Commentary: Kentucky Coal Association needs to face the facts about true cause of power failures

By Julia Finch and Drew Foley
Kentucky Sierra Club

In his September 13 guest column, Kentucky Coal Association President Tucker Davis took a direct aim at the clean energy economy — and the Sierra Club specifically — for last December’s failure to maintain reliable power during Winter Storm Elliot.

Of course, it was necessary for Mr. Davis to find another explanation for the failures. After all, the flagship message of the Kentucky Coal Association is that “coal keeps the lights on” — only this time, it did not. And the facts behind these failures were backed up by sworn testimony from LG&E/KU utility executives.

It is no surprise either that Mr. Davis chose to lob sensational and diversionary accusations at a nonprofit group, since KCA has spent much time and energy convincing state lawmakers that the reliability issues were not of coal’s shortcomings.

In a recent case before the Kentucky Public Service Commission, LG&E/KU’s own after-action report on the storm showed that outages due to reliability issues — both related and unrelated to Winter Storm Elliott — caused the loss of at least 822 MW of coal generation. This was more than twice the generation needed to have prevented rolling blackouts during the weather event. LG&E/KU shed 317 MW of load at the utility’s time of peak need.

390 MW of coal power — more than the 317 MW needed to stop rolling blackouts — were offline at the time of peak need due to winter weather failures. If this generation alone had been available, or if any of the 432 MW unavailable on December 23 due to unrelated mechanical failures had been available, LG&E/KU would not have had rolling blackouts during Winter Storm Elliott. LG&E/KU’s coal-fired generation failures were therefore one cause of the rolling blackouts during the storm.

Further, OVEC — a cooperative that is entirely composed of coal — fired generation for its member utilities, including LG&E/KU—fell 65 to 150 MW short of its expected energy delivery on December 23. The utility’s own facts revealed that when totaling the missing megawatts from OVEC, LG&E/KU lost at least 887 MW and possibly up to 986 MW due to its own, and OVEC’s, coal-fired generation failures. Those are the facts.

But the failures were not ONLY a result of “coal NOT keeping the lights on.” Based on LG&E/KU’s own reports, there was plenty of blame to go around — but NOT from clean energy sources.

Utility executives’ own testimony identified multiple mechanical and process failures of coal-fired power at Trimble units 1 and 2, Mill Creek 4, and OVEC that compounded energy delivery at this critical time. And the extreme cold also impacted gas plants and the reliable delivery of natural gas — a fossil fuel that is particularly vulnerable to sudden temperature drops and resulted in a depressurization of systems at critical junctures during the freeze.

As LG&E/KU’s own witness Charles Schram, director of Power Supplies noted, “Our system on any given day is almost never perfect… [T]his is pretty complex equipment, it is subject to cold weather stresses, and you do see these types of derates in colder weather.”

Finally, because LG&E/KU has chosen not to join a regional transmission organization that pools resources with many other utilities, it was unable to bring in power from other states at its time of peak need.

As our fossil-fuel based infrastructure continues to age, and experiences increasing impacts from extreme temperatures, it is fair for Mr. Davis, and his customers, to raise the question of energy reliability. However the real solution is to back up his “reliable” fossil energy with a newer, cleaner, more diverse portfolio of energy sources that include renewables with storage. That qualifies as “firm” power that provides the reliability the Kentucky Coal Association still wishes to claim for themselves — despite their own customer’s evidence. And better yet, it will provide cleaner air for Kenuckians and new opportunities for future economic development.

Kentucky utilities also need to pool their resources with utilities in other states to benefit from geographic diversity — where extreme weather threatens one area, others can share power. That is the “reality” that we, as local customers of these energy systems, are fighting for.

Julia Finch is Chapter Director and Drew Foley is Chapter Chair for the Kentucky Sierra Club.