editorial Energy Supply - The Challenges of a Changing Landscape Marshal Albright, President/CEO
sources (e.g., wind and solar) to the grid, blackouts could become more common. Energy supply challenges Minnkota Power Cooperative supplies electricity to Cass County Electric Cooperative and participates in the MISO wholesale market. Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) is a not-forprofit member-based organization that ensures reliable, least-cost delivery of electricity across all or parts of 15 U.S. states and one Canadian province. When you flip on a light switch, you expect the light to come on, and when you plug in a phone charger, you expect it to charge. As your energy supplier, it is our job to make sure that happens nearly 100% of the time. A variety of events can and occasionally do occur, causing your power to go off and when it does, Cass County Electric Cooperative employees work safely and quickly to restore your power. As a cooperative, we maintain our infrastructure; poles, wires, transformers, and all other electric supply devices to ensure we deliver above-average reliability. We rely on Minnkota Power Cooperative, our wholesale power supplier, to generate power and to make sure your power is on when you need it. Wide-spread power blackouts can occur but are rare and are usually related to a catastrophic event or extreme weather. However, as we add more non-scheduled power
energy has a potential capacity of 459 megawatts, but during the polar vortex and MISOinitiated Maximum Generation event, Minnkota’s wind energy was producing very little, and sometimes not at all.
When the wind turbines are not producing electricity, and energy demand is high, we have two ways to make up the difference; reduce power demand and generate electricity through backup resources. During the polar vortex event we successfully did both, our energy management system This past January, MISO was in a operated as planned by reducing critical situation during the polar the high electrical demand on the vortex because forecasted electricity grid resulting in no blackouts or demand nearly exceeded the brownouts. Regionally, enough supply. This condition was primarily fossil fuel (diesel and natural driven by two factors: colder-thangas) power plants were available forecasted temperatures in the to fill the void left by the lack of entire upper Midwest and less than wind energy in the MISO region, anticipated wind power generation. including running our coal-fired These factors led to MISO issuing baseload power plants at full a Maximum Generation event, capacity. calling on all available resources (especially fossil fuel) to supply the Cass County Electric and Minnkota grid with energy to avoid possible Power support an all-of-the-above rolling blackouts. The frigid weather energy supply strategy. Diversity in January 2019 caused problems in our energy supply is important, for energy sources, especially wind because when one source is in energy. When the air temperature short supply others can fill in the falls below minus 22 degrees or gaps. We are a national leader in lower, wind turbines shut down to the amount of wind energy as a protect internal components from percent of our total energy capacity. the cold weather. Wind energy Renewable energy sources, like represents a significant portion of wind and solar, can sometimes our power supply (34% capacity for present a challenge as a reliable Cass County Electric Cooperative), energy source because the wind so when the wind doesn’t blow doesn’t always blow, and the sun as anticipated, that presents a only shines for part of the day. In the problem, especially during extreme not-so-distant future, and if utilities temperatures. Minnkota’s wind are forced to switch to a renewable-
2 Highline Notes July 2019
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