Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) is between a rock and hard place, selling itself to potential new city members with claims of providing lots of renewable energy while ignoring vexing problems that nip at its heels.
California’s grid engineers are limiting energy production from wind and solar due to over-supply and electric grid constraints, the equivalent of rush-hour traffic.
This energy restriction process, known as “curtailment,” effectively kills off power that’s unusable by California.
Battery storage is not solving the escalating problem and introduces other drawbacks, including fires.
What’s happening is a dysfunctional dance between California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – the law which sets each year’s required renewable energy volumes — and energy retailers’ attempts to satisfy those increasing legal mandates by throwing relatively inexpensive and easy-to-construct wind and solar at the power grid, hoping to satisfy the RPS with their Hail Marys.
Then there’s new arrival OCPA trying to attract ratepayers by voluntarily over-supplying wind and solar, sucking the oxygen from the room, exceeding the RPS by 50% while exacerbating California’s electric reliability problems and undermining the state’s energy future.
OCPA effectively pours gasoline on the fire.
When imposed curtailments exceed OCPA’s wind and solar – true for each year since its 2022 business launch – that energy is not needed; indeed, absence of OCPA’s wind and solar would beneficially result in fewer curtailments and improved grid reliability for established market participants’ resources that preceded the upstart’s business launch.
In their eagerness to create OCPA, city leaders failed to heed the absence of “curtailment” discussion in the agency’s original Feasibility Study, and the third-party review of that document. Meanwhile, authoring consultants circled back to OCPA for post-launch contracts, putting everyone into conflict-of-interest while uncorking champagne.
Gamed “choice” and floating windfarms
“Choice” is used to lobby city councilmembers to join OCPA, while the opt out enrollment system controlling unknowing consumers remains skewed and under OCPA’s thumb. Average residences save about $1.75 per month (if enrolled into the lowest-price product) while each city assumes off-book open-ended liabilities.
This is in addition to OCPA’s questionable energy content, and its unwillingness to allow independent review of its records, which ultimately drove Huntington Beach from the agency.
Floating off-shore windfarms whose 1,000’ diameter rotors have yet to be constructed are dubbed a key ingredient to mitigating curtailments and improving our energy picture.
However, manufacturing problems in smaller, mounted-to-ocean-floor wind turbines are already experiencing colossal failures at an east coast windfarm, requiring the closure of waterways, while debris litter beaches amid concerns of fan blade chemicals leaching into the ecosystem. Now the developer of that mammoth Vineyard Wind project, GE Vernova, has announced layoffs and financial trouble, which comes on the heels of Ohio-based American Electric Power’s multi-state lawsuit against wind developer GE Renewables.
Activists, including OCPA’s fellow community choice agencies, are pushing for floating windfarms to replace Diablo Canyon power plant which provides nearly ten percent of California’s reliable carbon-free energy.
Even if battery storage is solved, a future built on floating windmills portends problems, including regular maintenance in enclosed nacelles that sway 600’ above sea level, or replacement of rotors whose diameter is larger than three football fields.
Before buying OCPA’s sales pitches, or caving to the environmental lobby, city leaders who aspire to preserve their offices should recall the abrupt end to Gray Davis’ political career when he was unable to outrun blackouts ushered forth by Enron, Iberdrola, and Shell Energy, the latter one of OCPA’s primary energy suppliers.
Orange County ratepayers will revolt if carbon and curtailment reductions are achieved at the expense of a polluted coast and rolling blackouts.
As renewable energy promoters promise to address California’s escalating curtailment problems and its self-inflicted energy shortages, city leaders need to remember ratepayers’ priorities — fashionable energy is worthless when the lights don’t work.
You can opt out of OCPA online or by calling (866) 262-7693.
Jim Phelps is a former power contractor and utility rate analyst. He served four years helping implement energy reporting legislation for the California Energy Commission, codified by the California Public Utilities Commission. Mr. Phelps is currently contributing to the Commission’s new Rulemaking for Power Source Disclosure Proposals on Hourly & Annual Accounting.
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