At AmericanExperiment.org, Sarah Montalbano reviews the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator’s prospects for providing stable electricity in the summer that is about to begin. MISO runs the electric grid for 15 states in the central United States:
The Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO) is at risk of running low on electricity this summer, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) 2025 summer reliability assessment.
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MISO will see an “elevated” risk of shortfalls this summer, with the retirement of 1,575 MW of natural gas and coal-fired generation since last summer contributing to “less dispatchable generation” in the region. NERC pulls no punches in pointing out that MISO’s grid instability is due to “the decline in dispatchable generation and the increasing share that solar and wind resources have in meeting demand.”
Emphasis added. This is from the NERC report:
The performance of wind and solar generators during periods of high electricity demand is a key factor in determining whether system operators need to employ operating mitigations, such as maximum generation declarations and energy emergencies; MISO has over 31,000 MW of installed wind capacity and 18,245 MW of installed solar capacity; however, the historically based on-peak capacity contribution is 5,616 MW and 9,123 MW, respectively.
Since last summer, over 1,400 MW of thermal generating capacity has been retired in MISO, and the new generation that has been added is predominantly solar (8,080 MW nameplate/4,140 MW on-peak).
In other words: don’t be fooled by alleged nameplate capacity of wind and solar developments. Wind turbines are only good for 18% of their alleged capacity, and solar panels 50%–a higher figure than I have seen before, for solar. More:
Other grids at an elevated risk this summer include NPCC-New England, Southwest Power Pool (SPP), and ERCOT, the grid that serves Texas. SPP is at risk of blackouts “if above-normal peak demand periods coincide with low wind output and high generator forced outages,” with known challenges including “managing wind energy fluctuations.”
More at the link. As coal-fired, natural gas and nuclear plants are retired and replaced–allegedly–by wind farms and solar panels, the likelihood of blackouts increases until it reaches certainty.
Energy expert Mark Mills is optimistic that recent events have driven the last nail in the coffin of any purported “transition” to wind and solar energy:
t’s no secret that the Republican’s “Big Beautiful Bill” plans to axe large swaths of mandates and billions of dollars in subsidies directed at achieving a so-called “energy transition.” If that budget axe falls, it will be the proverbial third strike that puts to rest the idea that the U.S., never mind the world, will abandon fossil fuels. The other two strikes already happened.
Strike two came last month with the Great Iberian blackout. Preliminary forensics make clear that over-enthusiastic deployment of unreliable solar and wind power was the fulcrum that put 55 million people in the dark for days. Few politicians will want to risk allowing something like that to happen again, anywhere. …
And strike one came a few weeks prior to the Iberian calamity with the release of a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) titled Energy and AI. That report sought to answer the question about how to reliably meet the surprising jump in power demands expected in the coming decade’s boom in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. Answering that also answers, even if not intentionally, the same question about meeting society’s future demands.
As the IEA report noted, just one large AI data center uses as much electricity as two million households, and myriads are planned. Thus, digital infrastructures will soon create demands equivalent to—reliably—powering hundreds of millions of new households. Spoiler alert: the IEA forecast shows fossil fuels continue to play a central role.
They’d better. There is no way to keep a data center running 24/7 with wind turbines that, 82% of the time, do nothing.
The folly of “green” energy is being proved, day after day. Let’s hope the green dream dies before it does catastrophic damage.
