the United States that’s been under the radar for the most part, although California and Texas have been the canaries in the coal mine. I touched on it a bit last January, when Duke Energy was crawling on its corporate belly apologizing for massive outages across their service area.

…You would think with the numbers of people migrating into warmer, friendly southern states, the utilities would be keeping abreast of current events and adding additional power resources for all the gadgets they’ve written rebate checks for, no?

No.

…In Tennessee, the number of households using electric heat has increased by about 22% from 2009 to 2020, driven in part by population growth, according to government data. Over that same time period, the percent of households dependent on electric heating jumped to 69% from 63%, the data show.

That rise in electric heating demand came as Tennessee’s total power generation remained largely unchanged…

… In North and South Carolina, which were also hit by blackouts as energy use overwhelmed the grid, the number of homes using electric heat rose about 20% from 2009 to 2020, the data show. The total overall percent of households in those states relying on electric heat also climbed from 65% in 2009 to 70% in 2020.

Over that same time period, the total power supplies for the two states grew at just 2%, with coal being displaced mostly by natural gas units and some solar farms, the data show.

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.

The owner of an Allegany County power plant has announced that it plans to stop burning coal there next year, making it the last plant in Maryland to share an end date for the practice.

The Warrior Run power plant in Cumberland would stop burning coal on June 1, 2024, under plans announced by AES Corp., the plant’s Arlington, Virginia-based owner.

…In a news release Wednesday, the Maryland Sierra Club called the Warrior Run announcement by AES a milestone for Maryland. When Sierra Club started its campaign to end coal burning over a decade ago, Maryland had eight coal-burning plants.

The environmental group said that Maryland now joins 14 other states that either have no remaining coal-burning plants or where all such facilities have announced their intent to stop burning coal by 2030.

Just so you know what Talen and Brandon Shores are up against.

Now, back to this particular plant.

Talen had weighed switching the plant to oil, but those numbers weren’t working, either. Not the electrical prices they would get from the PJM network, not the money it would cost for the conversion, nor the chance that performance penalties during an emergency situation could take a massive chuck out of an already huge operating deficit.

…Talen analyzes each capital project, such as a fuel conversion from coal to oil, on a standalone basis to ensure the economic viability of the project. In this instance, structural market economics around Brandon Shores’ planned fuel conversion were impacted substantially by a large drop in PJM capacity prices, higher than anticipated project costs, and higher risk of significant capacity performance penalties like those experienced with Winter Storm Elliott. Those factors make the plant’s continued operation uneconomic. Additional capital investment in Brandon Shores does not make sense, given the negative returns on capital, and we cannot run on coal past the end of 2025.

Prior to filing its deactivation notice, Talen engaged with PJM to express its concerns about market rules and significantly lower capacity auction offers in the beginning of 2023, which had negatively impacted the economic feasibility of the Brandon Shores conversion project. As soon as it became clear that market prices and PJM’s rules did not support the capital expenditure necessary to perform the conversion, Talen submitted its notice of deactivation for Brandon Shores. That notice was sent more than two years before the time specified by PJM rules.

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.

A major power grid operator that oversees electricity supplies across the mid-Atlantic repeated its warning that the looming shutdown of a coal-fired power plant in Baltimore will threaten the region’s grid reliability and may have devastating impacts on consumers.

In a follow-up letter obtained by FOX Business this week, PJM Interconnection warned the shutdown of the Brandon Shores coal power plant is slated to occur before replacement power sources can come online, resulting in “degraded grid reliability” for more than 1 million state consumers, including the entire city of Baltimore.

They are begging the Sierra Club to be merciful.

…”This situation requires immediate attention,” Asthana continued. “Failure to come to resolution on this issue could result in degraded grid reliability for over 1,000,000 Maryland consumers during peak hours, including the entirety of the city of Baltimore, for the years between the stated deactivation of Brandon Shores and the date whereby needed transmission can be constructed.”

Even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is, like, somebody oughta do sumpthin’…

…FERC Commissioner Mark Christie said Nov. 8 that, without proper upgrades, the shutdown could cause “severe voltage collapse in Baltimore and the surrounding zones, including Northern Virginia, the District of Columbia, Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania,” adding such a scenario would be “potentially catastrophic.”

Any of you D.C. peeps hear about this? Might want to buy a flashlight or two.

PJM has known about it. In one of their meetings just last week, they were trying to do electricity math for Virginia. It wasn’t adding up either.

YOICKS

…The proposal (PDF), discussed at the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee meeting, consists of a set of projects designed to expand the regional transmission system to meet the needs of electricity demand growth and generator retirements in the PJM footprint.

PJM is preparing for significant impacts to the grid from additional demand that includes up to 7,500 MW of new data centers to be sited in Virginia and Maryland. This is combined with widespread effects from the deactivation of more than 11,000 MW of generation across the PJM footprint.

The projects that make up the proposal to be considered by the Board of Managers Dec. 11 are required to maintain the reliability of the system. If the transmission improvements are delayed, electricity customers in the region will be at risk of outages, according to PJM’s analysis.

An additional 7500MW demand IN but 11K MW power generation GONE = LIGHTS OUT

Um…maybe make that a couple flashlights and one of those solar calculators.

And don’t trade up to that EV just yet.