Why the wind industry is facing a major energy crisis
- October 9, 2021
Energy companies, who are struggling to survive the recent storms, are hoping a surge in wind power in California will help their bottom lines.
The industry has been scrambling to find solutions to a power surge caused by the California wildfires.
The National Weather Service says the storms are “widespread” and could be expected to continue through at least the end of the week.
But many energy companies, including those with big operations in California, have been forced to scramble to get out of the state.
In many places, they have been out of business, according to industry experts.
The California wildfires are the worst wildfire season on record, according the National Interagency Fire Center, and experts are worried about the potential for even more severe weather in the coming weeks.
The forecast calls for more wind gusts, increasing the likelihood of wildfires.
The state is still in the middle of the worst fire season on the East Coast, but experts say it is not yet too late to take action to reduce the number of people killed in the fires.
Many of those people have been living in or near homes damaged by the fires, which were triggered by an oil-burning plant called Sunoco that shut down operations in June.
In the days following the fires that sparked the storms, energy companies have scrambled to find ways to mitigate the damage.
Some have installed water treatment systems, but others have used heat pumps and other equipment to cool and ventilate homes that were destroyed.
Some companies have tried to reduce demand by selling excess electricity to residential customers or to other businesses that rely on power from renewable energy.
That could be a risky strategy, since many of those businesses are dependent on natural gas to run their businesses.
But those efforts are not enough to avoid the worst-case scenario of more fires and the potential destruction of infrastructure and communities, said Dan Wieden, a senior vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group that represents energy companies.
Wieden said that even with a lot of energy companies’ efforts, there is still not enough electricity to meet demand.
“There is no way to make up for the losses,” he said.
“There are not any incentives to be a long-term investor in this country to reduce consumption.”
The California energy crisis could be worseIf natural gas prices fall, some companies are likely to lose their ability to sell power to customers.
Many are trying to sell their excess power to power customers or other businesses, but they have little leverage because they are unable to sell at a discount to the cost of natural gas.
In many cases, the utility companies have already cut their own power prices.
And some of the biggest utilities in the state have already begun to sell more power.
For now, the energy companies are scrambling to shore up their finances.
A spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the largest utilities in California and one of its largest customers, said in a statement that it had started selling excess power at the rate of 1,600 megawatts a day.
Pacific Gas has about a third of the power in the U.S. Pacific is the largest natural gas supplier in the country and is in a financial crunch, but it is trying to stay competitive.
P&E said it would cut power demand by about 2 percent by the end the month, a plan that would cut losses by $1 billion a month.
Pepco, the state’s second-largest utility, said it was considering buying back power from other utilities, but said it had no immediate plans to do so.
“We are still in a period of intense natural gas supply and demand,” Pepco spokesman Mike DeAngelis said.
Power companies are also looking for ways to generate more energy.
They are buying more power from the wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources.
But the industry has a long way to go.
