Renewable Battery Backup Measured in Hours, not Days

Following yesterday’s article on anow and coal in the WSJ, Stevin Koonin, senior fellow at Hoover, warns readers about the three legs of the energy trilemma—affordability, sustainability, and reliability—that must come first.

Everything else is secondary. When the temperature plunges, the only metric that matters is whether the power stays on.

There is no mystery about what makes a reliable grid. This highly engineered system’s behavior is well understood and must drive planning. Yes, we model grids (thus we can plan for worst-case situations), and not your average days or mild winters.

The recent cold snap demonstrated again what experts have long known: Wind and solar might well contribute little during severe winter weather, and natural gas becomes scarce and expensive when heating demand surges. Gas spot prices surged dramatically during this storm.

In that context, explains Koonin, reliable, on‑site fuel becomes indispensable. A pile of coal next to a coal plant will remain the only reliable hedge we have against multi-day weather events

That isn’t nostalgia; it is physics, logistics and system design.

Americans do not need to be concerned about the weather. Rather, their concern should be about policy-making, that is, “leaving them vulnerable to the weather.”

When grid architecture is shaped by misinformed or ideologically driven actors, rather than engineers, modelers and system planners, the result is predictable: a brittle system that performs beautifully on paper but collapses in the cold.

Reliability isn’t a political preference, reminds Mr. Koonin, it is a prerequisite for modern life.