NC energy advocate: A year after the Christmas Eve blackout, solutions face stiff resistance | Opinion
On Christmas weekend a year ago, as temperatures dipped below zero, half a million Duke Energy customers found themselves in the dark. Customers impacted by rolling blackouts had no way to cook their holiday meals and no way to keep warm in the record-breaking cold.
Today, one year later, in spite of warnings from federal energy agencies and analysis showing North Carolina’s power system remains at risk, there is still no appetite for the state’s largest monopoly utility to implement — or even evaluate — reforms that could help stabilize our electricity system and drive down customer costs.
It’s a complicated problem, but the solutions can be boiled down to simple options, the implications of which include better chances that our power stays on and a greater likelihood that our monthly bills go down.
Putting all our eggs in one energy basket isn’t smart. We’re all familiar with the concept of diversification helping to insulate consumers in a variety of situations, and it’s applicable to our state’s power system, too.
Duke Energy’s current mix of energy sources is about 50% coal and gas, and only 1.5% renewable energy. This is concerning as it relates to the rolling blackouts. In Duke’s testimony to the NC Utilities Commission in January and in reports from federal agencies, we learned that it was cold weather-related failures at its coal and gas plants that were the primary cause of the blackouts. Renewable energy facilities, including those generating electricity from solar arrays and wind turbines, continued performing throughout the cold weather.
North Carolina would be served well by further diversifying its energy mix with more renewable energy sources, particularly when paired with battery storage options that can help make that affordable, reliable power accessible even when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing. For example, wind and solar power proved to be meaningful help in Texas’ when summer heat waves swept the state. They were critical in keeping air conditioners running as temperatures and energy use spiked.
Closer evaluation of joining a regional power market would also be a step in the right direction. This would set up our N.C. utilities to more easily purchase and import electricity when there’s a deficit. Analysis shows this type of market would also yield between $400-600 million in annual savings for customers.
Our neighbors in South Carolina are ahead of us on this issue. In the last two years, under the leadership of Republican Sen. Tom Davis, the S.C. legislature passed a bill, commissioned a study and developed recommendations for implementing power system reforms that will improve reliability and lower power bills. They’re steadily making progress toward changes that will yield meaningful results for S.C. residents.
In North Carolina, steps like those taken in South Carolina have been met with roadblocks.
As we prepare to celebrate the holidays, we can be grateful not to have experienced weather events that resulted in additional blackouts. But if there’s no action on reforming North Carolina’s electricity market, there is no guarantee that we will continue to be so lucky.
At Conservatives for Clean Energy, we urge our North Carolina leaders to prioritize this issue and create an energy market that is more fair and competitive for ratepayers in our state.